Recently I reviewed the Lamborghini Ultimae, which was, they said, the last and most volcanically mental version of the Aventador. It would be the swansong, a goodbye to the good old days. And I must confess that as the big, mad, stupid thing was taken away, I had something a little bit unmanly in my eye.
So you can imagine my surprise and delight when, just two weeks later, they brought an even more volcanically mental Aventador swansong to my house. Let me give you the numbers. It costs £2 million (about $3.5 million), produces 600kW and has a top speed of 355km/h. It should, therefore, have been called the Lamborghini Even More Ultimate, or EMU for short. But it isn’t. Because it’s called… drum roll… the Countach.
Radio DJ Paul Gambaccini once said that if aliens came to Earth and asked him to explain rock music, he would invite them to take a seat and put on Won’t Get Fooled Again by the Who. I get that. It may not be the best rock song ever written, but the power and the anger somehow encapsulate the spirit of the genre better than anything else.
And that’s how it was with the original Countach. It wasn’t the best supercar ever made, by a long way, and for many reasons, chief among them the fact that no one shaped like a human could fit inside; to be remotely comfortable you needed to have no neck at all, and with arms the same length as your legs. Think monkey. The steering and the clutch felt like they were set in concrete, the rear visibility was non-existent, the air conditioning was like an asthmatic pensioner blowing on you through a straw, and because the doors opened upwards you were stuffed if the car rolled over. It also wasn’t very fast: 0 to 100km/h took 5.6 seconds, about the same as a ’90s hot hatch. In short, it was terrible – and yet it was also the perfect supercar because it looked so wonderfully out-there. Remember, it was launched in 1974 when ordinary people were driving Ford Cortinas and Austin Allegros. The Lambo was pure theatre. A poster car. A dream car. And now it’s back.
The new version is obviously an Aventador underneath. There are hard points in the chassis that the stylists couldn’t mess with. But they have changed the front and the back and the flanks, and I’ve got to admit it’s tinkle-grabbingly exciting to behold. It’s another poster car.
And sadly, that’s all it will ever be for you and me, because only 112 have been made and they’re all sold. God knows why Lamborghini lent me one for a Sunday drive in the country. But I’m very happy they did.
To make it more powerful than the Ultimae, the V12 has been fitted with a supercapacitor. It’s not exactly a long-term surfboard on which Lamborghini can ride the upcoming green wave. I don’t know why and I don’t care. What I do know is that the mild electric boost means the Countach LPI 800-4, to give it its full name, is noticeably faster than the Ultimae.
It’s mind-blowingly fast. Laugh-out-loud fast. It’ll hit 100km/h in 2.8 seconds. At one point I tried to short shift into fourth but at the precise moment I pulled the paddle I mashed the throttle, which caused the box to ignore my request and drop down into second, and holy cow, I damn nearly soiled myself.
Is it as deft or agile as a Ferrari? Nah. This is a car you manhandle. You drive it by grabbing the scruff of its neck and kicking it into corners; it’s a brute and it needs brute force. But thanks to the massive tyres and the hot weather and the four-wheel-drive system, it never once complained. It just did what I was telling it to do. In the same way that a cow will do what you tell it to do if you use enough electricity in the prod.
Inside, it’s beautiful. There’s a glass strip running down the length of the roof that bathes the interior in a diffused light. And the big, flat dashboard, trimmed in my car in red leather, looked like a Victorian’s writing desk. With a screen on it that baffled me. This car has a far more up-to-date command and control system than the Ultimae. It was so up-to-date, in fact, that I couldn’t make it work at all. I didn’t want it to work, anyway. I didn’t need music because that enormous V12 was providing all the soundtrack I’d ever need, especially on the downshifts when it snuffles and crackles and pops slightly. And I certainly didn’t need to know where I was going or how I’d get home again.
It was, then, a classic Sunday drive in a classic car. The ultimate Lamborghini Aventador. Or is it? I won’t get fooled again.
Lamborghini Countach LPI 800-4
Engine: 6.5-litre V12 petrol (600kW; 720Nm). Average fuel 19.5 litres per 100km
Transmission: Seven-speed automated manual, all-wheel drive
Price: About $3.5 million
Stars: 4 out of 5
Top 10 new EVs: from fast and furious to downright crazy
From Cadillac whoppers to tiny Fiats and the craziest electric vehicle to launch in Australia this year - here are 10 of the newest electric cars to arrive on our shores.
Setting a hot pace with some sting in the tale
There are two things you don’t want to happen while cornering at 115km/h and, wouldn’t you know it, they both did.