Twenty whole years. This is how long it took this young man to track down the Lamborghini Diablo Jota that his father sold when he was eight years old. Two decades later, he handed the car keys back to his dad and told him to drive slowly. The Lambo still had the original tires.
In 1995, the year Moritz Hess was born, his father bought a Lamborghini Diablo Jota painted in blue, from a dealership in Florence, Italy. Then he went back and purchased one more, this time, painted purple.
Mr. Hess took his purple Diablo to a Lambo owners' meeting and met a friend who had just got his Jota kit. So he wanted one, too. He went to a dealership in Germany and asked for a similar kit. They said that he had to take his Lambo to the factory in Sant'Agata Bolognese. And so he did.
Six weeks later, he got the car back. He was in love with it. He was so proud. He had this head-turning Lamborghini Diablo with a Jota kit that not many had. The car was purple over a sea blue interior, filled with Alcantara. He couldn't keep a low profile in it. He wasn't planning to do it anyway.
However, he sold it in 2003 with the help of someone in Dusseldorf. Moritz was eight years old and very upset that the car was going away. He remembers how he stood in front of the car and started crying. He was broken-hearted and did not want to let it go.
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When he grew up, his father explained he had sold it because he needed the money to buy a hotel. So, his car was eventually sold to a customer in Japan. He kept it for a few years, wrapped it, and sold it again.
The eight-year-old who cried when the Diablo was sold grew up and has his own car business now, together with his brother. However, no matter how many cars go through their hands, their thought stayed wiht their father's Lamborghini. They made it their purpose in life to find that 1995 Lamborghini Diablo Jota.
They thought it shouldn't be that hard. Only 28 Jota kits were made, with 17 factory-installed. Half of the cars that got them were purple, and many of them ended up in Japan.
One day, a friend showed him a video of the Diablo Jota wrapped in matte black. That is when he started searching for it on Instagram, hoping to see a picture of it, to find a hint that would lead him to his dad's car. He found a car that looked like the one in the video, but this time, it was purple. He messaged the photographer, but he got no reply.
Photo: VINwiki | YouTube
He used the location where the photo was taken and started searching in Japanese. He ended up on a car blog, where he found the purple Jota. The pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place. He told his father to call the man who had sold his Lamborghini Diablo Jota in 2003 and ask him for help to track down the car.
On December 16, 2022, during a Christmas dinner, he informed them that it was the exact same car. The owner would MAYBE consider selling it. But first, he wanted to hear their offer. They made him an offer, and the owner told them that maybe a little more would do.
Moritz flew all the way to Japan on a business trip that month and used the occasion to go see the car on December 22. The moment he saw the color of the car, he knew it was the one. He got flashbacks of his childhood running in the back of his mind. He had the original license plate with them to prove he was the son of the first owner.
That very day, when it was 6 AM back home in Germany, he video-called his brother and father on WhatsApp. His brother instantly started to cry when he saw the car.
The discussions with the owner halted during the New Year holidays. Two weeks later, the owner told him a price through his broker. The Hess family could not afford it. But they asked him how he felt about trading. Moritz was willing to trade his 25th Anniversary Lamborghini Countach, with only 4,000 kilometers (2,485 miles) on the clock just to get his dad's car back.
Photo: VINwiki | YouTube
The owner of the Diablo Jota had to decline the offer because importing the Countach into Japan would have been very expensive. Negotiations lasted for around seven months. Meanwhile, Moritz set his eyes on two other cars in Japan, bought them, and sent them to Germany.
One day, he got a phone call from the broker. The owner finally agreed on his price. He couldn't believe it. So he got the car shipped to Germany via Amsterdam in the Netherlands and then to Frankfurt in Germany. The first thing he did was put dealer plates on it and drive to his parents' home.
He handed over the car keys to his dad. So 20 years later, Mr. Hess sat in the driver's seat of his precious Lamborghini Diablo Jota. It had about 10,000 kilometers (6,214 miles) more, but it still felt like in the good old days.
He told his dad to drive slowly and carefully because the Lambo still had the original tires, which were terribly worn out. He said he would. But then, the two brothers heard him revving up the engine. The last thing he was going to do that day was drive slowly. He had been waiting for that moment for two whole decades.
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