The Lamborghini Countach was all the rage in the late 1970s and 1980s. It was a poster car, a dream car for two generations. Alex was one of those who grew up looking up to it. So when his dad had to sell his Countach, he was heartbroken. It was a heartbreak that he mended two years ago by buying a Countach just like his dad's.
Penned in the sharp and angled wedge shape and rocking the jaw-dropping scissor doors, the Lamborghini Countach was Ferruccio's vision of a Miura successor. The Miura was starting to show its age, so the Sant'Agata Bolognese house desperately needed something to replace it and fast! The Italians got test driver Bob Wallace and designer Marcello Gandini from the Bertone design studio on the team.
A year later, the first prototype saw the light of day and it was named Countach, which had no connection whatsoever with Lamborghini's tradition of naming its cars after famous fighting bulls. So the Countach came as a rule-breaker. A maverick. One of the bad boys of the era.
To confirm the bad boy aura, it came with a longitudinally mounted 3.9-liter V12 engine as an LP400. That V12 generated 370 horsepower (375 horsepower) and 266 pound-feet (361 Newton meters) of torque. It may not sound like much by today's standards. For instance, the Lamorghini Revuelto dons over 1,000 horsepower.
But the Countach weighed little over a ton (2,348 pounds or 1,065 kilograms). So it was enough to make the Countach run from 0 to 62 mph (0 to 100 kph) in 5.4 seconds on its way to a top speed of 179 mph (288 kph).
Alex Hess grew up in a family that had one of those. It was a daily driver for his father. He watched his parents take their Lamborghini to many club owners' events and parties. It was a white-over-white Countach, sporting a body painted white, having a white leather interior, and riding on white wheels. The car had rolled off the production line with black mirrors. Alex's father painted them white.
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His father had to sell it eventually. Alex grew up and became an exotic car dealer with a soft spot for Lamborghinis, but he kept thinking of that white-on-white Countach from his childhood.
One day, he received a phone call from someone who knew he was interested in old Lamborghinis but had no idea about his dad's Lambo. The one who called him wanted to sell him a Countach. Surprisingly, the car was white. And had a white interior. And had white wheels. Alex was shocked by the coincidence, and the idea of buying that car started to grow in him. The owner had bought it new at the end of 1987, and the car was delivered to him in 1988.
Alex and his dad talked to the seller on a rainy Monday morning. His dad remembered that Lamborghini that was just like his. He had seen it at car meetings. When he asked for the price, the seller changed the subject and asked him to come see the car in Hamburg that week.
In a Ferrari workshop, with three F40s parked in line and other Maranello icons on display, he saw the Lamborghini Countach. "I lost my heart to this car." That is what Alex remembers about that moment.
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He and his father expected the seller to ask for the kind of money that would make them go back home without a car. It was, after all, a low-mileage, single-owner, very well-maintained Lamborghini Countach. But he had the surprise of his life. He doesn't want to disclose the price but says that it was affordable.
When he sat in the car, Alex felt like he couldn’t walk away, even though he didn't even fit properly. "I sat like a monkey on a stone in the Countach," he admits. But he knows it is a Countach thing.
His father said "yes" in a heartbeat. They signed the purchase contract for the white Lamborghini Countach right then and there, on the spoiler of the Lambo. "We felt like thieves, stealing this car from the first owner," he says.
Alex and his father drove away afterward. But minutes into their ride, Alex wanted to see it again and found a stupid excuse for his longing: "I lost my pencil!" he said. The man from the workshop understood what had happened the moment he saw the look on his face and told him he could take another look at the Lamborghini.
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From that moment on, he couldn't imagine life without it. He drove 6,213 miles (10,000 kilometers) in the past two years since he bought it. He would have driven more, but the engine broke, and it took ten months to repair.
He did 199 mph (320 kph) in no-speed-limit sectors of the German highway. And he uses the F word to explain how fast it was.
The passion for Lamborghinis runs in the family. Alex and his brother, Moritz, spent 20 years trying to track down their father's Diablo Jota.
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