It is with no exaggeration that we say Ferrucio Lamborghini was a man with a need for speed.
Given that defining attribute, it is as unsurprising as it is impressive that the Riva Aquarama speedboat he commissioned almost 50 years ago is still the fastest one the firm ever built.
Built over the course of three months in 1968, Riva Aquarama Hull #278 was outfitted with a pair of four-liter V12s from a Lamboi 350 GT that the man himself had adapted for water use.
Riva also assisted with making the boat as fast as possible by custom designing an exhaust system with open pipes to accommodate the 350-HP engines per Ferruccio’s request.
The collaboration resulted in a boat with a top speed of 55 MPH (48 knots), almost 10 miles per hour faster than the top speed of the standard V8 Riva Aquarama models everyone else had.
Proving that the world is a messed up place, Ferruccio’s boat was eventually sold, stripped of its original motors and ended up stashed under a tarp until a Riva collector found it in 2010.
Over the course of three years, Riva-World painstakingly restored the boat, including sourcing two authentic Lamborghini V12s, and added six new twin Weber carburetors for good measure.
Although it was undoubtedly a labor of love, it was a also a labor of loot as Riva-World is selling the boat which, if you’ve got a treasure chest full of simoleons, you can bid on it here.
Just listen to those bulls purr …
Some images courtesy of Maurice Volmeyer
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