When does a smartphone become more than just a phone? When does it turn into a work of art? To answer that question, you must ask yourself a broader question: What, exactly, is art? Is it genius in material form? The raw product of passion and conviction? Or is it simply anything that costs a boatload of money? If this last descriptor pretty much sums up art for you, then let us be the first to tell you: you’re going to love, love, love the Lamborghini smartphone.
Imagine something this fancy, except in your pocket.
Yes, That Lamborghini
If you’ve been saving up for a down payment on a house but are looking to throw all fiscal practicality out the window, we have exactly the product for you. Introducing the $6,300 Tonino Lamborghini 88 Tauri smartphone, a device so absurdly expensive that it must be a great work of art. And we don’t say that facetiously. You see, in our mind, any smartphone maker able to unironically sell a mobile device at that price point might as well be Picasso, because that is straight-up genius. I mean seriously – who can do that? Who can say, “Smartphones should cost as much as a starter car”?
Lamborghini, that’s who.
“Who can say, ‘Smartphones should cost as much as a starter car’? Lamborghini, that’s who.”
Now to be clear, Lamborghini is not a company that makes starter cars, or knows anything about them. The well-traveled Toyota with 50,000 miles on it that you bought out of college has no place in the fabled factory of Ferruccio Lamborghini, whose vehicles typically cost around $200,000 or more. Ever since Feruccio burst onto the auto scene back in 1963, the Lamborghini name has been synonymous with wealth and exclusivity. Ferruccio Lamborghini did a good job of making his products desirable, and that’s a lesson he evidently passed onto his son Tonino, whose company is releasing the five-figure smartphone.
But to be fair to both Ferruccio Lamborghini and his son, Lamborghini products aren’t just about the expense. They are also well-made. After all, it’s not like your typical Lambo is coming off a huge machine line where it was assembled in minutes. In 2013, Lamborghini only sold 2,131 cars. By contrast, Ford sold around 2.5 million vehicles that same year. It’s not that Lambos have bad sales figures – it’s that they only make an extremely limited number per year. As a result, this scarcity lends the Lambo the kind of mystique that’s irresistible to the world’s elite.
The new phone works by this same principle: If you build not so many, they will come. According to CNET, there will only be 1,947 Tonino Lamborghini 88 Tauri smartphones. Why 1,947? Guess which year Tonino was born.
OK, so we’ve established that owning a Tauri (or ’88? Or Torino? Who knows what to call these things) places you among a very elite group. But what can members of that group expect? How will they know, every waking moment, that their smartphone is $6,000 more valuable than the average person’s? Here’s a brief rundown of what makes the Tonino special:
- It has a calfskin leather case. In case you didn’t guess, calfskin is expensive material. So yeah, there’s that.
- It’s got stainless steel in its construction that’s “automotive” quality – specifically, Lamborghini quality.
- Built into the phone are 13 ringtones created by a DJ exclusively for the device.
But apart from these adornments, the phone is kind of just like … well, any other phone. It’s got a great screen display, front and back cameras, and a healthy amount of storage space. But the iPhone has all those things. Yet there’s one thing the iPhone lacks: it’s not a Lamborghini.
