Lamborghini Countach LP500 Concept
Over 50 years ago at the 1971 Geneva Motor Show, the undisputed star of the event was introduced: the Lamborghini Countach LP500 in yellow. At ten o'clock in the morning in the exhibition space of Carrozzeria Bertone, this prototype made its first public appearance. Its unveil was so successful that the company raced against time to satisfy the customers' requests and transform the futuristic show car into a production car, though in a small series. The decision to unveil the Countach LP500 in Carrozzeria Bertone's space was motivated by the fact that Lamborghini's stand featured the latest arrival of the House of the Raging Bull: the Miura SV, perfected after five years of production. With this double presentation, Lamborghini communicated and confirmed its prowess not only in production but especially in innovation, to the extent that in the months following Geneva, the Countach LP500 was featured in all the international automotive magazines.
The Countach project, with internal code number LP112, where LP indicates the rear longitudinal position ("Longitudinale Posteriore" in Italian) of the 12-cylinder engine, stemmed from Ferruccio Lamborghini's desire to maintain the image of a company at the forefront of style and technology following the Miura.
Heading up this record-breaking achievement was engineer Paolo Stanzani, who had been with Lamborghini since 1963, and in 1968 was named General Manager and Technical Director, responsible for the mechanical part of the Countach.
The beautiful, clean, futuristic lines of the Countach, still so after 50 years, were styled by Marcello Gandini, Design Director of Carrozzeria Bertone. Gandini was also responsible for the decision to use the scissor doors, which since that time have characterized the production of Lamborghini's 12-cylinder models. The LP500 was a substantially different car than the Countach that would go into production in 1974. It had a platform frame rather than a tubular one, it was equipped with a 12-cylinder 4971cc engine (one of a kind), the engine air intakes had a shark gill design, and inside it featured sophisticated electronic instrumentation.
The origin of the name of this car lies in the dialect of the Piedmont region. In its final stages of assembly, the car was hidden in a shed for agricultural machinery on a farm near Grugliasco (province of Turin) to avoid possible work stoppages related to labor unrest, and was "discovered" by a farmer who exclaimed in amazement and enthusiasm, "Countach!" (a word in Piedmontese dialect expressing wonderment). When Piedmont-born Marcello Gandini became aware of the fact, he thought that this word had a particularly strong communicative force and also convinced Nuccio Bertone, Ferruccio Lamborghini and his colleague Paolo Stanzani of this.
Following the LP500's success in Geneva, Lamborghini's chief test driver Bob Wallace used the car, equipped with a more reliable 4-liter engine, for every possible kind of road test. The career of this extraordinary car ended at the beginning of 1974, when it was used for the crash tests required for the homologation of the production car and subsequently scrapped.
From 1974 to 1990, 1,999 Countachs in five different series were produced, representing a model that, in addition to ending up displayed on the bedroom walls of an entire generation and being used in dozens of films, allowed Lamborghini to survive the most difficult years of its history and to enter permanently into the halls of legend.
The Countach LP 500 has returned, entered in the class reserved for concept cars at the 2021 Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este. It is a passionate reconstruction carried out by Automobili Lamborghini's Polo Storico that required over 25,000 hours of work on behalf of an important collector. The contribution of the Lamborghini Centro Stile was fundamental in the reconstruction of the bodywork and supervision of the styling.
"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."
At the Geneva Motor Show in March 1971, Automobili Lamborghini presented its "idea car", the LP 500 Countach. The car immediately became the star of the show, and the photographs of it, which went viral, were published in major magazines around the world. This new model was conceived to replace the legendary Miura and wrote a new page in the history of the automobile, both for its technology and design. After three years of development, the LP 500 was sacrificed in crash tests in March 1974 and then disappeared.
At the end of 2017, a classic car aficionado and important Lamborghini customer asked Polo Storico if there was any possibility of creating a reconstruction of the Countach LP 500, a legendary model known only through photographs of the time.
The first months were spent acquiring all the material available and undertaking an in-depth analysis. "The collection of documents was crucial," underscored 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 the protagonists of the time: all this contributed to establishing the form and function of every single detail as accurately as possible. The support of Fondazione Pirelli was also fundamental in providing historical archive material to recreate the tires mounted on the original LP500 model.
The work began on the platform chassis, completely different from the tubular frame of the Countach models that would follow. In addition to physically redesigning it, Polo Storico had to decide which work system to use for building it in order to respect the production methods of the time. The same procedure was used for the bodywork, with various modern technological instruments employed for its analysis and definition. Once the sheet metal beating phase was reached, technology gave way to the traditional Italian system, carried out by the "battilastra" with his creativity and tools. A similar process was followed for the interior, which included the lighted diagnostic instruments, as shown on the 1971 prototype.
For all the mechanical components, as in 1971, original Lamborghini spare parts or restored components of the time were used, or failing that, parts were completely rebuilt.
For the historical reconstruction part of the original design, 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 2000 hours of work altogether to arrive at the final model, with lines that satisfied us. The exact same procedure was followed for the interior."
The collaboration with Pirelli - in existence since 1963 - to reconstruct the tires mounted on the LP 500 prototype proved to be invaluable. Thanks to the images and materials preserved in the archives of Fondazione Pirelli, it was possible to use the original plans of the Cinturato CN12 tire 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, today's line of tires dedicated to the most iconic cars built between 1930 and 2000, which preserve the originality of the rubber by combining a vintage image with modern technology. Specifically, the Pirelli Cinturato CN12 tires for the Lamborghini Countach LP 500 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.
When it came to choosing the color, the PPG archives proved to be crucial, making it possible to identify, after careful analysis, the exact composition for producing the yellow color used, identified as "Giallo Fly Speciale".
