The occasional malfunction is part of living with a car, but modern models are so complex it’s not that easy finding what’s wrong with them anymore.
Well, the Lamborghini Aventador is complex alright, and although it doesn’t have a reputation for being fragile, one example recently broke down while loaded on a trailer.
With the engine not cranking up and the semi-automatic gearbox stuck in Parking, it was impossible to remove it unless they somehow managed to find a way to put it into Neutral.
First thing that came to mind? Why, the battery, of course, only the power charger didn’t do the job, so the next logical assumption was that it was a transmission fault. Being a semi-auto, selecting Neutral was far more complicated than just moving a lever, like in a traditional manual gearbox.
After some head-scratching, they found out they had it all wrong from the start: they had to remove the front luggage space cover to gain access to the battery itself, as the connector that comes as standard for the trickle charger wasn’t actually, um, connected to the battery itself, so all previous efforts were in vain.
That’s modern tech to you; a boon when everything works as advertised, quite troubling when it doesn’t. At least it didn’t burst into flames or anything like that, if it’s just a flat battery it’s no big deal. We’ve seen worse, haven’t we?