Monster tyres, minute ground clearance and massive rear-wheel drive power make this kind of vehicle a liability on all but the driest, smoothest roads.
So it's fair to say I was expecting Lamborghini's Winter Academy to be carnage.
As far as I could see, even instruction from double 24-hour Le Mans winner Dindo Capello and Lamborghini's chief test driver Giorgio Sanna, wasn't going to stop me making a big dent in more than just the Italian company's PR budget.
And when I arrived in the Italian Alpine resort of Sestriere it was with the air of a man ready to be expensive.
There was a time when Lamborghini's reputation for producing uncompromising cars was only eclipsed by its name for unreliability.
Miuras
It would be harsh to suggest that the only reason more people didn't kill themselves in early Miuras was because they couldn't get them started, but it wouldn't be far off. But times have changed. The Bolognan company, famed for its tractor roots, is now owned by Audi. And, although the Gallardo reeks of Italian pedigree, its foundations are solidly German.
To start with, a Quattro four-wheel drive system tames even 520 bhp.
As you'd expect, it's exquisitely made and although some of the dash instruments may lack a little flair with their Teutonic solidity, at least they work.
Shorter than you might expect, the Gallardo's compact lines are mesmerising and everything from the exhaust note to the open-gate gearbox spells supercar.
The Gallardo's success has already spawned a soft-top Spyder model which promises to be in showrooms by the summer. For the purposes of the Winter Academy, Lamborghini's fleet of Gallardo SEs are shod with specially-designed Pirelli winter tyres. They have deeper treads than ordinary tyres and studs tapped into the soft-compound rubber.
The circuit we used is just a few hundred metres below the Olympic village.
It's about 500 metres long and built on a big car park totally out of snow and ice with a mixture of snow banks and straw bales to contain the over-zealous.
It's small enough to keep us in first and second with a combination of sweeping and tight corners, chicanes and straights.
Snowy
Now, as we all know, the key to driving your average car on a snowy road is a softly, softly approach to the steering and the accelerator in a bid to keep braking to a minimum and direction changes as subtle as possible. In the four-wheel drive Lamborghini on a circuit, though, things are a bit different.
It's more about hitting the throttle and yanking the wheel so hard that you end up sliding sideways.
Then, in a bid to rescue yourself from the rapidly advancing ice-bank about to sculpt itself into your wing, mashing the throttle again to pull you out.
It's no real surprise that Capello, who helped bring Crewe-based Bentley the 24-hour Le Mans crown in 2004, makes it look very easy. But what's more of a surprise is that, although fairly hectic, it is actually quite simple.
Even with all the electronic driver aids switched off, sliding this £120,000 work of art through an icy chicane is just a question of doing what you're told.
Hysterically
My biggest problem was trying to concentrate while laughing hysterically.
The most satisfying of all the manoeuvres was the aptly-named "pendolo" or pendulum.
Approaching a bend you flick the wheel and stab the throttle to slide the car the wrong way so you can then force it back the right way with even more energy. Immediately you're facing the right direction you hit the throttle again to let the spinning front wheels pull you out of the sideways slide and along the straight.
Lamborghini came up with the idea of its winter academy to promote the Gallardo's four-wheel drive system.
Executives explained that even many prospective customers didn't realise that both the powerful Murcielago and Gallardo had all-wheel drive transmissions.
Generally the academies are for existing or prospective customers who want to try the car on snow.
Not surprisingly it's not cheap and even if you've forked out £120,000 plus on a Gallardo of your own, the course will still rush you something in the region of £800.
But of course, the difference is, you'll be paintballing in somebody else's suit, and it's a bullet-proof one at that.
