Lamborghini Countach

The Lamborghini Countach was designed to shock. The name itself is an exclamation—“countach” in a Piedmontese dialect conveys exclamation. It’s the equivalent of the English word “wow,” although there does exist a more risque undertone to the word, according to some. Legend says that car designer Bertone uttered the slang the moment he saw the final car designed by Marcello Gandini. Company owner Ferruccio Lamborghini reportedly liked his reaction so much he decided use it as the car’s name.

The moniker was justified. Even in 1974 when car design often reached gross excess, the Countach was jaw-dropping. It pioneered cab-forward design in pushing the driver far to the front of the car, a choice that supercars are still following 40 years later.

With this radical design came strange compromises, though. If you were on the taller side, you weren’t fitting inside the Countach. The foot well is so narrow that drivers sometimes have to ditch their shoes to use the pedals.

Even when comfort is set aside in favor of speed and thrills, the Countach is an exhausting and extremely uncomfortable car to drive. It is deafeningly loud, hard to see out of, and gets extremely hot inside the cabin. This didn’t really matter, though. The Countach was meant to be an aesthetic sledgehammer. Even today, it turns heads more than any other car new or old, and we have it to thank for the now famous upward-swinging scissor doors.