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

But then, Lamborghini was never one to follow convention, and rarely has this free-thinking approach been embodied more completely 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 the defence market was somewhat farfetched, the company pressed a civilian version of the vehicle into limited production, with 328 examples being built and sold between 1986 and 1993.

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