Why you shouldn’t crash your priceless Lamborghini concept in public

If you're a European automaker looking to show off your flashy concept car on a public road, there's no better locale than last weekend's Goodwood Festival of Speed. It only made sense that Italdesign Giugiaro would show off the Parcour, a 550-hp, Lamborghini-based off-roader, at Goodwood's lightly challenging hill climb in front of 150,000 spectators. But even that challenge proved too much for the Parcour, which suffered an embarrassing run off track.

To the Parcour's credit, it wasn't the only car that did some impromptu off-roading during the festival; a classic Porsche Le Mans racecar also crashed at nearly the exact same spot. No one was injured in the wreck, but the Giugiaro Parcour was banged up enough — especially in the hand-crafted rear fender area — to require a flatbed tow-away. Did we mention this was one of only two such vehicles built so far, and likely cost Giugiaro's parent Volkswagen a few million dollars to bolt together.

The Parcour was meant to suggest further ideas about how Lamborghini could expand beyond sports cars — if not with an actual SUV that's been pushed back a few years, then with a tall, rugged car whose inspiration is as much dune buggy or Arizona's own Local Motors Rally Fighter. For a vehicle named after a sport based on getting over obstacles, the Goodwood debacle suggests the Parcour may need some more tweaking to ensure it can avoid them.