#countach

The world lost one of its preeminent car designers today, as Marcello Gandini has passed away at the age of 85. Though perhaps best known for the flashy and outrageous Lamborghini Countach, Gandini’s pen was applied to many other Italian, German, French, British, Japanese, and Swedish concepts and production designs. Gandini’s prolific portfolio of work made a permanent mark on automotive design.

The revived Lamborghini Countach (now using the LPI 800-4 suffix) is under recall following reports of at least one model shedding the glass cover that shields the electronically assisted 6.5-liter V12 engine from the elements. Having conducted an internal investigation, the manufacturer is faulting the supplier. Though one could make the argument that such problems make the Countach ownership experience even more authentic.

Lamborghini introduced the Countach LPI 800-4 over the weekend, undoubtedly hoping to rake in some of the wealth that’s been amassing in the upper echelons of society. Supposedly retailing somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 million, the vehicle is effectively an Aventador with some retro-inspired bodywork with the powertrain of the new Sián.

While a 6.5-liter V12 and electric motor providing a combined maximum output of 802 horsepower is nothing to sneeze at, there was some level of expectation that the Countach design might even outdo the truly wild Sián FKP 37 Lamborghini previewed in 2019. But producing something striking is difficult when you’re simultaneously attempting to marry the concept with a 50-year-old design everyone has been fetishizing since before they were old enough to learn what that meant.

Lamborghini’s Countach is arguably one of the most important vehicles ever to be manufactured in that it solidified the brand’s reputation and helped create an entire subgenre of automotive pornography. The model is often touted as being one of the only posters featured on more teenage walls than Bo Derek and was among the first performance automobiles to appear in videogames with any regularity. Introduced in 1974, it’s the one Lamborghini almost everyone recognizes and probably the vehicle that best represents the brand. It’s wildly impractical, beyond garish, and totally obsessed with giving an experience so unique that you cannot help but place the car on a pedestal.

Oh, and Lamborghini said the Countach is coming back in limited quantities for its 50th birthday. Though it’s to be reimagined as a modern automobile.

I stood face-to-fascia with a childhood dream, thanks to a tangential connection to Houston’s 2016 Lamborghini Festival. And yet, like all designs born pure and modified to remain relevant, the original Lamborghini LP400’s purity of form is sometimes absent in this time capsule, all-original LP5000.

But please believe that, LP400 or no, it took every fiber of my being to avoid the typical auto journo blather on this sheet of vellum.