"Plain hard work": driving the last ever Lamborghini Countach up the Stelvio Pass

And not just any Countach, but the very last one ever built. Yeah, about that. The 25th anniversary wasn’t the handsomest Countach – quite the opposite. It’s got so many strakes it’s like they let Wolverine at it, although the design is actually the work of one H Pagani. He’d go on to better things. The plan was for 400 to be built after it was announced in 1988 (celebrating 25 years of Lamborghini cars, not the Countach itself), but this wasn’t an era when anyone worried too much about small things like limited supply numbers or residuals, so 658 were eventually produced.

Photography: Rowan Horncastle

Then came Diablo, then Murcielago, Aventador and now Revuelto. A lineage of longitudinal, mid-engined V12s that each honour what went before and, until now, were never that fussed about being particularly forward-looking. The Revuelto is the most radical V12 Lambo since the Countach. Not so much with design this time, as a technical package that includes electric motors and batteries. 1,001bhp plays 455bhp.

And that was delivered using carburettors. We’re used to supercars yelping into life. This one splutters. You hear each cylinder catch in turn, and the sound at idle is softer, calmer than you expect. I then watch as Vincenzo nonchalantly sits on the sill to back it off the transporter. So unnecessary and yet so cool.

Highly necessary it turns out. I’m 5’ 9” and barely fit inside. My head presses into the roof lining and none of the controls are quite where they should be. The driving position is nothing so simple as long arms, short legs, it’s that everything seems slightly twisted or canted or misaligned. It’s like wearing strong reading glasses, the cabin messes with your depth perception, throws you off kilter a fraction. Is the steering wheel slightly further away on one side than the other? Or is the seat twisted? Or just a little to the left? And why are my feet struggling to land square on the pedals? I go for various controls and just miss by a little.

The bolt-on bodywork makes it look like a cheap parody of itself and inside, as well as awkward, it’s basic and blocky. What had happened to the wedge purity of the original? The 1980s had happened, that’s what. The last of the line Countach comes across as a car that had lost its way.

The Revuelto is a much more considered piece of design. It comes from a more mature company on a much surer footing, that knows its audience and understands its brand identity. It’s route one Lambo: bold, brash, doesn’t give a fig about aero loads, but knows how to have a good time. That’s the messaging. That it manages to combine gung-ho hedonism with obedient, benign manners is the real magic of this modern Lambo.

35 years of development separate these two. Feels more like 100. The Countach isn’t obedient or benign. It’s just plain hard work. I’d persuaded Lamborghini to send these two cars to the Stelvio as part of the 200th anniversary celebrations (read all about that here), as I wanted Top Gear to celebrate its relationship with this road with something that had meaning to us. It could have been one of the cars that Jeremy, James and Richard bought here 15 years ago, or maybe the Bugatti Veyron SuperSport or Pagani Zonda we had here for Speed Week back in 2011.

But in the end I didn’t look so far back for inspiration. Back in 2022 I bought Lambo’s recreated Countach here. As an occasion it was stellar, we came in May before the road was officially opened, had the place to ourselves for two days bar the road workers and the marmots. But that Countach didn’t hit the spot for me. It was a Sian in drag, which was essentially a marginally modified Aventador, and all it did was make me want to find out what an original would be like up here.

Memorable. Let’s use that word first. Because the original imprints itself on my mind in a way its recreation never did. Today, all cars offer up their thrills willingly and eagerly. It’s an amazing trick, packaging up 1,000bhp and making it friendly and exploitable. I know we assume that supercar development is focused on gains to power and speed, but actually the biggest improvements are in the drivability and control.

As I’m discovering right now. The Countach is a car that does nothing to help you and everything to challenge you. To be fair, the clutch bites progressively. Or it would if my leg wasn’t quivering quite so hard under the strain. There’s no power steering, so that’s like turning a stopcock on a dam. And laid back under the flat windscreen, I might as well be on a sun lounger in a greenhouse, with similarly little airflow through the window slots.

It's a workout, that’s for sure. But at least the Stelvio Pass is so famously forgiving. No jeopardy to be found amongst its stark, sheer flanks, buttressed hairpins, crumbling surfaces and lofty 2,757-metre elevation. I lose count of the number of hairpins I have to take two bites at, the sinking feeling as I realise that, yep, the turning circle ain’t going to make that and now I have to heave the steering the other way, and drop back while keeping the revs up. Just don’t want to stall.

But between each one I get to use the V12 and open gate manual. The gearshift is the sweetest thing about the car, and the engine once it clears the low rev lethargy, is blissful. Not exhaust dominated like so much modern stuff, but thrashy and dirty, full of valvetrain chatter and a soft richness that (correctly) suggests colossal fuel thirst. But above all it has presence.

It's not particularly adept at turning noise, drama and charisma into speed, and the gearing is so long that only once on the whole ascent do I use third. The rest of the time it’s second and let the Pavarotti behind find its range, because from 3,500rpm to double that it’s a honey. It actually rides very nicely, surprisingly calm on plump 15in Pirellis, and of course steering feel and chassis communication is wonderful because there’s no artificial filtering or control anywhere. But driving it fast? No thanks. It’s not that sort of car. I get the feeling that all would be well and then it would bite suddenly and bite hard.

But it is exactly how I hoped a Countach would be: proud, boisterous, inflexible and as raw as a wound. I imagine driving it might be like negotiating with a mafia don. You know you’re not going to get the best out of it, but you don’t care provided you emerge with your chin up and your only injury is a pinched cheek. That’s me today. I park up near the summit. My shoulders ache, my legs are trembling, my tee-shirt is damp and instantly cold against the chill temperature a vertical mile above where we’d begun. I’m elated. I haven’t stalled and up here among the pinnacles and vistas, the cars look unspeakably sensational.

Vincenzo’s parting gesture as he swung the door down on me at the bottom was a nervous pat on my shoulder. Now Lamborghini’s chief mechanic, a man who has worked on these cars for over 30 years, he envelops me in a bear hug. We spend the next few hours as the sun drops soaring back and forth, the two cars together. I can barely see the Revuelto behind me over the unsightly carburettor hump, and when I switch seats and follow the Countach I can never quite escape the feeling it looks like a bit of a dog’s dinner.

The Revuelto is everything a modern supercar should be. While others have got caught up in power battles, bogged down in technology, or trapped in legislative webs, there’s a clarity to the latest Lambo. It’s a carefree, good time car. And crucially one still powered by a naturally aspirated V12. It’s so much better up here than the recreated Countach had been, flows over the surfaces with ease, pats gearshifts cleanly through the twin clutch ‘box, doesn’t require endless nose lifting and lowering, has more e-torque yet never lets it cast a shadow over the V12.

The following day it leads the 200th anniversary hillclimb parade in partnership with a 340,000km police Huracan, and attracts almost as much attention as Hans Stuck’s Auto Union Type C. I see small kids react to the Revuelto in the same way I did to the Countach four decades ago. And if I’ve ever had a moment in my career that I would love to take eight year-old me to and plonk him in the passenger seat, it would be those 20 minutes I spent ascending the Stelvio in the Countach.

That car was the genesis. Not just for Lamborghini but arguably for all supercars. The Miura was too pretty, a car in the Ferrari mould. The Countach was a statement. From then until now, it’s the one car that every other marque has been able to draw inspiration from, for me the most influential supercar of them all. Forza, Lamborghini, Forza.