On the 21st of April 1968 a 19 year old Italian fellow wandered into Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A. and asked for a job. He had some mechanical talent and ended up with an apprenticeship at the company. It didn’t take long for Ferruccio Lamborghini himself to ask Valentino Balboni to help test some of their new road cars. He joined a chap named Bob Wallace, a New Zealander who himself joined Lamborghini five years prior as a mechanic and “trouble shooter”. Since then it’s said that he has test driven something like 80% of all Lamborghini’s produced, and quite a few of those would be the Lamborghini Countach.
We’ve shown you some awesome stuff from Museo Lamborghini, and if you visit, you’ll definitely see a Countach or two. The video above features a super cool 1986 Countach 5000 Quattrovalvole. This particular car was made special for the CEO of Lamborghini at the time, Patrick Mimran and features awesome paint and the ubiquitous gold phone dial wheels made so popular by the Countach. In 1985 Lamborghini added four valves per cylinder to the raucous 450hp V12, which is where the “quattrovalvole”comes from. They even relocated the carbs from the side, to the top of the engine. This meant that the engine sat even higher in the car, which according to Balboni means that it’s even more of a handful than a normal Countach. “The car is a little bit dancing all the time”. Great quote, but don’t listen to me though, he’s the expert. Check out the video and see what someone with 40 years of Lamborghini testing thinks about the Countach 5000 Quattrovalvole.
