Some cars you have to travel to find. This one was found at home.
This week's spot is a green Lamborghini Countach LP400, caught by @Zombpro77 in Sant'Agata Bolognese, Italy — the small Emilian town where every Countach ever made was built. Spotting one here isn't luck. It's a pilgrimage.
The purest Countach
Everything the Countach became famous for later — the fender flares, the rear wing the size of a door, the tyres like drainpipes — came afterwards. The LP400 has none of it. Marcello Gandini's original shape for Bertone is a clean wedge, narrow and impossibly low, with nothing bolted on to break the line. Park it next to any Eighties Countach and this one looks almost delicate.
Two details give the earliest cars away. The scissor doors, obviously — this is where they started. And the shallow channel running down the roof to a periscope-style mirror housing, which is why collectors call these cars Periscopio. It exists for a simple reason: Gandini's rear window is a slot you cannot see out of.
LP means the engine is backwards
LP stands for Longitudinale Posteriore. The 3.9-litre V12 sits lengthwise behind the cabin — but rotated 180 degrees, with the gearbox running forward between the seats and the driveshaft passing back through the engine's sump to the rear axle. It's an awkward, brilliant solution. It puts the mass in the middle of the car, and it gives the driver a gearlever bolted almost directly to the box instead of a linkage the length of a bus.
375 hp at 8,000 rpm. No turbos, no assistance of any kind, no electronics to save you. Lamborghini claimed 315 km/h. Nobody has ever independently measured it, and nobody who has driven one seems to mind.
The numbers
- Engine: 3.9-litre naturally aspirated V12, 375 hp @ 8,000 rpm
- Layout: mid-engine, rear-wheel drive, 5-speed manual
- Built: 1974–1977
- Production: 158 cars
- Value today: ~$750,000
- Design: Marcello Gandini at Bertone
Why it's worth logging
This is a UNICORN — the second-highest tier on Carva, reached by only 14 spots out of more than 2,000. It's worth 1,024 points, and it's the first Countach LP400 anyone has logged in the app.
The colour deserves a word too. The Countach lives in memory as red or white, because that's how the bedroom posters were printed. In period, the saturated greens and golds of the Seventies were what people actually ordered — this car is closer to the real thing than the poster ever was.
Seen something worth the walk back? Open Carva, point, shoot — next week this could be your spot.