2022 Lamborghini Countach LPI 800-4 revealed: Why the Italian brand is cashing in on nostalgia by reviving the poster-child for '80s supercar excess

If you were a car-loving kid in the 1970s or ‘80s, the chances are you had a poster of the Lamborghini Countach on your wall. Or, if you’re like me, you watched the opening scene of Cannonball Run II on repeat, with its colour-changing V12 supercar.

Now Lamborghini has brought back its most famous nameplate and iconic shape for a very limited and very expensive run of just 112 cars. Lamborghini hasn’t revealed a price, but with so few available and so many children from the ‘70s and ‘80s now in a position to buy their dream car, it’s hard to imagine this won’t be an immediate sell-out.

The car was unveiled to the public overnight at the Monterey Car Week in California, USA. In a nice nod to the past, the show car is finished in Bianco Siderale with a hint of pearlescent blue, the same colour as the personal Countach of company founder Ferruccio Lamborghini.

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The new Countach LPI 800-4 takes clear inspiration from the original 1974 Countach, with its wedge-shape, but also the latter ‘80s update with the large air-intake on the door. However, Lamborghini president and CEO Stephan Winkelmann insists this new car isn’t meant to be retro but a vision of what the car could have evolved into.

“The Countach LPI 800-4 is a visionary car of the moment, just as its forerunner was,” he explained. “One of the most important automotive icons, the Countach not only embodies the design and engineering tenet of Lamborghini but represents our philosophy of reinventing boundaries, achieving the unexpected and extraordinary and, most importantly, being the ‘stuff of dreams’. The Countach LPI 800-4 pays homage to this Lamborghini legacy but it is not retrospective: it imagines how the iconic Countach of the ‘70s and ‘80s might have evolved into an elite super sports model of this decade.”

2022 Lamborghini Countach LPI 800-4

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2022 Lamborghini Countach LPI 800-4

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2022 Lamborghini Countach LPI 800-4

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While that was the idea behind this limited-edition special, it’s not really necessary, as there is a clear family evolution from the Countach to the Aventador through the Diablo and Murcielago. Still, given the excitement around the revival of the Countach nameplate this week, it’s understandable why the brand would like to cash-in on the nostalgia of the original. 

Why is the Countach so important? Because the wedge-shaped V12 not only helped redefine what Lamborghini was as a brand, but reshaped the expectations of supercar buyers that remains to this very day. Look around at modern supercars and the extreme design of the original Countach echoes in the cars you see from Audi, McLaren, Koenigsegg, Rimac and even the new Chevrolet Corvette. This was the template for the supercar as we know it today.

This new model may look like a throwback on the outside but underneath it’s state-of-the-art. It’s built on the same carbon-fibre monocoque as the Aventador and is powered by the V12 hybrid found in the similarly-limited Sian. That means a 6.5-litre V12 engine paired with a unique supercapacitor hybrid system that makes more than 600kW. Thanks to that power, plus its 1595kg dry weight and all-wheel drive, the new Countach lives up to the supercar performance expectations, running 0-100km/h in 2.8 seconds and 0-200km/h in 8.6 seconds with a claimed top speed of 355km/h.