A while back I wasted two hours of my life a while back watching the terrible movie Lamborghini: The Man Behind the Legend. Starring “Dollar Store Jason Statham” Frank Grillo and Gabriel “only here for the paycheck” Byrne as Ferrucio Lamborghini and Enzo Ferrari respectively, this relentlessly sh*tty movie nevertheless contains a one hundred percent totally accurate sequence when a smug Byrne in a Ferrari Mondial QV casually dispatches Grillo in a Lamborghini Countach. Their supposed rivalry is started in an earlier scene in the movie where Lamborghini accosts Ferrari outside his factory to complain about the clutches Ferrari uses, and Il Commendatore haughtily tells Lamborghini to “go back to his tractors.”
Was Lamborghini the sports car company a creation of pure spite? Ferrucio Lamborghini was born to wine-making parents in 1916, but his interests lay in mechanizing labor rather than any romantic notions about the farming of grapes. He studied mechanical engineering and found himself maintaining trucks for the Italian Air Force during the Second World War.
After the smoke cleared at the end of European hostilities, Ferrucio opened a small garage in Bologna and began to tinker, using war surplus parts to create his first tractors. Because these used Morris car engines that ran on expensive petrol, Lamborghini patented a fuel atomizer, that allowed the engines to start on petrol and then switch over to cheaper diesel. Buoyed by favorable economic conditions supporting Italian farmers buying domestically built agricultural equipment, Lamborghini Trattori soon found success in the post-war mini-industrial boom. By the mid-fifties, Ferrucio Lamborghini was a very rich man.
Ferrucio shared his hardscrabble background with another Italian industrialist, Adolfo Orsi, who owned Maserati. According to an interview with Thoroughbred and Classic Cars given in 1991, Lamborghini said:
“Adolfo Orsi, then the owner of Maserati, was a man I had a lot of respect for: he had started life as a poor boy, like myself. But I did not like his cars much. They felt heavy and did not really go very fast.”
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He was also unimpressed with the succession of Ferrari 250s he owned. The Old Man famously saw his road car business as a necessary evil to finance his beloved racing team. Lamborghini considered Ferraris fast but unrefined and recalcitrant in use. Whatever the truth of what was said between them, Lamborghini had enough engineering knowledge, resources, and business acumen to believe he could do it better.
The Hills Are Alive To The Sound Of V12 Engines
The hills surrounding Turin were overflowing with sports car expertise and Lamborghini availed himself of the best of it, creating the very first Lamborghini Automobili 350 GTV which appeared as a prototype at the 1963 Turin show. The production version, substantially reworked for ease of use and manufacture, appeared in 1964 sans pop-up headlights and with less chrome trim. With no need for concessions to motor racing, the 350 GT followed the continent-crushing gran turismo layout with a large V12 under the hood and an opulent 2+2 cabin. 120 were built, but Lamborghini’s next car would be the genesis of the type of car the company is known for today.
The Miura wasn’t the first mid-engined production car, but it gave life to the idea that serious road-going performance machinery should have its motor in the middle of the chassis. Up to this point, mid-engine designs were nearly exclusive to racing cars, and Enzo Ferrari himself considered the configuration too much for non-racing drivers to handle. Indeed, the first mid-engine road-going Ferrari, the 365 GT4 BB, would not appear until 1973.
Ferrucio hadn’t been consulted about the Miura’s mid-engine layout, but as soon as the naked chassis was presented, he was convinced. Nuccio Bertone saw the Miura chassis on display at the 1965 Turin show and came to an arrangement with Ferrucio there and then. Marcello Gandini, whose hiring at Bertone had previously been vetoed by the departing Giorgio Giugiaro, would be allowed to get on with designing the Miura with a little input from Bertone himself. The Miura’s voluptuous curves and coquettish eyelashes are pure Fellini’s La Dolce Vita – an Italian man’s vision of the ideal feminine form on wheels. The successor would cast aside such sixties thinking.
Despite the Miura being only four years old Lamborghini gave chief engineer Paolo Stanzani and Gandini permission to think about a successor in 1970. The transverse layout of the Miura, while novel meant it had weight distribution issues and widow-maker handling. To remedy this a technician working under Stanzani, Oliveriero Pedrazzi came had the idea of turning the engine not only length ways, but crucially backwards in the chassis with the gearbox in front of the engine between the driver and passenger, giving the car its LP designation: longitudinale posteriore. As Pedrazzi told the website deRivaz & Ives:
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“I came up with the idea of using the engine-transmission combination of the Espada, but turned around so that the gearbox would be located ahead and between the seats for the driver and passenger. It was done to essentially rationalize our production process and save costs.”
With the four-seater Espada and slightly gawky Jarama (also a Gadini design) now covering the grand touring market, the new car was free to be the ultimate expression of Italian style and performance. Italy had long been a European industrial design leader, thriving in the spirit of post-war modernism. Gandini like his great rival Giugiaro had spent the latter part of the sixties and early seventies experimenting with a daring new automotive form language; harder edges, flat planar surfacing, sharp transitions and dramatic side profiles to give birth to what would become known as the wedge. Post Miura, Gandini designed the 1968 Alfa Romeo Carabo (built on the chassis of Tipo 33 Stradale) and the 1970 Lancia Stratos Zero concept cars. Both featured trapezoidal shapes, low profiles with new ways of entering the cabin, and the slashed rear wheel arch that would dominate the form of the prototype LP 500 Countach, first shown at the 1971 Geneva Motor Show.
So Shocking Its Name Is An Expression Of Amazement
The Countach LP 500 was nothing less than a showstopper. Low and sharp, simple yet sculptural, dramatic yet beautiful, and positively futuristic. It looked like a car to adorn the artwork of an Atari cartridge; except they wouldn’t exist for another six years. Its name came from the reactions it elicited. According to Gandini from the Lamborghini website:
“When we made cars for the car shows, we worked at night and we were all tired, so we would joke around to keep our morale up. There was a profiler working with us who made the locks. He was two meters tall with two enormous hands, and he performed all the little jobs. He spoke almost only Piedmontese, didn’t even speak Italian. Piedmontese is much different from Italian and sounds like French. One of his most frequent exclamations was ‘countach,’ which literally means plague, contagion, and is used more to express amazement or even admiration, like ‘goodness.'”
The original LP 500 prototype wasn’t just futuristic on the outside, it was state-of-the-art on the inside as well. A bank of large primary-colored warning lights dominated the sightline of the driver, mounted on the column and viewable through a single-spoke padded steering wheel. There were no door mirrors to spoil the aerodynamics; instead, a periscope system provided a view of the Polizia Stradale disappearing behind you. These flights of fancy were eliminated from the production LP 400 which appeared in 1974, although the inset on the roof for the rearview system remained on the early cars; these pure early versions are nicknamed Periscopio.
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Dissecting The Design
In any view, the Countach is simply outrageous. Despite the four-liter V12 being in the spine the Countach is nearly 10” shorter than a Muira. There’s no fat anywhere on it; everything is pulled taut. The upper section of the car is essentially four lines starting from the top of the taillights and running forward down the length of the car, varying in height just enough to package the underlying components and passengers. The top surfaces simply span these lines, gently curving and twisting to create great tension and a logical resting place for the side windows and the additional air intakes that road testing dictated would be required over the show car.
The front bumper, the bottom of the scissors doors, the front corner of the rear wheel arches, and the center lines of the axles are all level, creating harmony to balance the drama happening above. Those slashed rear wheel arches are a trademark flourish that would appear on other Gandini designs, but there is visual theory behind them. The larger gap in front of the wheel suggests forward movement, like how you would frame a car in a photograph with empty space in front of it. The NACA duct on the flank is pure science as function, one of the underlying principles of modernism as a design movement. Comfort and ease of use are secondary concerns – the doors are not a gimmick but because the Countach was a wide car and its chassis construction necessitated larger than usual rockers. Unusual commitment requires such unusual solutions. The Countach is sensational without being sensationalist; its form is shaped by the desire for speed and style, briefly sculptural but totally alien. Imagine gazing upon one as it came to a standstill, heat haze shimmering from the rear vents. Quietly ticking as the engine cooled. The door swings up with a controlled hiss. It would feel like a car from another time, or perhaps another world.
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Look How They Massacred My Boy
Ferrucio Lamborghini, sensing the seismic changes in the automotive market in the early seventies, sold his share of the car company in 1974. The company staggered between financial crises in part because the Countach was never developed for the United States so for a while was unable to be sold here legally. Consequently, in 1975 a Canadian industrialist, Walter Wolf developed his own updated version. Equipped with steam roller Pirelli P7 tires and extended wheel arch flares to cover them as well as front and rear wings, the Walter Wolf Countach formed the basis for the upgraded factory LP 500 S, and some of these cars entered the US grey market.
Unlike their rivals at Ferrari, who had access to the Fiat checkbook, cash-strapped Lamborghini had to make do with updating the old bull as best they could, injecting it with more and more testosterone. Official models finally arrived in 1985 with the LP 5000 QV, which could be optioned with a Bosch K-Jetronic injection system, making it emissions-compliant in the United States. In the era of excess, these models were also saddled with excessive oversized bumpers. The final indignity arrived with the 25th Anniversary model in 1988, designed by Horacio Pagani. To mimic the supercar that had totally captured the eighties cultural zeitgeist, the Ferrari Testarossa, Pagani infected a pox of strakes all over the poor Countach.
Towards the end of the eighties, motor racing was having an increasingly direct effect on the cars you could buy. Turbocharging, computer-aided design and composites began to move the supercar needle towards 200 mph. The Porsche 959 and Ferrari F40 emerged in 1986 and 1987 dripping in racing technology but the Countach wasn’t quite done for yet. In 1987 Pagani developed an ‘Evoluzione’ version. This Einstürzende Neubauten-looking beast had body panels and a brand-new chassis made entirely of composites, giving a substantial weight reduction. Lamborghini also stuffed it with state-of-the-art drivetrain technology – electronically adjustable suspension, four-wheel drive, and ABS brakes. A blueprinted engine pushed it to 205 mph; had it gone into production it would have been the fastest car in the world. Although magazines did get the chance to drive it in period, it was a test bed and probably never seriously considered for sale.
If you were a young car fan in the eighties you fell into one of two camps: Countach or Testarossa. Despite me now being a sometime paid-up member of the tifosi, I have never really got on with the Testarossa – it’s a bit ungainly and carries too much Out Run baggage for my liking. The Countach always had a special place in my heart because an unconvincing version was one of the first Matchbox diecasts I pushed around the brown carpet with my chubby baby fingers. The brilliance of the original LP 400 was it commands your attention and then rewards you for keeping it. The drama came from the form and the intent. A Persicopio in vibrant seventies earth tones is a transcendent statement of modernist Italian industrial design, like a Voxson Radio or an Olivetti Valentine typewriter. I often think that one of the hallmarks of any great design is that nothing added could possibly improve it, and the wider wheels and aero addenda of the later versions do nothing for the original car’s purity of purpose.
Despite what they say modern Lamborghinis have forgotten this heritage, instead concentrating on the more-is-more aesthetic ideas of the cocaine-powered eighties versions. The current range is a riot of furious angles and extreme details, each one an assault to the eyes, appealing only to dilettantes, attention-deficit TikTokers, and bored Middle Eastern playboys. They shout and scream and demand your attention, but they don’t really deserve it.
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Unless otherwise stated all images courtesy of Lamborghini Media.
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