Was it just for looks or did the Lamborghini Countach’s trademark “Lambo Doors” serve an purpose?

The Lamborghini Countach and its Lambo doors are iconic representations of what a super car is.  The exotic, Italian wedge design captivated audiences and fueled the dreams of teenage boys around the world when it appeared at the Geneva Motor Show on March 11th 1971.

It was meant to replace what is arguably the most beautiful car design in history, the Lamborghini Muira, and where the Muira was a design of elegance, the Countach charged on to the scene with in your face, design force.

The Countach had a cut off rear end, a square nose, pop up headlights, flat glass, brutally strong angles and of course, the undeniable awesome, scissors doors.  It was a car that astonished those that saw it for the first time.  Even its name is a term used to express wonder and astonishment.

Amazingly the design had a run from 1974 until 1990 and although it found itself cladded with difference body panels and a towering wing that made looking out the postage stamp size back window impossible, it showed the Italian Wedge was a force in the exotic car world.

Marcelo Gandini of Bertone’s design studio created an industry defining look and a set of industry defining doors.  But was it all about a look that had posters flying off store shelves?

Well, the answer is no.  The iconic Lambo Doors were actually a engineering design necessity.  Well, that is if you ever wanted to park your car and get out.

You see the Countach employed a tubular space frame that made the car   Door sills extremely wide, which required very side doors.  And it doesn’t end there, the Countach may only be 42.13 inch tall, but it is a staggering 74.28 inches wide.  That makes car over six feet wide.  With parking spots getting as narrow as, in some cases less than eight feet depeding on the town and country you were in, there wasn’t room to open a big long door.  So something had to be done, and the fix was what we know lovingly refer to as Lambo Doors, but practically know as scissor doors.

Now the scissor doors and the extremely wide door sill actually served an unintended purpose, but would have made the car almost impossible to use in normal driving if it didn’t have.  That is a place to sit while backing the car up.  You see, the back window of a Countach, if you can call it a window is so small and so narrow, you can’t see anything behind you.  A rear view mirror is only installed to meet government regulations.  So when you find yourself trying to back out of the parking space, you either guess that the coast was clear, which was an expensive gamble, or you opened your scissor doors, lifter yourself out of your seat, set down on that wide door sill and turned your body to look back.  Carefully working the clutch and the gas and steering wheel you could back up with enough visibly to keep from crashing into something. With regular doors, this would not have been possible.  Imagine backing up with regular doors like that, definitely not a good idea.

The Lamborghini Countach was the dream exotic for most teenage boys of the 70’s and 80’s. It represented excess and power and extreme styling while quietly keeping one of its most exotic features, scissor doors from being seen as just an engineering requirement.

#lamborghini #countach #lamborghinicountach #scissordoors #lambodoors #supercars