The 1974 Lamborghini Countach

The 1974 Lamborghini Countach may well be the first of the super cars. When it was introduced it completely changed the game for high end sports cars. It wasn't so much in terms of performance that the Countach stood out so much as it was in terms of the way that the car looked. While the style was taken to a bit of an extreme a lot of what appeared on the Countach has become standard on the modern super car.

From the time of its introduction the Lamborghini Countach has been one of the most distinctive cars ever to hit road. There is really no mistaking it for any other car. In a lot of ways the Countach was the first of the modern super cars and a number of the features that are found on modern cars of the class like the wedge shape and a cabin that is pushed forward were introduced on the Countach. The car quickly became an icon of style although there were questions about its level of performance.

The most distinctive feature of the Countach and the one that everybody notices is the scissor doors. While these became a key stylistic feature they were actually added out of necessity. This was in large part made necessary by the tubular space frame construction of the car and the fact that is was so wide that regular doors became impractical. The tubular space frame in itself was a fairly new feature for a road car at the time. It was common on race cars because it was so strong but it was not widely used on street cars because of the cost of building that way.

The other feature that really stood out about the Countach, like all Lamborghini's at the time was the engine. By today's standards a four liter V12 that produces a three hundred fifty horse power seems like nothing, but at the time it was quite a large and powerful engine. This is what Lamborghini has always been about building cars that had huge powerful engines and their own unique style. With the Countach they took it to the extreme.

The Lamborghini Countach has not been without criticism of course, the biggest being that the car does not handle all that well. This is pretty typical for Lamborghini as the company has said from the start that they build fast cars not race cars. The car is fast in a straight line but it doesn't really get around corners all that well. The other major criticism is that the Countach is a ridiculously impractical car. The driver is crammed into a cockpit that is way to small and there is no space to carry luggage. The car may be fun to drive for a short period of time but you wouldn't want to take a long trip in the Countach.