Classic Cars: Jeremy Clarkson on the Lamborghini Countach

'A full SAS workout, at 270km/h. That’s what it was like in a Countach,' says Jeremy Clarkson

Here at India Automotive, if there’s one car we’ve always fantasised about, it’s the Lamborghini Countach. For sheer spectacle, drama and over-the-top histrionics, the Countach was unbeatable. Sure, the Miura was classically beautiful and the Diablo and Murcielago are far more capable, but as a boyhood-fantasy-fulfilling Italian supercar, the brutal old Countach remains in a league of its own…

Now we’ve never actually driven a Countach or even been anywhere near one. And, well, because of reasons that are probably obvious, that’s the way it’s likely to remain. But while we’ll never be able to bring you our personal experiences with the car, what we do have here is a recent article that Jeremy Clarkson wrote for the UK-based Times Online. He talks about the Lamborghini Countach in this spellbinding piece of prose and here are some excerpts:

‘As a 14-year-old boy when I first saw a Countach, I couldn’t believe any of it. Not the noise. Not the lowness – it was only 42in tall. Not the vast rear wing. Not the monstrous size of the tyres. And certainly not the claims that it would do 270km/h. At the time, you must remember, the world was a slower place so 270km/h was about Mach 6.’

‘It was many years before I actually got to drive one, and oh my God ... as disappointments go, this was like getting your girlfriend’s kit off for the first time and discovering she had an Adam’s apple.’

‘The steering wasn’t heavy. An elephant is heavy. A school is heavy. An American is heavy. The Lambo’s steering was in another league. Sometimes, you’d try to turn the wheel to go round a corner and, for a fleeting moment, you actually thought the whole system had jammed.’

‘And then there was the clutch. If they’d set the pedal in concrete, it would have been easier to depress. And all the while, you were rammed into a space that was tiny and very, very hot. I’m sure you’ve all seen The Bridge on the River Kwai hundreds of times, which means I’m also sure you remember the box in which Alec Guinness was made to live. Well, imagine being in there, on a sweaty day, while doing a full SAS workout, at 270km/h. That’s what it was like in a Countach.’

‘Parking, however, was even worse because you could not see out of the back, at all. The window would only wind down an inch. The car was wider than the owner of a Cheshire tanning salon and, to complicate everything even more, you could be assured you would be trying to get kerbside while under the scrutiny of a very sizeable audience.’

‘You might have imagined as you took delivery of your new Lamborghini that you would spend the rest of your life drowning in girls. Afraid not. Because you didn’t step out of a Countach; you crawled out, sweating, exhausted and dehydrated to the point of death. Sex? It was the absolute last thing on your mind…’

Hmmm… pretty vivid, that account of the Countach. And yet, we still want one. Why? Watch this chase sequence from the 1980s classic, The Cannonball Run, and you might understand…

It was the Lamborghini Countach that was the real star of The Cannonball Run...