Lamborghini

The Lamborghini Countach LP500 first appeared in March 1971 at the Geneva show. It is beleived that the vehicle received its name before the show when someone at Bertone’s Grugliasco plant saw it and exclaimed “Countach” (pronounced “COON-tahsh” or “CUN-touch”, Italians use both pronunciations).

The Countach was designed by Marcello Gandini and built by Bertone as a two seater with a very small passenger compartment and minimal luggage room in the small, hot area just aft of the engine. The overall design was a very clean and slippery wedge that later sprouted all manner of bulges and vents. The interior was fairly simple in design though the dashboard and digital readouts would have been more at home in a space ship.

Visibility to the front and immediate sides was great but unnecessary to the rear due to only having the one tiny rear window that didn’t allow for much of a view. The rearview mirror, a simple pariscope design that pointed up and over the roof, was an interesting but uneffective feature.

The doors were the most interesting feature of the whole car and certainly the most memorable part of the car. The doors swung up and forward supported by gas filled struts and must have been influenced by those on Bertone’s 1968 Carabo. The design left little room for rolldown windows and so these were simply small letterbox size cuttouts that were hardly of any practical use.

The first Countach was only a prototype show car, little more than a hasty mockup, though a roadworthy one. As much revision would need to be done, the LP500 came to be a rolling testbed for future modifications that would find their way onto the eventual production car. The semi-monocoque chassis of this first car was very different from the more complex chassis of the production models. This car had a space-frame of square-section steel tubes and sheetmetal stiffeners welded together with a handmade steel bodyshell.

The engine/transmission layout was probably the most innovative seen in a road car to this time. While most mid-engined cars, even today, have their transmissions mounted behind the engine, this car would be different. The transmission would be place ahead of the engine which placed it between the driver and passenger seat. This help distribute weight more evenly front to rear giving a ratio of 42/58.

Power from the engine was then transferred down and back under the engine by means of a driveshaft in its own sealed tunnel in the engine sump to the final drive at the rear of the engine. The solution was a sound one that has been carried over onto the production Countaches and subsequent Diablo line. Engine access seemed reasonable though anything more involved than routine servicing could be tight.

The engine on the prototype was a 5 litre (4971cc) V12 with a bore of 85mm and a stroke of 73mm. The engine was fed by six horizontal Weber 2 barrel carburators and spark was fired by one 12 point distributor driven by one of the engine’s four overhead camshafts.

Not long after the Geneva show the first 5 litre engine (4971cc) proved to be too fragile and was quickly but unintentionally destroyed in testing while flying down the highway at flat out speeds. The engine caught fire after the explosion but the car was saved from completely burning to the ground.