Eccentrica is building the open-top V12 manual Diablo Lamborghini no longer builds
The purest Lamborghini you can buy new is not coming from Lamborghini
Eccentrica, the Italian firm behind the acclaimed Lamborghini Diablo restomod, is teasing an open-top version, set to be revealed at Monterey Car Week on 10 August. The teaser trades in pure emotion, clouds, open air and a promise about rediscovering why we fell in love with driving, and it confirms the two things that matter most: the naturally aspirated V12 and the gated manual are staying. In 2026, that combination has become almost impossible to buy new, including from Lamborghini itself.
What Eccentrica has said, and what it has not
Keep the excitement honest: this is still a teaser. Eccentrica has released atmospheric imagery of open sky with the line about being driven by emotion, framed it as a new chapter of the Eccentrica V12, and set a reveal for 10 August at Monterey Car Week. The wording all but confirms a fully open roadster rather than a targa, and the company has stated the car keeps its naturally aspirated V12 and manual gearbox. What it has not yet published is the roadster's power output, price, production run or whether it eats into the 19 units of the original. Treat the styling and numbers as unconfirmed until the covers come off.
The car it is built on
The roadster grows out of the Eccentrica V12 coupe, one of the most admired restomods of recent years. That car takes a 1990s Diablo and rebuilds it around a 5.7 litre naturally aspirated V12 with new camshafts and an electric throttle body, good for 550 hp and 600 Nm sent to the rear wheels through a gated six-speed manual. It hits 100 km/h in 3.5 seconds and runs to around 335 km/h, riding on a composite-reinforced chassis, double-wishbone suspension, TracTive active dampers and Pirelli P Zero Trofeo R tyres. It costs 1,200,000 euro, is limited to 19 examples, and Top Gear called it monstrously analogue. That last phrase is the entire point.
A convertible about less, not more
Most open-top supercars are an exercise in addition: more comfort, more show, a softer grand tourer wearing the coupe's badge. This one reads as the opposite. Everything about Eccentrica's pitch, the analogue V12, the manual, the emotion-first teaser, points to subtraction, to removing the last barrier between the driver and one of the greatest engines Lamborghini ever built. Losing the roof is not about lifestyle here. It is about turning the volume up.
The analog Lamborghini has moved out of Lamborghini
Here is why this matters beyond one rare car. The pure recipe, a naturally aspirated V12 with a manual, no longer exists in Lamborghini's own showroom. The current V12 flagship, the hybrid Revuelto and its coming SV, pairs its engine with electric motors and a dual-clutch gearbox, and no manual has been offered in years. So the analogue experience the brand was built on has quietly migrated to specialists: to Eccentrica, to coachbuilt revivals like the reborn Bertone Runabout, and to limited-run Italian specials such as Maserati's one-off GT2 Stradale tributes. The restomod is no longer nostalgia. It is the last place the emotional supercar is still on sale.
AutoNext Take
The teaser copy about rediscovering why we fell in love with driving would be marketing fluff on almost any other car. On this one it is close to a mission statement, because Eccentrica is genuinely selling the thing the industry has spent a decade engineering out: an unfiltered, naturally aspirated, hand-shifted V12, now with the roof gone so nothing sits between you and the noise.
What makes it more than a rich enthusiast's toy is what it says about where that experience now lives. When the company that made the Diablo will not build you a pure V12 manual anymore, and a small team in Italy will, the restomod has stopped being a tribute act and become the real thing's last dealership. We should be careful not to crown a car we have not seen, and the price will be absurd. But if the open-top drives like the coupe reads, this is one of the most exciting reveals of the summer. Bring on 10 August.
