Since only 410 cars were built, I'm not sure how many of these cars were actually tested. I was told before purchasing my car that these cars had a slower 0-60 time... somewhere in the 8sec range by various "experts" who had never seen one, let alone driven one.


Now that I am an owner, I can honestly say that I can understand why these cars had such accolades, starting with the Urraco. To date, the Jalpa is the best handling car I have ever driven outside of the latest iteration of the ultra-modern Lotus Elise/Exige. I have owned several fine cars including a 911, 944, Ghibli, Bora, Merak, and Testarossa. As far as handling, the Jalpa is superior in every way to these greats and until you've really lived with one, it would be impossible to understand. Bob Wallace and then later Alfieri (who credit's using Wallace's optimized "Urraco" race car) deserve all the credit for optimizing the suspension over the duration of the range.


As far as acceleration, I bought the Brooklands "Performance Portfolio" of past articles. Here is what the actual road tested car articles had to say:

(Urraco P300) Auto International - Aug, 1977: 0-60 mph = 6.4 sec
(Jalpa) Car Nov, 1982: 0-60 mph = tried several acceleration runs, but encountered test set-up difficulty, estimated the 0-60 mph less than 7 sec
(Jalpa) Motor June, 1983: 0-60 mph = 5.8 sec
(Jalpa) Sports Car Monthly - Feb, 1987: 0-60 = 6.1 sec

Only the US publication Road & Track recorded a lousy time. It should be noted however that this car was equipped with all of the usual California mandated emissions bull@#$! In fact, I think almost all of the articles that did not test cars did a "cut and paste" from the Road & Track cited figures of 0-60mph in 7.3sec. Certainly most of the US publications did this because they cite in their articles that they didn't perform a track test.

Finally my favorite post was by Car and Driver author Jim Hall,

"If Magnum ever has to Chase villains fleeing in a Jalpa, he might as well park the Ferrari".

Cheers. -John