The Lamborghini Countach was a statement of design. Before it, supercars were teardrop-shaped, think old Ferraris and Bugattis, smaller and rounded. The Countach was wide, low, and shaped like a wedge, and it created a new design language that cars are still following today. Bertone designer Marcello Gandini unveiled the LP500 prototype at the 1971 Geneva Motor Show and orders flooded in. Production of the LP400 began in 1974. The car only went into production because founder Ferruccio Lamborghini bet that test driver Bob Wallace could drive the prototype to Sicily and back. If it made it, they would build it. The prototype made it in May 1972. This was the car that truly saved Lamborghini from financial ruin, a company that had started building tractors and was now setting the standard for what an exotic car could be.

As iconic as it looks, the rear wing on the Countach is completely nonfunctional. The engineers zeroed out its angle because it actually made the aerodynamics worse, but customers loved the look. Because Lamborghini could not afford to re-certify the car with a new aero part, completed cars were pulled off the assembly line and into the factory parking lot, where workers bolted the wing on with an electric hand drill, about ten minutes per car. The car also never went through a proper wind tunnel. Engineers taped fabric strips to the body, drove it on the freeway, photographed it, and adjusted the shape based on the pictures. When they ran official top speed tests, they removed the mirrors, altered the suspension, and added intake spacers, anything to beat Ferrari. (3) The rivalry between Lamborghini and Ferrari at the time was fierce, and this car was their weapon.

Production ran for sixteen years, from 1974 to 1990, across five major variants, the LP400, LP400S, LP500S, Quattrovalvole, and the 25th Anniversary edition, which is the white car famously driven in The Wolf of Wall Street. Each revision added more horsepower, wider tires, and more aerodynamic body parts, but each one also moved further from Gandini's original clean and simple design. More recently, Lamborghini released a modern Countach to celebrate the original, a limited-run revival that sold for millions per car, proving that fifty years later the design still speaks for itself. The scissor door became the defining visual symbol of the exotic car. Every supercar has referenced it. The car that was only built because of a bet, whose famous wing was bolted on in a parking lot, ended up being the shape that defined an entire era.

(3) Prince, Max. "5 Things You Didn't Know About the Lamborghini Countach." The Drive, September 19, 2016.