Six years after it was purchased by Audi, Lamborghini still relied on the Diablo as its flagship model, and that received a final bump for the last production year: the VT 6.0.
After a troublesome period, Lamborghini finally looked like it had found a big group who could take good care of the legacy left by Ferrucio Lamborghini. The Diablo was designed in Chrysler's studios, outraging Marcello Ghandini, who penned the first sketches for it, but the customers loved the reshape done by Luc Donkerwolke, who worked especially on the Diablo VT 6.0 as Design Director for Volkswagen Group.
The car lost its pop-up headlights since new technologies allowed the carmakers to create angled lamps that could illuminate the road ahead efficiently. Thus, the sharp front end was kept, but the lower apron received a new design with side air intakes and a flat area reserved for the license plate. At the back, the Diablo VT 6.0 sported a twin-exhaust placed in the middle instead of the formerly used quad-exhaust system.
Inside, Donkerwolke didn't change the overall design but changed the materials used. Thus, the carbon fiber elements were seen on the center console, while the leather upholstery covered not just the seats but the door cards and the dashboard as well.
But the most significant change was on the car's underpinnings, which sported an all-wheel drive system. Also, the six-liter powerplant V12 was new and developed 543 hp (550 PS), which was a lot for those days' standards, and it was mated to a five-speed manual.