COUNTACH!! 

THE WORD ABOVE IS DISPLAYED IN ITALICS to emphasize contacc, its Piedmontese meaning roughly “WOW!!” As noted by the car’s designer Marcello Gandini, the word literally means ‘plague,’ ‘contagion,’ and is actually used more to express amazement or even admiration, like ‘goodness.’ ”

There were exotic cars before the Countach and a goodly number beyond its 1974–1990 production. But this icon of them is appropriately named. Here are tidbits gleaned from R&T’s March 1986 road test of the Countach 5000S Quattrovalvole, the first one with which I was directly involved. As we noted in the road test, “Still crazy after all these years.” 

The Hoopla. We wrote, “Just when the guardians of public morality were reasonably certain they’d made America safe against the threat of these brazen hellhounds spreading into family neighborhoods, now comes news of a fully DOT-ized EPA-ted Countach.”

Hitherto, exotic wares of this Italian tractor manufacturer had been gray-market—or shadier. 

“Yes,” we said, “we know how you’ve tried to resist wanting one of these shamelessly prurient devices. Yet even after all these years—indeed since way back in 1972—this archetypal Bad Boy’s Car, this utterly unrefined iteration of the Darth Vader GT, still remains irresistible.” 

As a Piedmontese would say: contacc!!

Details. “Its hallmark,” R&T observed, “is brass, clout, brute force… 5.2 liters, 420 bhp and 173 mph’s worth of it. The Countach is its own benchmark, a car that exists outside the constraints of convention, fashion—some may add taste. But whatever your final estimate of it, one fact remains that after all these years, practically the only clue to the still-stunning Countach’s advanced age arises from actually driving it.” 

A Throwback? We reported, “The Countach is perhaps the last and highest street-legal expression of an era when a supercar’s performance was measured against the standard of the Porsche 917, the Ferrari 512, the big-block Can-Am car…. Unquestionably this car is a throwback, though a throwback to an era warmly remembered by anyone lucky enough to have had hands-on experience with the super-fast cars of that time.”

Ergonomically Intransigent. We reported, “Ergonomically, however, the car is, shall we say, intransigent. For a high performance car of this type, the driving position is uncomfortable, ill-supported, and for anyone approaching 6 ft tall, outright contortional. Ingress and egress over the wide sidepod threshold require careful athleticism, though the Countach’s forward-sliding quasi-gullwing doors work lightly and beautifully.”

Image by countachinfo.de via Wikipedia. 

“Once inside,” the trick part for me, I recall, “the seats are plain-Jane, scooped out, thinly cushioned buckets with poor lateral, lumbar and thigh support…. The real problem here, we suspect, is the march of time. When originally designed years ago, the Countach may have been a reasonable exemplar of contemporary ergonomic thinking…. It’s a unique interior, as surely as it was intended to be—yet in these days it begins to look simply odd.”

My View, Retrospectively. I’ll take the Ferrari F40 and give you 48 points (one for each of this Countach’s 12 quattrovalvole bits of hardware). The F40 was quicker (0-60 in 3.8 seconds, 1/4-mile in 11.8 at 124.5), braked better (119 ft from 60), and handled better (its skidpad at 0.94g). 

The F40 entering Fiorano’s 2.976-km test circuit. Image from “My Favorite Ferrari.”

My first drive of a Ferrari F40 came in 1988, only two years after this Lamborghini test: “I was impressed by the car’s combination of sophistication and raw edge.”

Back to the Countach Mystique. “Indeed,” we observed back in 1986, “it is at the very heart of the Countach mystique: The point of the car is to have social impact. What Lamborghini is building here really isn’t an automobile at all, per se; they’re in the business of legend-building, myth-making.”

“And by any standard,” we concluded back then, “the Countach is bigger than its performance figures, bigger than the sum of its automotive qualities. The fact that after all these years… it still works the same soul-stopping spell on nearly everyone who sees it… a testament to the success of the Lamborghini concept and the original Bertone design. In fact, if you think it over, it’s just a bit miraculous.” 

And, yes, 39 years later I still agree with this last assessment. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025