There was a time not that long ago when driving a Lamborghini came at a price. To own something that looked like a spaceship and had the performance of a small nuclear explosion, you had to ritually cripple yourself every time you drove it, wedged like a foetus into the 5% of the car that wasn’t filled with engine.

The cars looked incredible on a poster stuck to your bedroom wall, but they were porcine to drive slowly and terrifying to drive fast. If you ambled, you stalled frequently; if you drove fast, you either developed the reflexes of a housefly or you crashed. And then the clutch went. As for practicality, the visibility was so poor that rumour has it Lamborghini owners developed rudimentary sonar long before parking sensors were invented.

Eleven years ago, however, the German giant Audi bought Lamborghini, and all that changed. Naturally purists complained that the air-conditioning worked, and that Audi would somehow leach all the Italian drama out of a Lambo. Well, if by “drama” they actually meant “rubbishness”, then they were right. Lambos aren’t rubbish any more.

The transformation began with the Gallardo of 2003, which became Lamborghini’s most successful model. It was small and usable, still looked like your mother would hate it and wasn’t as prone to exploding as previous models such as the Diablo. Last year Lamborghini freshened up the standard Gallardo coupé, gave it more power and called it the Gallardo LP 560-4 (the digits refer to the power, 560bhp, and the four-wheel drive) and now there’s the convertible version, this LP 560-4 Spyder.

This is an important car for the company since it sells roughly twice as many Spyders as it does coupés, and first impressions are good. The LP 560-4 looks like some wag lopped the wings off a stealth fighter jet, bolted in some seats and painted it a funny colour. There are tarmac-scraping vents on the front, vents in the back, vents on the sides. If speed were measured in vents, the Gallardo should do about 750mph. The reality is somewhat less, though 0-62mph in 4sec and a top speed of 201mph roof up or down is probably enough for most.

It drives pretty much like its coupé sibling, which is to say neatly and with minimum fuss and very unlike Lamborghinis from a decade ago. The four-wheel drive deploys most of the power from the 5.2-litre V10 engine to the rear wheels unless you lose traction, at which point it can shift as much as 70% of the available power to whichever axle has more grip.

Drive it badly and it will try its best to save you from the nearest ditch, which is a great relief in a hugely powerful mid-engined supercar; drive it well and you can reach speeds that will translate into lengthy prison sentences. It’s fast in the same way that being hit in the face with a baseball bat could be termed “uncomfortable”.

Admittedly, if you want to be really pernickety there’s none of the tactility of, say, a Ferrari F430, but there’s also none of the nervousness. The two cars take on the characters of their badges — the Lambo is a solid, charging bull and the Ferrari is a light, skittish horse. The Ferrari is ultimately the more rewarding, but the Lambo is more predictable and definitely the more accessible for most drivers. In the wet, I suspect, you’d always rather be in the Lamborghini and not just because of the four-wheel drive.

Perhaps of more interest to the average millionaire Spyder buyer is that you can drive the car slowly in complete comfort. It’s firm — especially if you leave the car in either “sport” or “corsa” mode — but not uncomfortable. And there’s none of the embarrassing kangarooing that you can get in some hypersensitive supercars.

It’s not all good news. The e-gear flappy-paddle gearbox promises faster shift times than before, and it delivers, though the upchanges are rough. There are also some problems with the roof, which folds mechanically in 20sec but if you are anything over 5ft 8in will smack you on the back of the head as it does so, which can make you look a bit of a berk.

The seats — finished in a rather cheap-looking blue leather — resolutely refuse to drop anywhere near low enough, meaning that when the roof is up, your head will rub against it. You also find yourself hunching to try to see out of the windscreen, because if you sit up straight your field of vision is limited.

These are minor quibbles, and potential owners will instead be occupying their time dreaming up combinations of ways to customise their car. You can order the Gallardo in bizarrely brilliant colours, including a neon green, as well as a range of matte — as opposed to glossy — paint jobs from yellow to black and white, which cost a not-inconsiderable £14,000 as options. You can have black wheels —and coloured roofs. And that’s what makes the Gallardo so exciting: it is outrageous and totally unapologetic. It is a proper supercar.

It may be flawed, but drive one around for a bit and you simply don’t care. Cars like this aren’t meant to worry about how much CO2 they produce (less, incidentally, than the original Gallardo), or the fact that the boot is small or that the roof is 2in too low.

Supercars should be about drama, about posters on walls, about making little boys ache to own one. About drawing crowds with cameraphones. I don’t want practical from my £130,000 penis extension; I want low, noisy, fast and utterly jaw-dropping. Which, despite its faults, is exactly what the Lamborghini LP 560-4 still is.

Hot wheels specs

Engine 5204cc, V10

Power/Torque 560bhp @ 8000rpm / 398 lb ft @ 6500rpm

Transmission Six-speed robotised manual

Top Speed/Acceleration 201mph / 0-62mph: 4sec

Fuel 20.2mpg (combined)

C02 330g/km

Verdict Makes other supercars look restrained and subtle

Price £130,000