The Countach set the blueprint for the modern supercar, and spawned a dynasty of wild V12 flagships
WORDS AARON MCKAY PHOTOGRAPHY MAX EDLESTON
The Piedmontese expletive ʻCountachʼ must have echoed through Bertoneʼs Turin studio as Marcello Gandiniʼs Miura replacement took shape in the winter of 1970. A passing employeeʼs reaction, it was a prelude to the scores of wows at its 1971 Geneva Salon debut; even Ferruccio Lamborghini was taken aback at his first sight of the finished article. The name stuck.
Impossibly low, this Modernist spaceship tapered in knife-edge aerodynamic style and bristled with irresistible details. Gandiniʼs slashed rear wheelarches and neatly rounded haunches wrapped up a profile echoed in its windowlines. Lamborghiniʼs V12 was installed, now longitudinally, behind the cabin. Then the doors opened upwards…
As the crowds gawped, Bertoneʼs surprise wasnʼt just the dramatic scissor doors borrowed from its 1968 Alfa Carabo concept, or even the radical pseudo-racer profile. It was that this outrageous creation, hinting at the Stratos Zero on Bertoneʼs stand a year earlier, was set for production, with a claimed 300kph (186.4mph) top speed. The opening of chequebooks crystallised Lamborghiniʼs future. A far cry from Ferruccioʼs sober dreams of GT perfection, SantʼAgata would sell forward-looking drama.
But a fully production-ready Countach took until the 1973 Geneva show to arrive, with deliveries the following year. NACA ducts had appeared behind the doors for engine cooling, the futuristic interior was simplified and the nose reprofiled, but the big upgrade promised by the show carʼs ʻLP500ʼ badging was gone. That the same 3929cc V12 from the Miura was fitted, in 375bhp tune with six sidedraught Webers, spoke to the constricted resources at Automobili Ferruccio Lamborghini SpA. It also left that 300kph just out of reach.
Still, the order books were full; the problem was building enough, which was a challenge in ʼ70s Italy. Lurching from mass strike action to mass unemployment, drowning in OPEC crisis-fuelled inflation and mired in political violence, the idea of increasing Countach production to 10 a month might have seemed fanciful. Ferruccio himself sold off his remaining 49% stake in the car business in 1974, and a number of technical minds left in subsequent years.
But there was a reason why Ferrari was selling cars by the thousands, and why many of those Lamborghini expats were still hovering close to the business. The demand in America for supe
