I FOUND A COPY OF THE LAMBORGHINI LM002 THE LAFORZA ITALIAN SUV

On today's episode of WatchJRGO, I'm bringing you one of the rarest cars in the world, and one of the cars that's on the cars I thought were gonna be garbage, but is actually really good list. What is going on, guys? I am WatchJRGO, and today, like I said, we are here with one of the rarest SUVs in the world. This is the La Forza. I think that's all it's called, the La Forza. This truck is the definition of copy Lamborghini's homework and change it a little. I think it's what we have to call this video because it is somehow an exact copy of an LM002, just done a little bit differently. They copied the hood bump, they copied quite a bit of the front end, and they completely copied the interior. And we're gonna get into all of that in this video where we check out number 245 of the 250 La Forzas. Oh, I haven't even got to the best part yet. This is the literal movie car from Pretty Woman. So it has some pretty cool heritage, if you ask me. They weren't driving it in the movie, but it's in front of a park in the background, and everybody made a big deal about it because these cars just don't exist. So the La Forza may be the most interesting SUV in the world, and it may also be the SUV that truly pioneered modern SUVs after the Grand Wagoneer, which was like the first ultra-luxury SUV. They consider this to have an ultra-luxury interior. There is so much to talk about when it comes to the La Forza. Now, this is a 1989, so it's one of the earliest ones. They actually ended up making these forever, but only about 1,200 of them were ever imported into the United States. So let's talk about the many, many, many facets of the La Forza, starting from the ground. So underneath this, it's an Iveco military truck with this tube system that makes up the chassis called Univiz. And it is, underneath, it really is a military truck, and they wanted it to kind of compete with the Range Rover, right? And you can tell they wanted it to compete with the Range Rover because they gave it the Range Rover Classic's door handles. That's really the only place this thing ever compares to a Range Rover. Maybe that and the fact that it has a real chassis underneath. It has real four-wheel drive, solid axles that come out to CVEs. It's really crazy in the front end and the rear end. So it's a pretty unique suspension system, pretty unique drive system. But that's the chassis. Now, it was designed by Pininfarina, which, of course, is the designer of all of the best-looking Ferraris, all the old-school Ferraris. And it's also the guy at Pininfarina that designed it is the one that designed the De Tomaso Pantera. And the one thing he did was make it look like a modern SUV. He really designed all the modern SUVs, let's be honest. If you look at the profile here, they gave it these flush windows, and they took away the rain gutters that everything else in the 80s had. Even those red flags that I just had here still had rain gutters. The suburban in this era, rain gutters. La Forza, clean sheet design. So honestly, that is pretty cool. Kinda nice to have an SUV that was designed by the Pantera guy. No one's gonna argue with you that the Pantera looks great. It is a beautiful car. And honestly, this thing kinda, it's kinda growing on me. I thought it was really stupid. I thought it was gonna drive terribly. And weirdly, it's been so good at everything. It's been fun to drive. We'll talk more about that when we get to driving it. And I love that it looks like LM002 with its hood bump and the interior and everything like that. So, it's got a lot going for it. Now, not only is it on a military chassis with a Pininfarina design body, and every inch of the interior is wrapped in leather or burlwood. Just a quick glimpse one more time. Every inch of the interior, which was unheard of. There was so much plastic back then. Still metal dashes in the early 90s, late 80s. You could still find metal dashes. But this thing is powered by a Ford engine. So, they actually shipped these cars built over to the U.S. without the drivetrain in them. And once they got here, they put a Ford truck V8 in it. Just a five liter V8. And a four speed Ford transmission. And later on, they really went with it. And they threw the Mustang engine in it. They supercharged the Mustang engine. And they built a crazy SUV that should have been competitive. Honestly though, I don't think I've ever seen another one. This is the only one I've ever seen in my life. So, you would think this would have been a very competitive car. But the fact that they were like $100,000 or more in today's money. They were selling for $67,000 in the 90s. Well over $100,000 in today's dollars. So, this was luxury. The pinnacle of it. All right, all right. Let's do a little walk around here. Let's check out the La Forza. So, this one has been re-shod with some beautiful BFGoodrich Rugged Terrain TAs here. And this is a, it looks like a 15, is it? It's a 265-70-16. And it looks incredible. This is the perfect look for this thing. Look at that chassis. That is straight up welded box steel. Unbelievable. And no, it didn't leak all that water. That's from a storm last night. But this is an unbelievable chassis. This thing is solid from front to back. Which again, lends itself to the fact that I thought it was gonna drive like garbage, but it drives like a rock. I mean, it literally is so solid going over bumps and everything like that, it must weigh an outrageous amount too. I bet this thing weighs like every bit of 6,500 pounds. I don't know for sure, but it feels heavy. Anyway, back to the tour here. Disc brakes in the front, drum brakes in the rear, and the brakes work okay. I'd say it's some of the worst brakes I've driven recently. If I had to complain about it, it would be the fact that it's hard to stop. But look at that. Somebody's even put stainless steel brake lines in there. Unbelievable. And they have AN fittings converting to the brake lines. Wild stuff in the La Forza here. Cool Italian flag with the V8 badge here on the front. So you've got like Italian, the checkered flag, and that's kind of the American V8 badge there. Very cool. The Pininfarina badge. The La Forza steps, which are very cool as well. Those are, they look very custom, just the way they're cut back here. Gotta love that. You know what else the front end looks like? The early minivans. Just like a Dodge Caravan, I think the non Grand Caravan or whatever, had this exact grill. So that's interesting. Does this move? It's, guys, this is, this is metal. This is folded metal. That's not plastic. How outrageous is that grill? So that's pretty crazy to see. Hella headlights. The grill is supposed to be silver, but it's been rewrapped and brushed aluminum. And I wouldn't say the wrap is amazing, but hey, it's there. You've got fog lights down low. I actually like the La Forza tag there. And these are actual, that's the oil cooler right there. These are real cooling ducts on the front of the La Forza. This thing is blowing my mind. Every minute, there's another cooler. Wow. You know how I told you guys that axle system is crazy? Look at that. How insane, how overbuilt is this tank? I'm telling you, I really wanted to drive this because I was like, look at this joke that was in Pretty Woman, but it's cool. This is a very cool car. Gas cap, gas door right here in the back. It does run on normal 87, which is cool. And then you have a little chrome exhaust tip coming out of the side right there. I haven't opened the back hatch or anything, but you do have a wiper. I don't think it has a sprayer, which is a little interesting. Maybe it was supposed to have a sprayer and somebody took it off. It kind of looks like they did. You've got the La Forza badge back here, the five liter badge right there. These look pretty Range Rover-y. I'll give them a little credit there. And some big handles here to help you open and close the hatch. And then this right here, this comes off and the trailer hitch is actually just hidden behind it. So very cool, you know, predated the Suburban and everybody hiding their trailer hitches. And then, I don't know if you guys can see, every single centimeter of this basically has been restored. It's perfect underneath. Everything's perfect. How do you open the hatch? You guys think this works? Okay. It does have a very nice aftermarket security system. It works great, Avital. Oh, guys, listen to this. Are you ready? Here goes the trunk. Opening this door electronically sounds as good as a G-Wagon door. That is unbelievable. All right, look at the back of the La Forza here. So dual latches, electronic release, as you just heard. It does have rear defrost. It looks like somebody's done a really nice job tanning the windows on this thing. The hatch struts are clearly new and they work really well. Honestly, it looks like it's been completely modified and replaced, but hey, it works really well. Spare tire right there and a ton of storage here in the back. And if you need more storage, that middle seat, middle row folds down. All right, we'll get in the back seat here in a second, but check out those lights. Everybody has their own map light, like an airplane right there. And then I like how it has so many lights for the traditional cabin lighting as well. So you've got nice coverage from the lighting and this carpet, this carpet's really nice. Heavy duty, this might be the real carpet, but this is very heavy duty and I like it. So that is the hatch. Wow. Took a little bit of work to close there. There used to be an antenna here for the radio, but it is missing. It's got a little filler cap in there. You probably don't need it. I think the radio was working just fine when I had it on, but kind of cool if it was power. That'd be really sick to have a power antenna that high in the car. Okay, let's open the hood and go check out this American power plant. Wow. It's got hood struts that work way too well on the La Forza here. Okay, so everything was serviced. Everything was serviced. Five, five, 21, 20, I'm confused about that. Maybe they meant 20, 21 and they just put a one in there. Okay, diff oil even. They went through it. T-case, wow. The AC doesn't appear to work. I didn't really look into it, but I don't think it does. This thing looks like it's relatively easy to work on. Look at that. I mean, once you take the air box out, the air box is most of the room under the hood here, but if you just pull the lines off, you can get to every centimeter of this V8. Wow. The easiest plug job I've ever seen on one of these. I'm kind of impressed right now, guys. This looks like a super, super easy V8 to work on. All right, somebody put a brand new alternator on there. It looks like it's a brand new alternator. That's for sure. Oh, the throttle body cooling bypass hasn't been done. Kind of interesting. You'd think you'd want to cool this old girl down and a crazy, crazy throttle linkage right here. Cruise control, it looks like. Maybe that's TV. But there's a cruise module. That has to be a cruise module right there. I didn't even see that this thing had cruise control. I should have looked around. Very Italian looking fuse box right here. Let's open this thing up. It looks like it's those old school Mercedes fuses. Here we go. Let's open her up. Oh yeah, old school fuses right there. Just after glass, right before, we got nice automotive fuses. Very interesting. I don't know if that's factory, but it looks like somebody added this fuse box here. Also, it looks really, really nice. So maybe not. I don't know, that could have been factory. I mean, these things were basically completely hand built. So I guess anything is possible under the hood of a La Forza. So that is a good look at that five liter EFI V8. It starts right up every time, drives nice. So I would say that it's a pretty reliable old car here. Check out the lights. Bayonet bulbs under the hood. That's kind of interesting there. And they didn't turn on. It looks like that might be a tilt switch, mercury switch, something like that. Oh, they're unhooked. That would explain why the lights didn't turn on. Well, there you have it guys. The front end of this thing is basically just an American Ford truck. So that's pretty cool. And now the hood bump makes sense. That giant five liter intake, that is one tall intake. Everybody else would probably do a power bump because it looks cool, but they did it because they had to. You know, honestly, that power bump is kind of deception. This engine only makes 185 horsepower. So it's horrific, right? Every four cylinder today makes more power than this. 270 foot pounds of torque. So it's just enough power to get this thing going. It's not fast. There is no world where this thing is fast, but it looks fast because of the power bump and the nice slick looking front end. But 185, 270, it is not great on the power or the torque side. All right, there you go. That's the exterior of the La Forza. Why am I in love with this? I thought this was gonna be just absolute garbage. And instead it's good. Like look at these Blaupunkt speakers right here. And it's all done well. Everything's leather, everything's stitched. We got some nice stick on burl wood, but it is supposed to be real burl wood. And I think it is. Power door locks and they work great. They work on the remote, which is amazing. Power seats and they work great. It's a really interesting seating position. You are sitting back. You're like, you are sitting back in a pure recliner and up underneath the steering column. Look at this crazy steering column. You know that doesn't collapse in an accident. You are gonna eat that steering wheel in an accident. And speaking of that steering wheel, it's built by Momo. It's just everything in the La Forza is crazy. And they have really nice, check it out. The horn is awesome. It's like a victory horn right there. All right, all right. Let's start at the door panel real quick. Fast tour the interior and then we'll get this thing out on the road. First of all, look, gigantic windows, gigantic windows. And they all have the Sangorban logo very well engraved in them. Like you can see the logo in every pane and it's huge. The door panel itself is pretty cool. I mean, it's not ergonomic, it's useless. This is an old car and let's be real. Everything about it is basically useless. Cup holders in the sun, useless. Weird storage on the dash. What's going on with that? Why is the ashtray down here and the cup holders aren't? You know, everything about it is odd, but it's just charming and really good to drive. I can't express why this thing is so good to drive. Look at these crazy door hinges. Oh my gosh, they have grease zerks. They've been painted over, but they have grease zerks. That might be the coolest door hinge I've ever seen in my life. It'll last forever if you replace the grease zerks. The ball, I can't even feel the ball anymore. On that one, you can. Okay, door panel, I promise. All right, so you've got a little map pocket right there. The elastic's still good. The door handle actually works really well. It's like, I mean, it sounds great. It feels solid. The door pull is incredibly solid as well. The mirror switches work as you would expect. Kind of weird that they're just out here on their own island, but hey, it works and it's not in the way of your arm, so all of that's cool. I think we have some true early 2000s APC pedals bolted on here, so that's kind of crazy. You can see all the wiring, as you'd expect in any hand-built Italian car, just shoved up underneath. I guess I do think this is tilt telescope. It has this little thing here, so I guess let's find out. I don't want to move the wheel because it's in the perfect spot. Okay, so it's tilt and it's all the way down and it is not telescope at all. Okay, so one-way steering wheel right there. Great looking dash, wrapped in leather like we said. Beautiful instruments. The instruments are kind of the coolest part. Everything is actually numerated, right? Not just a bunch of markers or anything like that. You know the water temp, you know the oil pressure, you know the voltmeter, like this thing is great. Really nice warning lights across the top. They're laid out well. Beautiful leather stitching all the way across. Those cup holders that are literally worthless too. You can't put anything in there. They're only this deep. Okay, so that is the dash. Over here, key goes in on this side. You've got your wiper controls right here. Headlights here on the column. Kind of interesting, right? You twist this and then of course towards you for high beam. Look at that big old high beam indicator. All right, very cool. Oh, cruise control's right there. It's like a GM control almost. Now it's not actually a GM control, right? It'd be round with a button in the center, but it might be a Ford control. Huh. All right, well we'll try cruise. I can't wait to find out if that works. And then moving over here to the center, we have climate control. So instead we actually have fog lights, then we have defrost, then we have hazards. Look at that. They work. I guess rear wiper? If I had to guess, this is the four wheel drive control. Here's the rear trunk and this is lock and unlock. Here's the climate controls. Somebody's relabeled them, but you can tell what they are. Defrost floor, bi-level off, vent and AC. The crazy thing is it's in reverse, right? So the passenger side is cold and the driver's side is hot. So it's very confusing. You have to actually wonder if it's even working, but that's hot and there's a transition. You can hear that snappy transition in the middle when it moves from cold over to heat. Down here, we've got a little Jensen Bluetooth head unit. Obviously not stock, but it does work and it all sounds pretty good. We've got this Ferrari Pininfarina logo down here in the ashtray and somebody has put in that USB charger, which is nice to have, honestly. Here's our shifter. It is a T-handle. And then beside that, we've got the e-brake, window controls, center console. Check it out. Felony for us here in the center console as well. All right, well, that's not very deep. It is lockable though. So that's kind of cool. And that's it. Let's check out the glove box. So we've got Burlwood above the glove box. Anything crazy in here? There's the Colorado emissions testing right here. Is the weight on there? Nah, 89,000 miles. I guess it still says 89,000 miles. So TMU on this one. And then there's some spare parts in there, but that is the glove box. Wow, it shuts super nice. I bet the mirror went bad. So somebody put one of these aftermarket ones on. It looks fine. These did have a huge sunroof, which is very nice. Okay. It moves, but I'm not gonna break it. It looks like this was a digital clock. It's a Viglia Flash. What a cool clock though. I wish it worked. It does not. We do have a map light right here. Still works. Interior lights. Ooh, all the interior lights turn on. Very nice. All right, and there is a sunroof and we're not gonna test it. I bet it works, but I don't wanna be the guy who tests it. And no, ooh, passenger does get a mirror. Drivers do not get a mirror in the La Forza. But the sun visors are wrapped in leather. So very fancy. It even has La Forza floor mats. Look at these seats. These seats are actual like recliners, like from an office. They have embroidered L's in the headrests for La Forza and they have really nice big armrests. The seats in the La Forza are so comfy. I can't tell you how good they are. I am really enjoying driving this thing around and just like sitting in my living room recliner. We talk about how all the new trucks and everything have nice seats. This got real recliners out of an office. All right, here in the back, we've got my new helmet. We'll take a detour and talk about that in a minute. Just went and picked it up. Here you go, BMW. The backseat of the La Forza is interesting though. You can see this seat is crazy. It's like an absolutely flat bench with super reclined backs. So since this doesn't come up the way the front seats do, I think you'd be fighting in the backseat to like hold yourself still. It's basically a military troop seat wrapped in leather, right? So you'd be pushing back against this really hard to stay in the seat because these slanted backs are gonna make you wanna slide forward every time the car comes to a stop. So kind of interesting. I do love the triple headrests with the La Forza L's in them. And the passengers do get their own vents. It looks like they might even get their own ashtray and they sure do. And that's the rear. Okay, the rear passengers do get their own. Oh, the car is not on. That's the craziest Easter egg I've ever found. The windows work when the car isn't on? All of them do. So that is the 1989 La Forza from Pretty Woman. The Lamborghini LM002's clone. That's really what it is. The center stack looks just like the LM002's interior. The gauges look just like it. I mean, I get it. They're both Italian, but it really looks like they just copied Lamborghini's homework and changed it a little. Anyway, let's take the La Forza out for a drive and check this thing out. One of the most interesting SUVs I'll ever drive in my life. And I should mention it's for sale if you want it. And it's a lot cheaper than you'd imagine. Oh, I'm so happy they put cupholders in the... Yeah, that's where they... All right, driving the La Forza. First of all, let's start this thing up. It runs so well. You know what's crazy, guys? Normally when you get in an Italian car, especially of this vintage, you're used to seeing leather peeling back and quality issues all over. But this thing is a tank. I mean, it truly is a tank. It was sitting on a military vehicle frame. But listen. I guess the sunroof makes a little noise. But other than that, this thing is very quiet inside. Really solid. And there's not much to do here other than talk about how it drives this nicely. You know, it eats up the bumps in the road. It does it in the old school way, right? It translates it into a lot of motion. So it doesn't just absorb it all flat. You know, new cars are just so good. Their dynamics are incredible. But this feels like an old 90s truck, but built unbelievably well. That's really all there is to say about it. It doesn't like to go around corners. It doesn't go fast, but it is nice to cruise in. And, we're about to find out if cruise control works. It does not. Yeah, cruise is completely dead. I'm doing every single thing on the cruise stock. All right, well, we tried. Also, the speedometer's off by a full order of magnitude. I don't know if you can see this. I'm going like 10 mile an hour, and that Avalon just passed me like I was standing still. So they're going the speed limit, which is 40. So if we go 40, I checked it on my phone. I think you have to be going 50 to be doing 36. So the speedometer is just wildly off. Even if I show you a full pull, it's not a good representation, but we're gonna do it right now. So let's do a 40 roll. Okay, here it comes, guys. Here comes our 40 roll. You ready? Ready? Wide open. Let's go. We're going like 45 miles an hour. Hey, I don't think anyone ever claimed this was fast. I sure hope they didn't claim it was fast until it got the supercharged Mustang engine. So that is driving the La Forza. There's not much else to say about it. Let's see a little body roll. Oh my gosh, the body roll's unhinged. One good corner, you could flip this thing instantly. I hadn't tried that. It would fail the moose test. There is no question this thing absolutely fails the moose test. All right, here, we're gonna throw it around this corner. It's really not bad around the corner. You can get it through a corner. I don't know. It's just a nice cruiser. And it's built like a tank and it's quiet. That's what I like. And honestly, the audio system in here with those six and a half coaxials that somebody put in, I don't think they were factory, and this Bluetooth head unit, it's perfect. The Bluetooth connects instantaneously. It gets plenty loud and it's fun to drive around. It's just a very fun truck to drive around. But you better have the windows down. Oh, they're not auto. You'd think they would've been auto for $67,000. Almost no difference in windows down and windows up. It's got a lot of positives, guys. What a cool old truck. All right, let's get back to the house. Well, there you have it, guys. That is the 1989 La Forza. I was super excited to drive this thing. As soon as I saw it, I mean, it's a cool color, Italian design. I thought it was gonna be horrible, but it would be like a really good video. And instead, it's like really good, and I hope it's a really good video. So I am a little bit mind blown. There is nothing Range Rover about it, except for those door handles. So I don't know where they were coming from with that. But you can kind of see how this kind of defined the modern SUV. Cleaning up the sides, bringing the windows out, all this power stuff that works great even today. And also a really, really reliable powertrain. Who would have guessed? An Italian car with a super reliable drivetrain that you can work on at O'Reilly's every day of the week? Because they have every part for this. Unbelievable. Anyway, this thing is for sale at Sullivan Auto House. It might be going up on their new auction site, Dutch Auctions. I'm not sure which way it's going, but you might be able to just jump in and buy it now for a very reasonable price. Or you could jump in and try your luck on Dutch Auctions when that rolls out here shortly. I had fun driving it. I'm super glad they let me take it. And that is it for today, guys. Thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to head on over to ShopWatchJR.com for cool shirts just like this. And please like, share, subscribe, do whatever you want to do. And I will talk to you next time. The E500 has been sitting here for two days and change. And after we did this, people were telling me that I was doing everything wrong. They said that everybody knows that the passenger seat fuse is always bad on Mercedes. And I was like, well, the fuse wasn't bad at all. Interesting metal tab right there. We'll just put that right there. So it's actually the computer that was dead. It's very obvious that it was the computer, but let's find out. Oh, this thing's fine. It is completely awake. We're going to start it up right now just to prove the lights are bright. The lights were never bright. Oh, there we go. Sorry, I was rocking out. We fixed it completely. All right, I'm happy the E500 is rocking. I need to go put more miles on this car for sure. People were telling me all these things that are clearly shown in the video. They were like, you need to take a screwdriver and set the door latches. I was like, I showed that exact step in the video. It's just, it was pretty crazy. Some of the comments on this video. Believe me, I did some troubleshooting here. I tried to give up on it, but we have this car figured out. It's literally just this $35 computer under this seat. And really, I think it still works, right? Okay, no, it's dead. I did have to disconnect the seat, but you could just put the fuse back in, move the seat and take it back out. Not a bad way to live in a $2,000 Mercedes. I mean, it's so cheap and it's pretty fast. That's kind of the thing is this is pretty fast. Good old E-Class. I put washer fluid in it too.