After living in the shadow of the Countach and later Murcielago for too long, the Lamborghini Diablo is now both collectible and extremely valuable, with good regular examples changing hands for upwards of $300,000, and the rare GT going for almost double that.
So it’s easy to see why someone without that kind of cash might want to steal one, but then what do you do with it? You can’t drive it, and swapping its identity with another legitimate, but perhaps damaged, car isn’t simple like it is when you’re dealing with Golf GTIs, where you could buy a battered donor for a couple of thousand bucks. Even trying to sell the parts could land you in trouble because the cars are so rare and distinctive, and the supercar and Lamborghini communities so tight.
Sure, if you’re part of a gang that routinely steals high-dollar exotics and have the right contacts across the globe, you might get away with it and make some money. But for a casual thief a car like a rare right-hand drive Diablo that looked like a great opportunity to make some easy cash could soon turn into a curse.
Which seems to be what happened in the case of Alistair McKillop’s 2001 Diablo 6.0 VT, one of only 12 right-hand drive cars made. The British Lambo fan lent his car to a collector friend before the pandemic when he was too busy with work to drive it, but Mckillop was later shocked to receive a letter from the UK’s Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) telling him that someone was trying to register the car in another name. When McKillop checked with his friend, the friend confirmed that the car had left his premises, but said he assumed McKillop had collected it himself some time earlier.
Related: Lamborghini Remembers The Diablo, The V12 Bull That Chrysler Built
The police were alerted and McKillop contacted Ciro Ciampi of the Petrolheadonism Club, who is also secretary of the Lamborghini Club UK, but the trail remained mostly cold until December 2022 when the car was located in an abandoned farm building in Somerset, in the south west of England.
Sadly, the Diablo wasn’t in the same condition as it had been the last time McKillop had seen it. Although the 6.0-liter, 550 hp (558 PS) V12 was still in place, the doors and many important trim pieces including the bumpers, lights, grilles and engine cover were missing. Replacing those parts with genuine new or used spares could be hugely expensive and time consuming, leading both McKillop and Petrolheadonism’s Ciampi to believe that the best chance of getting the car back on the road is to find the car’s original missing parts.
That might sound like a tall order, but the pair got a break when they unearthed social media footage of the Lamborghini taken at Car Keys Solutions in Essex during 2021. The thieves had dropped the Diablo off to get a set of keys cut and coded, claiming that both sets had been lost. The car, still in pristine condition at this point, was wearing fake plates, but identifiable as McKillop’s by the exhaust shield he’d had made to protect the bumper.
Ciampi ascertains that the locksmith company and its staff were an innocent party in the story, but staff there were able to supply a name that has now been passed on to police for further investigation. If you’re a fan of true crime podcasts but also have a soft spot for a Lamborghini V12 this story might be worth following.