If you’ve ever owned a car from a luxury or exotic carmaker before, you’ve probably experienced a bit of sticker shock the first time you got a repair bill or went shopping for parts. Something that costs $30 on a Ford or Toyota can cost triple that, or more, on a BMW or Porsche. And the difference isn’t always just because the part is more complex or of a better quality. Automakers have learned they can charge more just because their fancy badge is on a part, and people will pay it.
In some cases, though, the extra coin is justified, at least somewhat. Lamborghini’s gas caps are a great example. Sure, they function the same as any other gas cap, but Lamborghini’s is made from a fancy piece of billet aluminum and features Lamborghini script on the handle. It’s a nice touch that most people won’t see, but the owner will use often.
Because Lamborghini’s gas caps are solid aluminum and not standard plastic like most other gas caps, they are far more expensive than your average gas cap. Brand-new examples for the Aventador cost over $1,000 before shipping and taxes, while used versions cost over $900. So when the rubber seal on the cap goes bad and needs to be replaced, owners are looking at a four-figure repair bill – unless they’re smart enough to realize it can be fixed with a $15 Ford part.
An Easy 98% Discount
This discovery comes courtesy of Reddit, where user Fixitsteven figured out a cheap fix for a 2015 Lamborghini Aventador he was working on that needed a new gas cap. According to them, the car had a large evaporative leak in the fuel system, with a failed rubber seal on the gas cap as the culprit. Instead of simply ordering a new gas cap from Lamborghini, they decided to get creative. From the post:
Our cost was over $1200… I noticed the plastic portion said FoMoCo so I did some digging and found a European Ford cap with the same guts. Took both caps apart, swapped everything over, verified with the smoke test and its working great.
Lamborghini wanted $1,300 for a gas cap so I fixed it with a $40 Ford Focus cap.
by
u/Fixitsteven in
Justrolledintotheshop
It’s not the cap itself that does the sealing of the gas tank, obviously. It’s the rubber O-ring on the inside face of the cap. So as long as that rubber O-ring is the same shape and material as the original, and the plastic bit in the middle has the same mounting points, the Ford piece should screw right in.
It’s possible the Ford cap could’ve gone on without any modifications, though presumably, the owner of the Lamborghini probably preferred that the billet aluminum piece be retained. If I owned a Lamborghini, I would not be caught dead at a gas station without my aluminum gas cap. Without a metal gas cap that says “Lamborghini” on it, am I even driving a Lamborghini at all?
Though Fixitsteven doesn’t say which Ford the gas cap came from, it didn’t take long to find it myself, using his hints and the cap’s design. The Ford piece seems to be lifted straight from The Mk2 Focus—the C307 version sold in Europe, specifically, part number 6G919030AD. You can pick one up from eBay right now for just $15. While the black shell is quite different than the billet aluminum Lambo piece, the plastic stem and green rubber seal are identical.
There Are Many Such Cases
If you like weird, quirky cases of cheap parts from mass-production cars being found on hand-built, rare exotics, then you’ll know this is a common occurrence, especially on Lamborghinis. Hell, this isn’t even the first time I’ve seen Lamborghini borrow a part from a Ford Focus. The Murcielago, the Aventador’s predecessor, famously uses side marker indicators from the Mk1 Focus.
The most obvious case of parts-sharing from Lamborghini comes from an even older car, the Diablo. When Lamborghini updated that car with a facelift in 1999, it gained fixed headlights lifted from the Nissan 300ZX, of all cars. Going back to the Murcielago, it uses an alternator from a Volkswagen Eurovan, an HVAC blower motor from an Alfa Romeo 164, and an air conditioning compressor from a Renault Espace II minivan.
On its face, hearing that exotic cars like Lamborghinis are made up of a lot of pedestrian-level parts might be upsetting to those paying huge sums for these cars. But I think it’s very much a benefit, for the reasons shown above. If Lamborghini designed and produced its own gas cap seal for the Aventador, it’d be a $1,000 part no matter what. But because it was also used on a Focus, the owner saved a bunch of money and still got his car fixed. Personally, I have no trouble putting cheaper, non-brand-name parts on my car, so long as they’re designed identically. If it works, it works.
Top graphic images: Lamborghini; Ford; iOS
Oh the freedom, when you, at a certain age, realize that a lot of car parts are generic parts, that doesn’t suit one particular car!
–I don’t imagine “some” Lamborghini owning influencer types having that kind of brain capacity though 😀
I love looking up a part number and then googling it, finding out which cars it actually fits, and then spend a lot of time trying to find the cheapest… Then thinking about all the beer or gasoline I can buy with the saved money 😉
I’m not much into Lamborghinis – so little in fact that I don’t even call them lamboes – but the one with the triangular side indicators have those from a Ford Ka. Love that story too 🙂
I’m surprised a Ford part worked and there wasn’t something from the Volkswagen Group ecosystem that was usable instead since they own Lamborghini.
I would have replaced the entire cap with the plastic Ford unit and used the aluminum Lamborghini cap as a paper weight on my home desk.
If I had extra money, I’d find a failed Lamborghini gas cap and adapt it to fit on my Honda Civic. Then I’d park it at Cars and Coffee with the gas door open.
I wonder how far standardisation of components could go, if culture (both on makers and drivers) wasn’t an issue.
I think it’s already there. Dig under the hood and look at all the components made by Bosch and others. They’re not making bespoke parts. Heck even seats are outsourced to suppliers: sure they customize fabric and other details, but the frame, motors, etc are all standardized.
Related: The Lamborghini Murcielago uses the Ford MK1 Indicator light. I saw that somewhere years back, probably on Autopian 🙂
The seal in the images isn’t an o-ring
Ironically, several parts for the engine in my Ford Territory, the Lion 2.7L V6 diesel found in a bunch of European makes and models, are cheaper if they’re sourced from Land Rover rather than Ford. Possibly because more Lion V6s ended up in Land Rovers globally than the Australia-only Territory.
Same thing with my dad’s UK Ford Explorer 2nd gen. It was easier to source the timing chain cassettes (because 4.0 SOHC) from Land Rover than trying to go through Ford for a car that maybe sold 6000 units over here
The Lotus Elise uses the same HVAC vents as the Alfa Romeo 4C, which is funny in itself but not as much as both cars sourcing them from the Alfa Romeo 156.
You could probably get just the o-ring for a few cents.
I met a guy at Cars and Coffee years ago who told us that the fuel injectors he replaced on his Ferrari 308GTBi were VW parts.
Bosch CIS-Jetronic fuel injection is used on the 308 and many VWs, lots of Jetronic parts are interchangeable.
And let’s not forget every 90s sports car that came with Citroen CX mirrors…
Lotus Esprit, Jaguar XJ220, TVR Chimaera, Aston Martin DB7…
The Elise has some horrible Rover mirror they confusingly mounted on an elaborate fiberglass plinth.
R3 Rover 200?
Rover Metro 100…
Quite awful indeed. The base they have on the Else looks good though.
It’s odd Lamborghini used a Ford part but stuff like switches, vents and lights are expensive to tool up. Ferrari famously used Fiat parts, there’s an Aston Martin that uses upside-down VW Scirocco taillights and so on. TVR “wedge” cars used Landrover steering columns and stalks but the later Tuscan Tamora and Sagaris had CNC machined brass heater vents to avoid using an off the shelf part.
“…switches, vents and lights are expensive to tool up…”
Aparently VAG group really made a difference when they purchased Lamborghini, as they could pressure manufacturers to consider small batches of bespoke switchgear along with the mainstream orders. The Gallardo was the first one to come with those.
“If you’ve ever owned a car from a luxury or exotic carmaker before, you’ve probably experienced a bit of sticker shock the first time you got a repair bill or went shopping for parts.”
This is a video of Bruce Weiner (yes, the same person who had that lovely and sorely missed microcar museum in Georgia) talking about the costs of maintaining his McLaren F1 where he mentions that even if he never drove a single mile it would still be some $50,000 a year simply on account of components timing out due to age rather than wear. What he tells about replacing the tires is pretty wild!
https://youtu.be/EsKDGdcb6BQ?si=XWdVWbYcj3Asi5p7
That’s only $137 per day. Forever.
It makes perfect sense for a small manufacturer like Lamborghini to take advantage of the engineering facilities of much larger automakers. There’s no reason to reinvent the gas cap, that’s a fully solved problem with lots of mass market solutions.
The $1000 billet hat for it is a $35 part that is designed to extract money from Lamborghini owners
Off the shelf parts like that make all the sense on the world – what surprises me is that it was a Ford part and not something from the VW group that actually owns Lamborghini. Do all VWs, Skodas, etc. use Ford gaskets?
It could also be a part designed/built by a supplier and the guts are the same across many makes and this just happened to be the one that someone knew about already.
So who’s gonna be the first to put a Lambo cap on their Focus?
For all you Autopian Veyron owners, the air filter from a 928 is a direct swap, too.
The Veyron’s starter is from a Volkswagen Passat and the airbags from an Audi. I’m watching the series from Mat Armstrong where he’s rebuilding a crashed Veyron after Bugatti has refused to sell him parts. It’s interesting where some of the parts come from.
…and Audi got the airbags from a supplier.
Schrapnel is an optional extra.
Actually it came standard.
I know the brake light switch on my old VW Polo was also used on Porsches, along with a whole host of other VW/Audi/Skoda/Seats etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lambo used them too, after all, it’s just a switch that the customer will never see.
Right. And that’s a good thing. A mass market OEM has the resources to validate the design and the incentive to get it right before putting it in a million cars. I’d much rather rely on that process than a handful of Lamborghini engineers reinventing wheels. They’re not going to make a better switch, and will almost certainly make a worse one.
“It’s a nice touch that most people won’t see, but the owner will use often”
I wonder what the numbers are on Lamborghini owners who pump their own gas, and drive enough to do so often.
I met a Countach owner at an event in 2009 or so, right about the time gas prices were spiking. He was showing off his window sticker that showed a 8 mpg combined fuel economy rating* with a sheepish smile. The 2015 Aventador is rated at 15 – there’s progress for you! That’s 309 miles of range.
The point is that you don’t have to drive them much to have to pump your gas often.
*interestingly, this was revised in 2017 to be 7 mpg combined.
https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=1711
I was able together a combined 12 mpg out of my Contact just by adding a fuel shark.
When my electric turbo arrives from Ebay I expect to be sitting at a sweet 13-14…
If you know, you know /s
Well, there are only about a dozen full-service stations in all of Los Angeles – and you can see Lambos cruising the streets of Beverly Hills and Hollywood every day….
The manservant pumps it at the mansion garage with a portable tank.
While you joke, fuel delivery services are a thing. https://www.fuelster.co/
This may be one of the few cases where it makes sense: you don’t have to deal with people gawking at your car and asking the same 4 questions every time you fill up.
When I was a poor broke student an old Tee shirt or a hockey sock worked. Mind you, these were not fancy modern jars, just 60’s and 70’s run down junkers.
We’re talking about gas caps right?
They said “jars” in their comment, maybe they are using a hockey sock to replace the missing lid on their vintage jar of mustard. If one were to use a T-shirt as a gas cap on a post-1996 OBD2 car it would trigger a Check Engine light for the escaping gasoline fumes.
Meant to type cars and the cars were of the 60’s and 70’s vintage. If the gas cap got lost or broke I’d stuff a tee or a sock in the filler neck. It wasn’t that uncommon a practice back in the day.
Also known as a “Molotov cocktail with wheels”
yep, My mom’s car had a Molotov gas cap from time to time.
I’m with ya, but you know, teenagers, socks, t-shirts and time does not automatically equate with rolling Molotovs
We were youts. universally understood to not think things through to the logical or any other conclusion. Why spoil the spontaneity of the moment.
Aeons ago, I worked in a parts store and we had a customer who refused to use Toyota parts on his Lexus. He wouldn’t believe that they were the proper parts.
If I’m the store manager:
“Uhh, yessir, you are correct! The Lexus parts are right here (40% markup) and in order to save the planet, they don’t come in a box!”
Or better yet, “it isn’t in stock, so I will have it overnighted from Japan.”
Then charge shipping plus markup.
Aisin? Denso? Get this knockoff Amazon crap out of here.
To be fair, those do both kind of sound like they could be Amazon alphabet soup brand names. 😀
Diablos even use off-the-shelf bus taillights too, exposed screws and all.
In fairness, a need for correct identification occurs on lower-end offerings too.
“My H!! Aaaah, that’s how people know it’s a Honda!”
I’d imagine there’s quite a bit of cross shopping with minute parts. I’m wondering if you could just find the proper o-ring for the gas cap. Likely a pack of 10 for cheap.
If this happened to me, I would just use the stock Ford cap as a F**K You to Lambo.
(But my not being in that tax bracket, excludes me)
I would go out of my way to place a ‘Mustang’ badge on it
If you own a Lambo, you might be entirely out of any taxbracket
Had something like this with the “stepper motor” on a Discovery with the Lucas 14CUX controls. It cross-referenced to a very common Delco/GM idle air control valve. (Starting alphabetically with the Astro…) Cost about half what a Land Rover part was priced at. Although the LR part wasn’t what I’d exactly call “costly” like a Lambo gas cap — but hey, money saved on wrenching is always welcome!