For those of us born in the 1970s, it’s nigh impossible to imagine a world without the Lamborghini Countach in it. And as much as some of us might preen and trot out our purist credentials, saying we prefer Marcello Gandini’s unmolested LP400 shape, the Countach we all fell in love with was the beflared Lambo with the phone-dial wheels. Whether that was the 400S, the Walter Wolf 500S that came disassembled in the Tamiya box, or the later 5000 Quattrovalvole, it matters not; the car’s visuals didn’t change radically until the unfortunate-looking 25th Anniversary model, which added a grip of Testarossa-style strakes to aid in cooling. They also had the unfortunate side effect of making Lamborghini look like it was cribbing from Ferrari, and the Countach had always been anything but a Ferrari. So how does one properly bring a body style from the late ’70s into the late ’80s? Simple. Add gold.
In the 1980s, silver-toned metallic finishes were out. Even the lowly Chevrolet Celebrity got up on the chrome-delete tip with the Eurosport variant. Gold, however, was way in. One might recall that our president first tasted national fame during the decade, and if you really wanted a Countach to pair correctly with your Omega Constellation Manhattan, well, it turns out Sant’Agata was willing to make that happen.
This, friends, is the shockingly rad result. It’s a 1987 5000 QV in white over white, with 14-karat-gold accents. One of two reportedly produced by the factory, this one was recently restored by Polo Storico Lamborghini. It has to be one of the most perfectly perfect Countachs that ever Countached a Countach. You may recall that countach is a Piedmontese expletive, which makes this the “Damn, Daniel!” of Lamborghinis. We apologize for trotting out a meme from last year, but in such an accelerated age, it’s due to come back into vogue within the next three weeks, anyway. Consider us ahead of the curve. And back at it again with the white-on-white Lambo.
Consider this Lamborghini’s price a bit ahead of the curve as well. While early cars are beginning to command very large sums, RM Sotheby’s suggests that this 5000 QV should cross the block at a price somewhere between $518,000 and $627,000 during their Villa Erba, Italy, event at the end of the month. Meanwhile, in America, a red example with a rear wing and those woeful front and rear bumpers was just bid to $251,000—and didn’t sell. Is the gold over white worth twice as much? Normally, we’d say no. But in the rarefied world of auction weirdness, why not? It’s a white Countach with a gold-plated shift gate and exhaust pipes. If that’s not worth a half-million dollars these days, why should anything at all be worth the sum?
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The answer is bringing fuel to the fire by two separate paths, and a few makers already are fitting their engines with both port and direct injection. Toyota introduced this technology, which it calls D-4S injection, on a V-6 more than a decade ago and now uses port and direct injection on its 2.0-liter flat-four (which is built by Subaru), 3.5-liter V-6, and 5.0-liter V-8. Audi has it on its 3.0-liter V-6 and 5.2-liter V-10 engines.
