Lamborghini Countach LP-500 Reconstructed

The Lamborghini Countach LP 500 has made a comeback, this time in the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este’s concept car class. It’s a meticulous restoration by Automobili Lamborghini’s Polo Storico that took over 25,000 hours of labor on behalf of a prominent collector. The Lamborghini Centro Stile made a significant contribution to the bodywork reconstruction and styling supervision. 

Automobili Lamborghini debuted its “concept car,” the LP 500 Countach, at the Geneva Motor Show in March 1971. The car quickly rose to the top of the show, with images of it appearing in major magazines around the world after going viral. This new model was created to replace the renowned Miura, and it established a new chapter in automotive history, both in terms of technology and design. The LP 500 was destroyed in crash tests in March 1974, after three years of development, and then vanished. 

At the end of 2017, a classic vehicle enthusiast and important Lamborghini customer asked Polo Storico if a rebuild of the legendary Countach LP 500, which was only known through images at the time, was possible. 

The platform chassis was built first, which was very different from the tubular frame that would later be used on the Countach models. In order to respect the production procedures of the period, Polo Storico had to pick which work methodology to utilise for building it in addition to physically redesigning it. Original Lamborghini spare parts or restored components from the time were used for all mechanical components, or if that was not possible, parts were totally rebuilt. 

The LP 500 is of paramount importance to Lamborghini because it gave rise to the design DNA of all subsequent models.” said Mitja Borkert. “To arrive at the car that debuted in Geneva in 1971, a 1:1 scale styling model was developed, which along with the car itself was lost over time, but extensive photographic evidence of it remains. This is the same approach with which we decided to tackle the project. The biggest challenge was to create the exact volume of the car, and for this we used the opportunity to take a 3D scan of our LP 400 (chassis 001), which was an enormous source of information. It took us 2000 hours of work altogether to arrive at the final model, with lines that satisfied us. The exact same procedure was followed for the interior.”