Lamborghini’s new Countach has drawn reaction from all corners of the motoring sphere, such is the pull of reprising such a synonymous supercar nameplate.
Reaction among punters seems to have been mixed. About half of the comments spotted on our facebook page were outright positive. The other half seemed to mostly be made up of people commenting that the new ‘Tach isn’t much of a Countach at all — criticising the fact that it’s ‘just’ an Aventador reskin.
The general consensus in NZ Autocar HQ is that the car looks about as good as it could do given the constraints of being based on the Aventador platform. But, that didn’t stop our team’s crack in-house designer (and Italian car aficionado) Alex Schultz from having a go with his digital pad and paper.
Here’s the ‘before’ shot:
And here’s the after:
Alex’s main concern with the design is its numerous nods to the 25th Anniversary Edition Countach — the final edition with all the added wings and vents. He reckons that the model would’ve been better had it instead chased a philosophy of the more simplistic earlier iterations, like the first-generation LP400.
As such, the front bumper and side skirts have been blackened out — reducing the visual weight of the car as a whole. The front splitter in particular used to be black on early Countachs. In a similar vein, Alex decided to place a couple of LED day-time running lights in the letterbox grille, similar to the LP400’s fog lights.
The imitation Naca duct up the new Countach’s side has been replaced with a much smaller duct shaped like that of the original. This gives the car more side-on surface area. Alex complemented this with an LPI 800-4 badge behind its trailing edge — a nod to where the LP badge used to sit.
While the new Countach’s wheels do have a certain ‘Teledial’ appearance, it was decided that the look wasn’t a clear enough homage to the diamond-cut look that appeared in Lamborghini’s press images, so Alex decided to dip them in a single colour instead.
The biggest tweaks, though, are to the front end. Alex has shrunk the headlights a smidge and dropped them to a lower point on the car. This gives the fascia a more slanted and pointed appearance, like the original Countach.
And, for an added layer of throwback flavouring, Alex has suggested cut-outs above these headlights that give the impression that there’s pop-up headlights behind them. One a staple of the supercar and sports car genres, pop-up headlights are generally seen as a menace to pedestrian safety these days due to how they protrude from the car’s body.
Alex suggests that these cut-outs could function as portals for consumables like washer fluid and the like, instead of them being entirely fake. It’s not a thought without merit. The recently released Mercedes-Benz EQS EV featured a diminutive mystery port on the left-hand side, which was eventually confirmed as a port for washer fluid to go in.
At the end of the day, what commenters on social media and punters in the media landscape think about the new Countach is largely secondary to Lamborghini’s concerns. Priority number one is that the model resonates with its customers, and we think the angular model will do just that.
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