Review by Peter Bleakney, photos courtesy Caliber Automobiles.
Caliber Automobiles Ltd. located on The Queensway in Toronto’s west end is not your average used car purveyor. Walk into the showroom on any given day and you’ll be greeted by a cornucopia of automotive exotica. The staples here seem to be cars from Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Porsche, and Lamborghini, but many a high-end Mercedes, Aston Martin and Hummer have rolled through here as well.
Today we’re looking at an exceptionally rare offering – a one-owner 1988 Lamborghini Countach LP5000 QV at $500,000. General manager Serge Levcovich tells me these cars have seen rapid appreciation of late. A few years ago you could pick up a later model Countach for around $200,000. This one is a pretty special example, not least because it looks like it just rolled off the factory line. Lamborghini produced only 610 Countach LP5000 QVs in 1988, and this white-on-white specimen with 43,887 klicks on its clock just screams “outrageous 80s excess!”. It’s also a dead ringer for the Countach that played a major roll in The Wolf of Wall Street film. Subtle it is not.
By this time in the Countach’s lifecycle, Lamborghini had defiled designer Marcello Gandini’s original pure form with a plethora of wings, scoops and flares. The front spoiler on this car is an aftermarket add-on, apparently inspired by the Countach in The Cannonball Run that sported the same appendage. Gaudy yes, but perfectly gaudy.
Power comes from a 5167cc V12 making 420 hp and 341 lb-ft of torque. Lamborghini claimed a 295 km/h top speed and a 0-100 km/h sprint of 4.9 seconds for the ’88 LP5000S QV.
The white interior is pristine. Getting over the super wide sills is no picnic (just watch Leo DeCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street), but at least they are padded. The dash architecture is all angles and boxes and the spindly five-speed stick juts out of a metal gate in the finest Italian tradition.
Lamborghinis have always been over-the-top, but this Countach in all its '80s garish glory might very well be the ultimate expression of that ethos. And certainly a rare opportunity for the right buyer.
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