" Ok, so it's probably true. Everything that can be said about Lamborghini's Countach has been said. It was always the most outrageously styled production car - and it was always the Top Trump superstar that had kids of the seventies "
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Lamborghini 350 GTV
At the end of the Fifties Ferruccio Lamborghini had a fateful old moan-up about the finish of the Ferrari he had bought. Few could have predicted that the tractor manufacturer would soon begin to build a car company that aspired to the heights that Enzo Ferrari had assaulted.
The don of SantA’gata was deadly serious from the get go. He made a few phone calls. Franco Scaglione of Bertone soon came on board. The 350 GTV’s body, inspired by the lines of the early sixties Corvettes, evoked the high point of mid-century American futurism and combined that with a typically Italian panache and with a coachbuilders’ finesse.
To design and build the car’s engine, he collared Giotto Bizzarini. Bizzarini was, of course, a legend in his own right. He had built some of Ferrari’s most successful motors – and aspired to creating cars under his own label too. The engineer eventually delivered a bespoke 12 cylinder unit that would form the basis of Lambo V12s for the next 30 years.
The Lamborghini 350 GTV – the first ever road car to bear the mark of the raging bull – was a flawed but beautiful creation. A subsequent model, this time in collaboration with Touring – was a real success and formed the bedrock of the Lamborghini brand. But for our money, you can’t beat the Scaglione penned version. For us, it evokes everything good about Italian cars.
- You can’t miss the influence of the early sixties Corvettes
- A distinctly European touch inside
- The signature of the guvnor as logo…
- Borranis and shark-nose articulate perfectly
- Sculptural and angular like any mid-century classic…
- An acreage of glass lets the sunlight in
- bug eyes ruin the lines somewhat
- this angle straight out of the Bertone BAT handbook
- reat 3/4 the most outrageous
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