Few could have anticipated the imposing yet incongruous sight of a six-foot-tall, near three ton, V-12-powered, four-wheel drive behemoth at the 1986 Brussels Auto Show - much less one appearing on the Lamborghini stand.

But then Lamborghini was never one to follow convention or perceived wisdom, and rarely has this free-thinking approach been embodied more succinctly than with the company’s fantastically idiosyncratic LM002.

In fact, its genesis stretched back as far as the ill-fated Chrysler V-8-powered Cheetah military vehicle of 1977, the failure of which led Lamborghini - with hindsight, somewhat optimistically - to reason that a four-cam V-12-powered derivative might be more attractive to U.S. or Middle East-based armed forces instead.

Eventually, and reluctantly, accepting that accessing the defence market was somewhat fanciful, the company pressed a civilian version of the vehicle into limited production, with some 328 being constructed between 1986 and 1993.

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