The first Lamborghini Countach, missing for decades, has been recreated.

Lamborghini unveiled the Countach on the occasion of the 2021 Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este being held on the shores of Lake Como in Italy.

No, we are not talking about the Aventador-based Countach that debuted at the 2021 Monterey Car Week in August, but the original Countach.

It was at the 1971 Geneva International Motor Show that the covers were first removed from the Countach, specifically the prototype known as the Countach LP500. Marcello Gandini's design caused a sensation, its picture went viral even before it was fashionable, and orders quickly poured in. Unfortunately, in the rush to start production, the original prototype had to be used for crash testing in 1974 and disappeared shortly thereafter.

In 2017, a customer close to Lamborghini asked if Polo Storico, Lamborghini's official classic car division, could recreate the original; Polo Storico subsequently published the minutes of meetings regarding the project and Polo Storico then set about gathering all the information about the car, including minutes of meetings about the project and contemporary information from the people involved in the project. Pirelli also provided historical and archival material to recreate the original tires, known as the Cinturato CN12.

Work first began on the internal construction for the prototype. This was quite different from the tubular frame design used for the production model. The metal for the body panels was then formed using the traditional method of hammering and rolling. The biggest challenge was to produce the exact volume of the car, and for this the team used a 3D scan of the first production model, a Countach LP400 with a VIN ending in 001. A similar process was then used for the interior.

All parts were either original spare parts on hand or restored parts from the original Countach. If not, the parts were built from scratch by Polo Storico and original materials were used whenever possible to ensure authenticity.

For the yellow shades, Polo Storico relied on the PPG archives. This made it possible to reproduce the exact composition of the original yellow, known as Giallo Fly Spetiale.

It is not clear at this time if Lamborghini is willing to build additional models for those with deep enough pockets to pay the costs that would be required for this car. More than 25,000 hours of work went into this project.

Interestingly, this is not the only reproduction of a long-lost concept or prototype by Gandini: in 2019, BMW reproduced the Garmisch concept from the 1970 Geneva Motor Show; two years later, the original 5 Series This concept, which influenced the design, also went missing shortly after its debut.