Yahoo Autos Valentino Balboni on Why a Countach Still Thrills
If anyone could find driving a Lamborghini to be unremarkable, it's former company test driver Valentino Balboni. He spent his career road testing every single car Lamborghini made, in a career that started with the Miura and reached to the Gallardo before he retired. You'd think, then, that driving an old Countach wouldn't be that exciting for Balboni. But the master test driver still gets a thrill from this machine.
And why not? The Countach is still quick by today's standards, and it's an absolute icon. You can't open one of its scissor doors and not be excited, even if you've spent more time driving Countaches than anyone else on the planet, as Balboni has.
This particular Countach is an excellent one, too. It's a 5000 Quattrovalvole built in 1986 for Lamborghini's then-CEO Patrick Mimran. For this model, Lamborghini punched out its famous V12 to 5.1 liters and fitted six downdraft Weber carburetors. The result is around 455 horsepower - a huge figure for the time. This car's color combo of purple paint and gold wheels looks astonishingly good, too.
Balboni admits that the Countach is prone to oversteer due to its engine being mounted relatively high in the chassis, but that's what makes it fun. The car is alive.
It says a lot about the Countach that it still can elicit a strong reaction from Balboni. Of course, we're still talking about this car more than 30 years after it was built. It's that much of a legend.
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