"The biggest challenge facing Lamborghini right now is one of physical capacity," Stephan Winkelmann tells us. The president and CEO of Lamborghini SpA looks calm and elegant in his chair at the company headquarters in Sant'Agata, near Bologna, Italy.

"Here we have a maximum production capacity of 2,300 or 2,400 cars without serious investment. We could possibly run a second shift, but this brings problems of its own."

For much of its history, Lamborghini has had trouble running one product line, yet now it has two. Founded in 1963, the company has changed hands many times, passing through ownership by Chrysler and then an Indonesian company in recent years until Audi took over in 1998.

Now success seems to have arrived at last.

Same style, new efficiency
Stephan Winkelmann is the perfect meld of Lamborghini's traditional culture with Audi's buttoned-down corporate rectitude. If he didn't exist, Lamborghini would have had to invent him.

Though of German parentage, Winkelmann was born and raised in Rome. He eventually returned to Germany, where he worked in management for Audi. He later became the chairman of Fiat's sales operations in Germany, but Audi brought him back to become Lamborghini's chief executive in 2005.

Winkelmann is fiercely protective of Lamborghini, yet he understands the big picture. Confront him with the widely perceived notion that somehow the Murciélago is the last Lamborghini true to the company's original spirit, and he responds, "No, I don't necessarily find that assertion insulting. As a company we need to innovate. What was right in the 1960s is not good enough for today. A big engine and a nice shape are no longer enough, and we cannot do what we did 40 years ago."

It doesn't take long on the factory floor to establish the seismic magnitude of Audi's involvement with Lamborghini. The older production line for the Murciélago has the feel of cottage industry, while the production line for the Audi-engineered Gallardo has a surgical cleanliness and Germanic efficiency.

Each Gallardo spends just 59 minutes at each of its 22 assembly stations. A Murciélago, by contrast, requires three hours at each of its 14 stations. It's unsurprising that of the 2,095 Lamborghinis produced in 2006, the Gallardo made up 1,651 of these (and the newly introduced Gallardo Spyder accounted for 1,025 of this number).

Everything at Lamborghini is changing. The last employee to have worked on the iconic Lamborghini Miura (1966-1973) retired in September, as did Lamborghini's last sheet-metal worker. There's a younger workforce and the queues in the canteen indicate a bigger body of staff. In 1998 there were 300 working for Lamborghini; today there are 750 employees.

And yet the agnolotti in the company canteen is still worth waiting for.

The Audi R8 is not a Lamborghini
Winkelmann is practical enough to recognize that Audi's partnership has drastically improved the quality of the parts that go into every Lamborghini, yet he believes his company is essentially Italian. He doesn't feel threatened by the prospect of the new Audi R8, the Gallardo-derived midengine sports car just entering the exotic-car market.

"The R8 occupies a different market position to the Gallardo," he says. "It's both a different size and a different price. Audi consulted us about how to approach the market and build a car like this. Although the cars have little in the way of common parts, we had some Audi employees based here building Lamborghinis for a while." He chuckles, "I think they found it informative."

As important as it is to Winkelmann to underscore the differences between the Gallardo and the new R8, it's easy to wonder if Lamborghini's commitment to all-wheel drive also gives it an identity that's too close in spirit to Audi.

"It's an interesting point," he says, "but we established a base building four-wheel super-sport models back in the early '90s, long before any Audi involvement."

He continues, "What's more, we use viscous coupling technology here, which is different from the traditional Audi Quattro model. Four-wheel drive is — and will remain — one of Lamborghini's unique sales points, alongside design, performance and power."

A booming worldwide market for exotics
No matter what the differences — real or imagined — between the Gallardo and R8, Audi's top brass will be certainly eyeing Lamborghini's market data.

The U.S. is the key market with 40 percent of Sant'Agata's production heading across the Atlantic. The next most important markets are Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom. The Swiss market is on the way up. With three dealers in China, one in Russia and one in India (with another opening soon), Lamborghini is also broadening its horizons.

When it comes to new markets, however, a healthy sense of perspective is useful. In America, Lamborghini Houston alone sold more cars in 2006 than Russia, China and India combined, and if California were a separate nation it would be the company's biggest market.

Yet Winkelmann also points out that managing demand is actually more important than producing cars.

"What's easy to overlook," he says, "is that for decades we have been building 250 cars a year. Now we are a different company, but in order to protect the brand we still need the same philosophy of producing always less than demand. Once you oversupply, that leads to a vicious circle of discounting at dealers and then the brand is done. Completely over."

The Lamborghini look of the future
One thing that's over is Lamborghini's brief flirtation with retro-style design themes.

Although Lamborghini showed a Miura concept car at the 2006 Detroit Auto Show, Winklemann dismisses the exercise as simply a one-off tribute to the car's 40th anniversary, not the precursor to a limited run of production cars.

"We're not planning on riding the retro wave, despite vocal demand from the U.S.," he says. "Lamborghini needs to be recognized as a trendsetting company, and retro design is, to me, indicative of running out of ideas."

In the immediate future, Winkelmann tells us, Lamborghini plans to consolidate its position. It will continue to produce special editions such as the Gallardo Nera and Murciélago Versace, and it will expand its program for customer personalization, which it calls "Ad Personam."

He notes, "Although we've had more orders in 2006 than any year before, we're aware that the production life cycle of a Lamborghini is often double that of a normal car and we need to keep things fresh."

Winkelmann does acknowledge, however, that Lamborghini will continue to improve the performance of its cars, although the improvements will come in the form of technology rather than pure power. For example, no senior suit at Lamborghini will deny that there's a strong possibility of a slightly more powerful Gallardo built with exotic lightweight materials.

With improved financial stability is there a possibility that this might see Lamborghini reenter the motorsports arena?

"Ferruccio Lamborghini reckoned there was no need for competition," Winkelmann tells us. "For most of our customers, the opportunity to take the car on track themselves is more important to them than factory-backed motorsports ventures. Sooner or later we will run a one-make Gallardo racing series for gentlemen drivers."

Profit, what a concept
When the talk turns to financial issues, a topic always greeted with dismay by Winkelmann's predecessors, it's interesting to see Lamborghini's new president light up with enthusiasm.

"2006 has been the third year in a row we've earned money but the first year we've earned good money," he tells us. "We just need to take a long-term view and not become fixated on short-term return on investment. The key indicators are good. Warranty claims are down, rework in the factory has been massively reduced, and supplier quality has improved enormously."

Now that our interview has concluded, Winkelmann shakes hands, wishes me the best and we exit across the floor of the factory.

The horn signals the end of the work shift and there's soon a log-jam of Fiats driven by the departing craftsmen in the streets of Sant'Agata. The assembly lines fall silent, and the lights in the museum blink off one by one as curator Cristina Guizzardi checks her charges one last time.

One car remains out front, a black Gallardo, and one light remains burning. It's the light in Winkelmann's office. He's silhouetted against the light, gesturing with one hand as he holds a cell phone in the other.