Documentary: The Cannonball Countach

I remember when the Cannonball movie came out and seeing that crazy car. I had no idea what a Lamborghini was, and no one in my circle of kids or our older brothers knew. I also never saw a spandex jumpsuit before, but that is a different story. Anyway, fast forward a year and every kid in my town had a poster of a Countach on their wall and the Lamborghini became the object of crazy schoolyard misinformation. The feats and specs I heard attributed to the car were perhaps more over the top than the styling of the original car. The crazy boasts of the cars capabilities highlighted the passion we all had for it, and also the fact that no one in rural New Hampshire would ever get a chance to actually see one in real life. The stories took on life of their own. It was the car that everyone agreed was the pinnacle of fast.

I didn't see one for real until I was an adult. They are still cool as hell and interesting to just look at from every angle. There are a few of them in Switzerland, mostly the later ones with all the fins and vents, but it is still an amazing sight to see one. Enough so that everyone in the family will point it out and we all silently stare at it as it motors by. At the Aarberg Ferrari Treffen a couple of years back there was a white one parked off to the side of the event. It was interesting that the Lamborghini drew more attention than the F40's, LaFerraris, and vintage spec Ferraris...at a Ferrari event, among people who owned their own exotic cars. There is just something about that car that pulls you in.

The newer Lamborghinis look much more aggressive, and they are certainly amazing vehicles, but they all launched in the era of the supercar, whereas the Countach arrived out of nowhere onto the automotive world...and into the culture via movies like Cannonball Run. Anyone that downplays the significance of this car doesn't understand cars.
 
Tiltsta said:
I remember when the Cannonball movie came out and seeing that crazy car. I had no idea what a Lamborghini was, and no one in my circle of kids or our older brothers knew. I also never saw a spandex jumpsuit before, but that is a different story. Anyway, fast forward a year and every kid in my town had a poster of a Countach on their wall and the Lamborghini became the object of crazy schoolyard misinformation. The feats and specs I heard attributed to the car were perhaps more over the top than the styling of the original car. The crazy boasts of the cars capabilities highlighted the passion we all had for it, and also the fact that no one in rural New Hampshire would ever get a chance to actually see one in real life. The stories took on life of their own. It was the car that everyone agreed was the pinnacle of fast.

I didn't see one for real until I was an adult. They are still cool as hell and interesting to just look at from every angle. There are a few of them in Switzerland, mostly the later ones with all the fins and vents, but it is still an amazing sight to see one. Enough so that everyone in the family will point it out and we all silently stare at it as it motors by. At the Aarberg Ferrari Treffen a couple of years back there was a white one parked off to the side of the event. It was interesting that the Lamborghini drew more attention than the F40's, LaFerraris, and vintage spec Ferraris...at a Ferrari event, among people who owned their own exotic cars. There is just something about that car that pulls you in.

The newer Lamborghinis look much more aggressive, and they are certainly amazing vehicles, but they all launched in the era of the supercar, whereas the Countach arrived out of nowhere onto the automotive world...and into the culture via movies like Cannonball Run. Anyone that downplays the significance of this car doesn't understand cars.
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I couldn't have said any of this better.

We were living in Germany when that movie came out and I'd already caught the car bug from just watching cars on the Autobahn in the back seat of my parents' car. I've talked about this before, but I can clearly remember a Boxer leaving us standing still and it changed everything for me. So I was already primed.

My friend Tim had a copy of the movie on VHS and we'd watch that opening sequence over and over, just utterly fascinated with the Countach. It seemed impossibly low, impossibly wide, and it might as well have been from Mars. It was 1983 before I finally saw one up close at the Frankfurt auto show and it was even crazier in person. The Countach on the stand was a white on white LP500S, no wing, and Lamborghini brought a matching white Jalpa.

I saw a couple here and there during our time in Europe and they always made an impression. I never got a ride in one, but I did get to sit in an early LP400 Periscopo car when I was in high school and I can still remember everything about it.

By most accounts they're terrible machines to live with, but I'm not sure there's another car that captured the imagination of generations quite like the Countach did.

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The obsession with the countach sure didn't have anything to do with the posters featuring nearly naked women on so many boy's bed room wall
 
Lerxst said:
The obsession with the countach sure didn't have anything to do with the posters featuring nearly naked women on so many boy's bed room wall
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I don't know about that, but I know the Alpine ads were surely one of the most successful marketing campaigns of all time.

This one has appeared at a couple of events I've attended in California over the past few years. Gorgeous car, none more 80s, all the cocaine, this one goes to eleven.

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When the movie came out I was working with my dad in his garage and had already built and rebuilt some Chevy and Ford motors. Cammed up with big 4 barrel carbs or 3 2 barrel carbs were what we were into at the time. We had a homemade motor stand and we would build start and tune right there in the shop floor of this little country town. I remember the he movie but the plastic little car didn’t turn my head. 12 cylinder motors didn’t cut in our type of go fast in an 1/8 or 1/4 mile world. I appreciate them now but I was in a different world at that time.
 
I remember that movie, and that seen. I had the Hot Wheels (or was it Matchbox?) of that car, and I recall playground discussion that it could go 300 MPH :grin:

From what I understand it is an impossibly difficult car to drive, and that when you take it to the track it will try to kill you.
 
They had one at the DC show but was a dark gray with grayed out everything. Not a good look for it IMO. Stock rims were gray and it didn’t work for me.
 
TomcatMF said:
I remember that movie, and that seen. I had the Hot Wheels (or was it Matchbox?) of that car, and I recall playground discussion that it could go 300 MPH :grin:

From what I understand it is an impossibly difficult car to drive, and that when you take it to the track it will try to kill you.
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Hard to drive in the world of auto control slipper everything because the average Joe has no where to gain experience. Growing up everything seem to have a clutch and learning to gauge tire slippage with throttle control on all surfaces was mandatory. I mean today you have all these high power cars hitting the street that no one is really driving. They just hold the wheel and point it. I see them roar by all the time and hear how the computers are controlling it.
 
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