Car and Driver’s European correspondent, Jethro Bovingdon, brings us what he calls the last of the old school supercars. He’s talking about Lamborghini’s “base model” Gallardo with a true manual transmission and two-wheel drive. Lamborghini first made a two-wheel drive Gallardo to celebrate the retirement of their chief test driver, Valentino Balboni. It seems that car was popular enough to warrant them making it a regular part of the lineup. Even though the Balboni car was rear wheel drive, the suspension was set up very conservative to provide the stability of natural understeer. It seems that problem has been remedied for the LP550-2. Jethro says there is a slight touch of understeer that’s very easy to overcome to put the car into a drift which he demonstrates several times. The other “less is more” feature of the car is the open-gate manual transmission which turns out to be the last of its kind in the age of the modern supercar. It’s a shame that most of the people buying these cars prefer the short shift times to the experience and mastery of shifting your own gears with a clutch. Hopefully they will make a retro novelty comeback sometime in the future.