This is a coffee table made from a Lamborghini Diablo V12, it has a tempered glass top which is supported by all 12 pistons, and the open design allows you to see into the engine and observe its internal architecture.
The V12 fitted to the Diablo was an evolution of Lamborghini’s original V12, an engine that had been designed by the great Giotto Bizzarrini and had debuted in 1963. Rumor has it that Ferruccio Lamborghini paid him a bonus for every horsepower it produced over Ferrari’s V12.
From left to right: Giotto Bizzarrini, Ferruccio Lamborghini and Gian Paolo Dallara at Sant’Agata Bolognese in 1963, with a Lamborghini V12 engine prototype. Image courtesy of Lamborghini.
The Bizzarrini-designed Lamborghini V12 was highly advanced for the time, with double overhead cams per bank, an alloy block and heads, with a 3.5 liter displacement producing 370 bhp at 9,000 rpm.
Bizzarrini insisted that the engine could make 400 bhp and be safely revved to 11,000 rpm with an uprated fuel system, however it was felt that for production car use, it would be better not to over-stress the new engine design.
This V12 would power almost all of the most memorable Lamborghini production cars from 1963 well into the 2000s, including the Miura, Countach, LM002 “Rambo Lambo,” Diablo, Murciélago, and more.
It received significant upgrades over the decades of course, with increased displacement, modern engine management and fuel injection systems, and improved emissions equipment. Later versions of the engine would produce over 660 bhp, and the distinctive sound of the original Lamborghini V12 is instantly recognizable.
As you can see here, the glass tabletop rests on all 12 original pistons which are held up by their connecting rods and mounted to the top of the block.
The coffee table you see here is a celebration of this first Lamborghini V12 in some respects, it’s been designed with a very open format that showcases the pistons, and internal design of the engine. The pistons and connecting rods support a 40″ long by 28″ wide tempered double glass top, and it rests on legs that are threaded into the original crankcase holes.
The table is now being offered for sale out of Fort Saskatchewan in Alberta, Canada on Bring a Trailer. If you’d like to read more about it or register to bid you can visit the listing here.
Images courtesy of Bring a Trailer
Articles that Ben has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
