Way back in 1971, at the Geneva motor show, Lamborghini displayed what was effectively a concept car, named for an expletive. A V12-engined doorstop called the Countach LP500, it became an instant sensation, and Lambo was basically forced to put it into production by people waving blank cheques under its corporate nose.
The legendary original Countach
Wind forward a decade and the Countach had become a legend - a TV and movie star, and a regular and cliched fixture on teenage bedroom walls. Now, a wealthy car collector has waved another, bigger, blank cheque under Lambo's nose to recreate those heady days of '71, by recreating the original Countach LP500.
This is not the Countach from your bedroom wall. This is the ultra-clean, almost perfect wedge designed by Marcello Gandini, before the design became corrupted with wings, slats, spoilers, and pointlessly-wide tyres.
So, way back in 2017, Lamborghini's oft-unsung classic car department, the Polo Storico, swung into action. Action that would not be easy, because that original show car existed only in photographs. What happened to the original? Destroyed in a crash test, apparently.
Dive into the archives
The first months were spent acquiring all the material available and undertaking an in-depth analysis. "The collection of documents was crucial," says Giuliano Cassataro, Head of Service and Polo Storico. "There had been so much attention paid to all the details of the car, to their overall consistency and to the technical specifications." Photographs, documents, meeting reports, original drawings, and the memories of some of the people involved at the time: all of this was thrown into the mix to help recreate the car. The support of Fondazione Pirelli was also fundamental in providing historical archive material to recreate the tires mounted on the original LP500 model.
The chassis of that original LP500 was even different to the production Countachs that followed. Those used a tubular chassis, while the show car used a platform-style chassis, related to that of the Miura that Lambo still had in production at the time. The Polo Storico had to not only recreate that, but wanted to do so with a traditional Italian system of construction, carried out by the "battilastra" with his creativity and tools. That traditional aspect carried over to the interior, where the lighted diagnostic-style instruments, as shown on the 1971 prototype, were painstakingly recreated.
All of the mechanical components were either original production Countach parts, suitably repurposed and modified, or were made bespoke from scratch.
Recreating the original styling
And then we come to recreating that iconic bodywork. Polo Storico turned to the Lamborghini Centro Stile where the team led by Mitja Borkert, Head of Design, set to work on a very challenging project. "The LP 500 is of paramount importance to Lamborghini because it gave rise to the design DNA of all subsequent models." said Mitja Borkert. "To arrive at the car that debuted in Geneva in 1971, a 1:1 scale styling model was developed, which along with the car itself was lost over time, but extensive photographic evidence of it remains. This is the same approach with which we decided to tackle the project. Starting from publications of the time, from images on homologation sheets and other material recovered from Polo Storico, we were able to reconstruct the mathematics necessary for creating the first 1:1 scale model. The biggest challenge was to create the exact volume of the car, and for this we used the opportunity to take a 3D scan of our LP 400 (chassis 001), which was an enormous source of information. It took us 2,000 hours of work altogether to arrive at the final model, with lines that satisfied us. The exact same procedure was followed for the interior."
Those recreated tyres were tricky, requiring a deep dive into the archives of Pirelli, to find the original plans of the Cinturato CN12 tire as fitted on the LP 500 for its Geneva debut. From these documents, the Milanese company's technicians set out to create the Cinturato CN12 of the Pirelli Collezione range, Pirelli's current classic car tyre lineup. Specifically, the Pirelli Cinturato CN12 tires for the Lamborghini Countach LP500 were supplied in the sizes 245/60R14 for the front and 265/60R14 for the rear, and are now fitted with the same tread pattern and aesthetics as in the 1970s, but with a modern compound and structure.
Even the paint required special research, with Lamborghini staff dipping into the PPG archives, making it possible to identify, after careful analysis, the exact composition for producing the yellow colour used, identified as "Giallo Fly Speciale".
25,000 hours later, the finished, recreated, original Lamborghini Countach LP500 was ready. "The Countach reinvented high-performance cars," said Stephan Winkelmann, Chairman and CEO of Automobili Lamborghini, "and it became an icon in terms of stylistic language that even today, after decades, still inspires contemporary Lamborghinis. Bringing the reconstruction of the first Countach to the concept class of the Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este, in the year we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of this model, is something extraordinary because it allows us to admire the legendary 1971 LP 500 in person for the first time in so many years."