Latest news with #Baldi
Hamilton Spectator
03-05-2025
- Automotive
- Hamilton Spectator
The Lamborghini Urus SE is terrible value for money. Good!
The Lamborghini Urus SE I am testing comes with a sticker price just under $430,000. Wondering if Lamborghini can objectively justify that price tag? Of course it can't. For that money, you could buy two fully loaded Porsche Cayenne Turbos — a vehicle with which the Urus shares both a platform and a number of fundamental components. The Urus SE even uses the same twin-turbocharged, 4.0-litre V8 with hybrid boost, as the Porsche Cayenne Turbo — which is actually an Audi-derived unit — albeit with some special tuning from Lamborghini. The Urus SE Makes about 789 horsepower and will do 0 to 100 km/h in 3.4 seconds, where the Cayenne Turbo has to make do with only 729 horsepower and 3.7 seconds, respectively. Grading the Urus SE on a $400,000-curve, you start to get unreasonably judgy, even paranoid. The paddle shifters feel kinda plastic-y. The Bang and Olufsen sound system lacks amplified fidelity. Hey, are those the same automatic window buttons they use on the Audi Q7? I don't actually know if any of those things are true. But I can tell you I wouldn't have had any of those thoughts in a $150,000 SUV. When I asked non-enthusiast friends to sit in the driver seat and guess the price tag of the Urus SE, to a person they said, '$150,000.' And yeah, I'd say that's what it objectively feels like to drive and use as an everyday car. As a plug-in hybrid, the Urus SE can be driven up to 60 km on battery power alone, and doing that makes the experience especially ubiquitous. It feels like driving an electric SUV. Any electric SUV. The end. Lamborghini themselves aren't shy about this fact. 'We wanted to build a car with the possibility to be an everyday driver,' Lamborghini CEO of Americas Andrea Baldi told the Star during the launch of the new Temerario supercar. Living with the Urus SE for a few days confirmed something I had long suspected about all cars — tangible value of any vehicle basically tops out around $150,000 to $175,000. But you don't buy a Lamborghini because you're interested in great value. You buy a Lamborghini because you demand hot, sticky, dripping, pure, uncut dopamine. Finishing his remark on the accessibility of the Urus, Baldi said, 'We wanted to offer our customers a driving experience that was the best part of their day, every day — not just on weekends.' So, big question: Can an electrified SUV be the best part of your day? If it's a Lamborghini? Definitely. Dip out of the hybrid 'Stada' mode and select Sport or Corsa and you're met with pure violence. The exhaust note becomes a roaring cacophony of snap-crackle-bangs — causing nearby pedestrians to JUMP. Stand close enough to the exhaust, you can feel a deep thumping into your chest, as though your heart is trying to escape through your spine. The throttle response becomes sharp and edgy, and the grip is so tremendous, you can rip the more-than-5,500-lbs. SUV around corners with such ferocity, it beggars belief. The steering may not offer sportscar-like feedback, but, goddamn, is it responsive. It translates your ham-fisted inputs into silk. The transmission shifts lightning quick. Literally. Floor it from a dig and all hell breaks loose in the most hilarious way possible. Clocking a 0-100 km/h time becomes about as appealing as timing how long you're having sex. And it even does off-road-y things. Select one of the off-road modes such as Neve, Sabia or Terra and the suspension will raise several inches, become more compliant and distribute traction accordingly for maximum fun … er … I mean, control. Whipping through rain-soaked back roads, kicking up puddles to make massive rooster tails and soaring over rough terrain probably isn't something I would do with any other Lamborghini (well, OK, maybe the Sterrato). And to the credit of Lamborghini, the reps, including Baldi, were delighted when I recounted my experience to them. 'Where did you take it? Which mode did you like best? Did you feel how much grip? Isn't that chassis incredible? Did you launch it?' You rarely get that kind of engagement and thrill from a manufacturer after beating up on their tester. And it's perhaps why Lamborghini fans are so willing to pay for a badge. Because it's fun. The most compelling evidence that a hybrid SUV is a real Lamborghini? It made people's day to see it. Driving it down the street, kids chased after it, adults stopped to take pictures. All begged for me to rev the engine. How could I not? Baldi proudly proclaims that this was integral to the design brief, 'If you look at the Urus, you have no doubt that it's a Lamborghini,' he says. 'We can't hide who we are. We're not afraid to make a statement.' That's why you pay $430,000 for one of these. Because you're not making anybody's day in a Kia Givenuponlife or Hyundai Sockswithsandals or whatever their latest soulsucking bucket of nothing is called. A bright orange Lamborghini — even if it's an SUV, makes the world a more interesting, vibrant and exciting place. That's Lamborghini's 'value proposition' and their line in the sand. 'It's not a choice between Lamborghini and competitors in the segment,' says Baldi 'For our customers, it's a natural choice to have a Lamborghini.' The most memorable experiences in life are not 'great value.' They're the most unique and exciting. And by that metric, as hybrid SUVs go, nothing else even comes close to the Urus SE. Type: Front-engine, all-wheel drive SUV Engine : Twin turbo, 4.0-litre V8, combined with an electric powertrain, 789 horsepower, 701 pounds feet of torque Transmission: Eight-speed automatic Fuel (Premium 93): 12.5 litres/100 km in the city; 11.2l/100 km on the highway; 12.9l/100 km combined Cargo: 574 litres, or 20.3 cubic feet Price: $432,490, as tested
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
What's a losing team's 'Super Bowl Champion' merch worth?
The question hits the air before the confetti hits the ground, before the winning team has stretched their 'Super Bowl Champions' t-shirts over shoulder pads: Hey, what happens to the losing team's merchandise? Right now, there are boxes and pallets of 'Super Bowl Champion Eagles' and 'Super Bowl Champion Chiefs' sitting quietly in warehouses and storerooms in New Orleans, Kansas City and Philadelphia, among other locales, just waiting for the clock to hit 0:00 so one can be opened. The losing team's merch will be packaged up and sent away. Far, far away. 'The products actually get shipped to Eastern Europe,' says Cinira Baldi, CEO of Good360, the organization tasked with handling the NFL's unsellable merch. 'There are multiple countries — Ukraine being one, and Poland, and some other countries — where we make sure that it gets to good hands, people that need the product.' Good360 specializes in this sort of asset reallocation for charitable purposes; the organization is involved in stateside relief efforts for the Los Angeles wildfires and the Florida and North Carolina hurricane devastation, among other crises. The organization has worked with the NFL for more than a decade to redistribute merchandise to locations in need — everywhere from war zones to disaster zones to impoverished areas. Where other corporations that work with Good360 may not necessarily worry about specific brand management security, the NFL has very specific concerns and needs regarding its donated merchandise. Cincinnati Bengals Super Bowl champion merchandise from 2022 might be an interesting little collectible, but it dilutes the brand and infects the market with what the NFL sees as defective — or at the very least, improper — merchandise. Thus, Baldi notes that Good360 carefully vets its nonprofit vendors to ensure that merchandise actually get to their destinations, rather than to less charitable and more opportunistic hands. 'We don't want to ever ship products that could be resold on the market or where the NFL might be very popular, so bad actors could take them and resell them. We're very particular about that,' Baldi says. 'We want to distribute them where there's a need, either around having access to clothing and gear, or there's displacement. So people who've been displaced from their homes and don't have anything. It could be natural disasters or conflict areas.' (Interesting side note: the hottest item in donations right now is baseball caps. Whether for fashion or utility, ballcaps are now in demand all over the world.) Thing is, once the merchandise reaches its destination, literally anything can happen to it, including a possible return to U.S. shores. What then? Would anyone pay a premium for a t-shirt of a Super Bowl loser? Collectibles experts contacted by Yahoo Sports consider that a fairly remote possibility. Fans of the team that lost generally don't want to be reminded that they came up short. And the value of 'wow, that's kind of weird' merch is pretty limited. It's on par with, say, a Memphis Allen Iverson jersey from the three games The Answer played for the Grizzlies. Collectors tend to value real-world events over hypothetical ones. The secondary market seems to bear that theory out. Scout around eBay, and you might find a painfully desperate 'Home with the Chrome' San Francisco 49ers Super Bowl LVIII t-shirt for '$14.99 or best offer,' or perhaps a 'Super Bowl Champions' 49ers shirt for '$19.97 or best offer.' (The Niners lost Super Bowl LVIII to the Chiefs last year, 25-22.) Or, if you're a Falcons fan who wishes to deny the existence of literally everything that happened after Atlanta led 28-3 in the Super Bowl, you can pick up a 'Champions Falcons' long-sleeved shirt for '$5.18 or best offer.' Authenticity is always a question, but all have NFL holograms or price tags attached. So if you want to live in that alternative reality, or if you just want a one-of-a-kind collectible, you could see who you know in Eastern Europe. A better idea: keep in mind that whoever is supposed to be getting that shirt or hat probably needs it for something more than just a conversation starter.
