*Review originally posted
here
Bull Fighting
MadFinnTuner’s Countach 560SV-
This is a classic Lamborghini. Mid-engined, rear wheel drive, dramatic, looks insane, sounds amazing. Unfortunately, because of its classic origins, it also has just about every other bad trait an old bull like this can have. The steering is like that of a tractor, it’s heavy, cumbersome. It rolls around like it’s drunk when you finally point it in the right direction and it’s not that fast. Most of all though, it just feels too unpredictable, you can never tell if it’s going to take the corner, just plough straight on or buck you off with a sudden bout of oversteer. Oh, and the brakes are appalling. Until you really stand on them, they don’t really feel like they’re working. So, bad brakes, crap handling, and the fact that it weighs 1.4 tons mean that it can only lap the Top Gear Test Track in 1:22.361, so it’s not the last word in ultimate track day performance either.
And yet, there’s something about this car, I can’t really put my finger on it, but it’s really lovable. Maybe it’s the lunacy of it all. Driving this makes me feel like a little school boy. It’s like a comic book character, it’s very over the top, and I love it for being so bold. But it’s not what you’d call user-friendly, is it? In fact, it’s everything but that. Which means you can’t really use it, not when it tries to kill you at every corner. Don’t worry though, because there is a solution to this problem of satisfying your inner 5 year old as well as the petrolhead inside. And this solution is from MFT, and it’s called the Countach 560SV.
It’s stiffer, angrier and lighter than before. It has a new gearbox, an adjusted diff and now sends 560hp to the rear wheels. Its also got stickier tyres and fully adjustable suspension, and the difference is astonishing! What was a lardy, V12, Italian truck of a thing has been transformed into a proper supercar. The handling isn’t like that of a tank, in fact, it seems to have captured the brutality of being a super bull while being manageable and thrilling to drive right up to the limit and to be able to hold it there. Step over that limit though, and it’ll all over. Just like that. Backwards in a cloud of tyre smoke, normally only inches away from an armco. But it’s not discouraging, in fact, it’s addictive! You just want to go back for more, you want to piss it off as much as you can, you want to get it as sideways as it can possibly go. And if you can narrowly avoid being gored by its horns, well, that’s just an excuse to try even harder!
What MFT has done here is, from my point of view, not stop the bull from killing you, but turn the whole thing into a game. And the aim of this game is to hold the bull is as big a slide as you can without it bucking you off and into the gravel trap. It’s great fun, but it’s not the ‘sawing at the wheel/controller to keep the damn thing straight’ issue you’d get with a Ruf. It’s not stressy. It’s just that this old bull doesn’t like to be manhandled, it wants to retire to the garage and gather dust. But just take it out, show it who’s boss (with respect, obviously), drive it to the very limit and you’ll never want to get out of it. Oh, and just so you know, it did a lap of 1:15.658, not what you’d call...slow. This, then, is what the Countach should have been. Looks great, goes fast, meet the new boss of the big bad bulls. The MFT Lamborghini Countach 560SV.
Lap Times- Top Gear Test Track
1:22.361 (before)
1:15.658 (after)