Car Of The Day: April 24, 2011

Today's car of the day is Matchbox's 1984 Lamborghini Countach LP500S.

The Lamborghini Countach was a mid-engined sports car produced by Italian automaker Lamborghini from 1974 to 1990. Its design both pioneered and popularized the wedge-shaped, sharply angled look popular in many high performance sports cars. The "cabin-forward" design concept, which pushes the passenger compartment forward in order to accommodate a larger engine, was also popularized by the Countach.

In 2004, American car magazine Sports Car International named this car number three on the list of Top Sports Cars of the 1970s, and it was listed as number ten on their list of Top Sports Cars of the 1980s. Top Gear placed it at number 1 on their list of "100 Sexiest Supercars of All Time" (supplied with the June edition of Top Gear).

For more information and pictures of the real car please visit: Lamborghini Countach LP500S

I acquired this car through rather unusual means at last weekend's Keystone CARnival.  I run the banger track, which is a four lane gravity track with no barriers to prevent the cars from colliding.  I get called over and asked to throw a car into the racing, so I put in my best banger, not knowing that this was to be a claiming race.  I admit, I was rather nervous because had I known I was risking my Matador I wouldn't have entered it.  This Lamborghini was one of the competitors, and it pained me to watch this one go down the track.  I love the casting, love the wheels, and I had never even seen this particular variation of it.  So now it happily resides in my collection, though unfortunately it does show some signs of having raced the banger track in the chips seen on the front & rear fascias and on the fender flares.  All in all, it's not often you hear of an AMC dominating a Lamborghini in any type of racing, though one would imagine demolition derby would be the racing series where it could happen.  The Laser Wheels on this particular example are highly reflective and extremely eye-catching.  The third picture shows this in the reflections.

1982 saw another improvement, this time giving a bigger, more powerful 5 litre engine. The bodywork was unaltered. This version of the car is sometimes called the LP5000S, which may cause confusion with the later 5000QV.