Adrian ‘Lambo Guy’ Portelli takes multimillion-dollar stake in SummerNats event company

Adrian “Lambo Guy” Portelli has taken a multimillion-dollar stake in a major Australian motorsport festival and media group. Mr Portelli, who started amassing his fortune in tech in the US before launching his car enthusiast club LMCT+, made the announcement in Melbourne on Tuesday. He sees this latest investment in Out There Group as a passion project rather than an investment but also says his involvement aims to future-proof the Australian car industry. Out There Group runs the internationally renowned SummerNats, the Australian National Drag Racing Championships, and website and magazine Street Machine. Mr Portelli has taken a minority ownership stake but was coy about the actual dollar amount other than to say it was eight figures. “It’s more of a passion project, I don’t see it as an investment, I do things for fun now and this is something I definitely want to be involved in,” he told NewsWire. The son of a western Melbourne mechanic, and university dropout himself, Mr Portelli also revealed he had purchased land “on the outskirts” of Melbourne to build a racetrack. “Racetracks in general, a lot of them are getting shut down because of the noise. People building around racetracks that were already there to begin with, that’s just one aspect of it,” he said of the Out There investment. “The car culture and the car scenes in general, events, they’ve been limited. And doubling down on that gives people a chance to take their pride and joy to a racetrack or car show.” The money gives Out There Group an eye to replicating the massive annual SummerNats in the US. Out There Group co-owner Andy Lopez said organisers would aim to run an edition of the SummerNats stateside in 2026. “I’m wetting my pants with excitement,” Mr Lopez said. “It’s going to be immense.” Despite major music festivals around the country seemingly dropping like flies due to poor ticket sales and inflation, Mr Lopez said motoring events were strong. “The mood in the car scene in that space is really positive … it’s the passion in the community,” he said. “The SummerNats, and car festivals like it, whether it’s ours or other people’s, you can’t experience that in any other platform than being there live.” The Covid-19 pandemic changed the music industry as festivals and gigs were somewhat replaced with online content, Mr Lopez said. “Bouncing out of Covid for us, our community was like ‘well we can’t enjoy our cars on the internet, we gotta take them somewhere, where we can show them off’,” he said. “That’s why we’ve continued to do well; you can’t do it in any other way.” Despite extensive property, business and jewellery assets, Mr Portelli’s passion is cars. “There’s so few racetracks and there’s so many car nuts out there. They just don’t have the means to enjoy it,” he said. “I want to take our scene to the world.”