Lamborghini’s logo is a raging bull — and the legendary Italian automaker is seeing red because of a Chicago dealer.
In a lawsuit, Automobili Lamborghini America says it was misled by Gold Coast Exotic Imports about some of the customers who bought cars from the dealer, which breached its contract with Lamborghini.
One of the customers was a convicted criminal who was an unauthorized reseller, the lawsuit says.
The litigation has been going on since early 2024 when the lawsuit was brought in federal court in Chicago, but last week both parties said they may be close to settling the case.
Under state law, Lamborghini can’t directly sell its Huracans, Urus and other high-priced motor toys to the public. So it licenses independent dealers across the country, such as Gold Coast Exotic Imports, to sell the vehicles.
New models sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Lamborghini says its contract with Gold Coast required the dealer to sell to “retail customers” or other authorized dealers.
In violation of the contract, Gold Coast misrepresented to Lamborghini that it sold cars to a former Chicago pro athlete and the chief executive officer of a chiropractic clinic in Minnesota, people considered to be retail customers, according to the suit.
But the vehicles were actually sold to “brokers” and “resellers,” including one who “previously pleaded guilty in a criminal fraud case that involved selling luxury cars to drug dealers and pimps as a means of laundering money,” the suit said.
Lamborghini says it bars dealers from making direct sales to brokers and resellers because they often flip the cars at inflated prices and don’t provide customers with a full range of services like a licensed auto dealer does.
That harms the vaunted automaker’s brand, the lawsuit said.
Based on an audit, Lamborghini said it found at least 32 transactions in 2023 that appeared to be sales to non-retail customers.
Lamborghini said it believes “these practices are merely one part of a larger program of deception and that Gold Coast and its employees have engaged in other misconduct, including demanding off-the-books kickbacks from customers amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars for Gold Coast, to agree to sell exclusive limited-edition vehicle models to those customers,” according to the suit.
Gold Coast was paid more than $4 million in dealer incentive bonuses from Lamborghini since 2019, but the dealer was operating a “shadow program” to sell Lamborghinis to non-retail customers in violation of the terms of those bonuses, the suit said.
In court filings, Gold Coast denied the allegations in the lawsuit, but unsuccessfully sought to get the judge to toss out the case.
In court papers, Gold Coast said it filed a “notice of protest” with the Illinois Motor Vehicle Review Board against Lamborghini just three months before the automaker sued Gold Coast on Jan. 24, 2024.
The protest letter said Lamborghini withheld hundreds of thousands of dollars for improvements to Gold Coast’s showrooms and failed to reimburse the dealer for marketing expenses.
In the letter, Gold Coast said it often outperforms other Lamborghini dealers in New York, Los Angeles and Miami despite Chicago’s “less favorable market conditions.”
The letter accused the automaker of trying to push out 81-year-old Gold Coast president Joseph Perillo Sr. and making disparaging comments to Gold Coast’s employees that he’s “too old, too difficult to deal with and has made enough money.”
On Friday, both sides told U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer they were discussing a possible settlement. They said they were “optimistic that an agreement can be reached that will lead to a resolution of this case in the coming days.”
“The parties are working together collaboratively to resolve all claims, including the claims pending before the Illinois Motor Vehicle Review Board,” lawyer Ira Levin, who represents Gold Coast, Perillo and a salesman for the dealership, said in response to questions from the Chicago Sun-Times.
The parties have told the judge they can be ready for trial in December 2026 if they don’t reach a deal.