The Cannonball Run Countach: Supercar Legend | Full Documentary

the speed limit was 55. we're not going to drive 55, we're going to drive 155. in the 1970s there was this mentality of government oppression and different ways that people could rebel against that and that's why brock yates thought that the car rally perfect That would be: there are no rules, street race across the country, the adrenaline will last 35 hours and 53 minutes. Many teams never spoke to each other again after the event because it was so exhausting that it was about putting great drivers in great cars on real roads and Seeing what was possible, this event continues without the majority of innocent and respectful civilians of the law they find out.

Ordinary people would have this adventure throughout their lives. They would come home and they were heroes, so you release this

legend

into the world. film context, let's put the first car here, let's get this going, this is one of the biggest movies of 1981. Burt was the hot topic at that particular time, the funny thing was that a lot of the people in the movie They didn't. I don't know there was anything real, they thought this was a script when you look at the reasons we became car guys. I'm not sure there's one that's responsible for the continued love of cars more than the opening scene of Cannonball Run.

For many people, the first time they saw a koontash or the first time they heard a kunsashi, no one at that time thought that the way Lamborghini made the Countach was unapologetic, it's the Lamborghini Countach for everyone, no, I think it's a special car. For special people, having a car that went 180 miles per hour, 190 miles per hour was completely crazy, this was an emotional and cultural impact that will never be forgotten, we have become the nation on wheels with the most motorized mobility in the world. who has never dreamed of the day he traveled. because your license is the most important thing that has happened to you since you were born, the great love story doesn't always seem to make sense, but common sense has never had anything to do with love, in the early 1970s, Americans in general they faced much more external situations. forces that they were really used to we were seeing terrible inflation interest rates were very high unemployment was rampant it was just a really bleak time I have the governor he's going to keep an eye on this guy yesterday's situation I won't take the blame for this anger and confusion grow as more and more Americans face gas lines and empty pumps.

For millions of Americans, this may be the worst weekend they have ever faced in finding gas to give them the automotive freedom they consider their war-feedback debts. of the fuel crisis ideas how long was it online yesterday not much about an hour and a half that's not much today it's more than two and a half hours the idea that cars were not allowed to have emissions and were limiting performance and the muscle car Without a doubt, the era was coming to an end. The most important consumer product in North America is the automobile. It has been the main target of consumer concern.

Laws were cracking down on the cars he loved and the manufacturers he loved to support. like you were a car guy you were being attacked from all angles yes the car would be tamed and the deviants who dug them up as pleasure devices would be cleaned off the roads and returned to society as constructive citizens we had speed deaths , you know, speed of 55 miles per hour. limit all these restrictions, suddenly you know the Nixon administration went down to 55 to save fuel and look, we have more fuel floating around than ever, we're bathing in fuel, it's all political and I think that was Brock's statement.

For some reason or another, I don't know what happened to my brain it went neutral or something and one day I decided we should have an unrestricted brace from New York to Los Angeles and there was a big cross-country. driver named cannabal baker and he had made a lot of records in the 1920s and 1930s, so I named the event after him. You get an old edition of National Geographic. They had car ads there. They used to hire a guy called

cannonball

baker and he would drive him around the country trying to promote the performance of the car and in the '20s or in his teens it was a huge accomplishment

cannonball

baker set over 140 point to point records in his life and he did it on all kinds of things in cars and motorcycles, train races, hill climbs and of course he was doing it at a time when there was no developed road, there was no infrastructure, it would break down, he would be lost for days , everything.

What would you imagine would go on that kind of adventure, but it was him, Brock could imagine this guy riding from coast to coast and challenging himself to conquer the feat of doing something that would be

legend

ary. Hello, I'm brock yates as an automotive writer. a very brilliant and authoritative person, he was one of the most creative minds, I don't think I ever knew that he could put in writing what many people thought, but many people couldn't say that he was very informed about politics and history. and cars and racing from the beginning they called him the killer because he only spoke his mind and didn't mind paying a price I suppose half the fun of the cannonball baker was anticipating the indignant clucking of the chicken that would emerge next. his step. nader and his ilk monitor inside their airbags I wouldn't say he was jumping intentionally, he was just charming, I mean, in those days he was considered a bad boy, he wrote for practically everyone, he worked at Time magazine, he did American Heritage , had a column for the Washington Post did sports illustrated liked the challenge of doing things different did the first Daytona 500 to be broadcast. let's brock yates absolute chaos down brock yates was a phenomenal writer he was an accomplished driver he loved to drive because that was life his way and that was very important to him he was associated with and knew everyone who was in the automotive scene and that made him the perfect lynchpin for a movement like Cannonball, he had all the connections, he had access to cars and he had the ideas and the courage to go out and exploit them, you have to remember that in the early 70s everyone went crazy, the government was getting involved in automobiles, Ralph Nader was in

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cry, this man is not in politics, but today he is one of the most influential. men in the united states ralph nader brock knew very well and hated each other, each adopted a totally different philosophy about automobiles, speed and fuel, the automobile touched all Americans and this was for me the perfect interface between one of the main public issues. having economic importance to the pollution safety and daily lives of millions of people.

Nader was a fierce and fierce competitor, he is an excellent student of what it takes to gain notoriety or attention for the things he believes are important and that not many people assume gm and winning is in his headlong pursuit of the auto industry that nader has made many of his enemies brock was on a different track speed doesn't kill brock would say people make bad drivers superlative handling braking steering lighting etc ., along with driver competence being the real key to sanity on the roads, wrote a wonderful article in 1971 explaining to the public and his critics why this event was important and had nothing to do with let's go out and drive fast and violate all the laws, this is how it's going to happen. being car fans in the first demonstration that some people are conscious enough to manage their own destinies behind the wheel of a car, of course, all hell is going to break out and there could come the day when guys drive around all over the country in some kind of crazy Protest that people who know how to keep cars under control are not going to collapse before the government bureaucracy.

The other guys in the automotive press can sit around and recommend writing letters to your congressman, but I already had it in the spring. 71 no one showed up brock said you know the hell it was just I'm going to do it his son brock jr was 15 years old and the editor steve smith was there and he said to get in the car and they went to do the cannonball we all alone took a Dodge truck and We modified what they call lunar debris a little bit, didn't we? We just drove across the county, got lost, had some horrible slowdowns and ran out of gas, no one had really documented the experience of driving without We stopped from New York to Los Angeles for a while and it was never going to be a tremendously awesome moment.

It took us 41 hours. He had a sense of humor. A sense of the absurd. We will do it because we can. I know it's a rebellion against this 55 mile per hour speed limit. I want to show that we can do something like this and that we can have fun on American roads and be safe. They just came out to really see how exhausting it was going to be. be and that led to some invitations that readers responded well, I can do it faster than that so he said well, let's get to know New York and let's try it.

He threw down the gauntlet again in November of '71. He was called the Cannonball Baker, look at the shine. Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, well, that was too much for anyone to say, so it just became the cannonball, it was kind of the perfect namesake for, uh, no excuses, no hold bar, drive from here to anywhere. First place, the only rule is that you have to drive the same car. All the time it doesn't matter what route you take, it doesn't matter what kind of car you drive, the important thing is who is going to get from Manhattan to California in the shortest time possible, why would you do something like that? why is that not a good answer?

It's there, it's there when you think about the idea that we need to organize a bunch of cars in Manhattan, that's pretty inconvenient, but fortunately, through the car and driver gates, Brock had access to the Red Ball parking lot, so That was the logical starting point. East 31st Street, when they were looking for an ending point in Los Angeles, there was the Portofino Inn, run by Mary Davis, who was kind of a racing fan and would throw parties there and things like that, so it was kind of a fair ending point. on the coast with good parking and some interesting signs, you would think that among a world of car enthusiasts, if you proposed a race like this, you would get hundreds and hundreds of entries, but in reality the first one was a dozen cars or so that I ended up with a Ferrari Daytona with Dan Gurney, my old teammate, I didn't have as much preparation compared to how you would normally prepare a car for Cannonball, but they set a time of 35 hours and 54 minutes, which was of course , the new record.

Now that Ralph Nader, who proudly proclaims that he rarely drives, has become the leading spokesperson for American drivers, we, as a group of people who like cars, are being pushed to a point where we are beyond the law; At first glance, it was illegal. break the speed limit yeah I think car guys hate all speeds that's right that's a good point speed limits are at best hypocritical at worst species so which should be accepted as a fact of life, but hardly canon law after all if the police don't do it. Look at them and they don't believe me, so why should we do it, despite the economic restriction on the European entertainment circuit?

This year's Geneva show had its fair share of new and notable cars. The Italian brands were most impressive in 1971. You have the Geneva Motor Show. The Lamborghini Countach was unveiled and shocked the world before it was released to the public. You had Bob Wallace and one of the other engineers who was going to see the car at Bertone for the first time. Apparently, the lights were off in the room. and security was letting them in to see the car and when someone turned on the lights the security guard said kuntas which essentially meant the

countach

is radical look at it see oh my god this is a spaceship this is a focus different, looking back, the beauty. from lamborghini, you know ferrari as a manufacturer that made cars with a purpose, they made production cars to finance racing and the same with porsche, lamborghini was completely opposite, lamborghini was not a brand that had its history in racing and that has been a criticism at times, but road cars are not always like that.

Great race cars are terrible road cars, and great road cars are usually terrible race cars. People don't build race cars to look amazing and that's what happened when Frucchio came up with this concept of having something different this was about the good life and in the past there weren't many exotic vehicles if you think about it. , there were only a few frucha lamborghini was a businessman and industrialist in italy he had a companytractors among many other companies that also had an air conditioning company and other things. At the time, he actually had a Ferrari 250 GT and was basically complaining about the clutch and other problems with the car.

The story goes that he went to complain to Enzo Ferrari. and he said, "hey, maybe we should change this or do this" and Ferrari told her to basically get out of his office. He said, you know you build tractors and you know I'll stick to building cars and I think Ferruccio was, you know the guy? of character that he wasn't going to take no and he decided that he was going to build a better car. The first prototype was built in 1963 and then imagine in 1964 and 1965 they had a production car which is the 350 gt, the 350 gt was essentially frucho's answer to the 250 gt and the other gt cars produced by ferrari with the front engine v12 and if you look at a 350 gt the details are outstanding, i mean the fit, the finish, the gauges and all these different things, to this day people walk in our showroom and if we have a gt they go right to the car , the beauty of what Frucho did was that it was the best of the best.

I mean, if you go through the list of engineers that worked at Lamborghini during those early days, you have bitzerini lara de stanzani you know over and over again and allowed great teams to do incredible work, there was no, we shouldn't do that or not, really it was forward thinking, you look at that evolution, so you have the 350 gt as the first production car and then within, let's call it a year or two after the launch of the miura, there was nothing like it as a production car, a transverse mid-engine which was beautiful. The infant Lamborghini really made a bold statement as a boutique

supercar

manufacturer and at the time the concept had not yet been described.

Would those two cars be your first production cars? In many ways, a Lamborghini is a caricature of a normal car. Yes, it has an engine, but it has 12 cylinders. It is naturally aspirated. Yes, it has a transmission, but it is a closed manual gearbox that gives you an unmistakable feeling. and a totally different driving characteristic, yes, people spent time trying to make it visually appealing, but instead of just making it good enough, they took it to the moon and back to make sure anyone who saw it would never You will forget that these cars are work. of love for the brand and the engineers and designers behind them remember that all this was made by hand in Bologna they were in an artisanal production facility from the engine parts to the machining of parts nothing came out of that facility it looked like craftsmen hitting the aluminum panels the detail that goes into putting the cars together and building that engine was amazing how you follow an act like the miura probably the most beautiful car ever produced when the car was built like a lamborghini

countach

you're not necessarily looking for Say hey, are you? how do we make this more comfortable and how many golf clubs do we put in it when you build a car like that?

The first priority is always the experience and not only the experience of the driver but of anyone who comes into contact with the car. you're talking about something that stirs the emotions and excites the senses in a way that most things never could. The Countach was developed over many years. Bertone Design was the design house responsible for the body of the Countach, but Marcelo Gandini is the person who designed it. Bob Wallace was the original test driver who actually developed the Countach. You can see him driving this original LP 500, which was the prototype of the car that eventually became the first LP-400.

The parascope. The original LP-400 is known as periscope cars. The reason is that there is a notch and a roof and the rear view mirror went up and you could see it through the notch just by stepping back towards the vehicle and looking at how dramatic it was, what other vehicle can you and I see? ? Think about the '70s that had that kind of design, none of the concept of Lamborghini making a bold statement for Enzo Ferrari and how the company started almost as a fu to society, it's like I can do this and I will do it and I think The ADN has kept the Lamborghini of the Countach.

This design is the classic wedge. This year he turns 50 years old. All these decades later, you can still park that car in any parking lot and it still looks futuristic, no matter how old it is. It just seems to be. timeless to the point that it never looks like an old design the ingenuity underneath is truly something out of this world for that era its chassis the design of all these tubular components that create almost like a birdcage I think you could probably hang a chassis in a modern museum and people would say wow, that's incredible, the Countach when it came out in the '70s and it set the bar and it's always been the one that people said this is the most amazing car that anyone has ever made, no Just aesthetically, it was wild with the doors it went up, I mean you're talking about a v12 engine that at the time produced almost 400 horsepower.

Later variants imagine almost 500 carbureted horsepower in a car that could almost exceed 200 miles per hour, the incredible sense of stability and purpose, and sheer precision. of a car that has no other reason to exist than to travel down the road as far and as fast as possible. That feeling is so strong in the Countach that it can leave you breathless after the first race in November 1971. Rock Gates held the record. but when you set a record like that, it's obviously the mark to beat at 72, they had bad weather so no one could beat it in the second really competitive race, I wrote a note to Brock Gates and told him if you ever did it again run this, invite him.

I, Brock, was very selective about who I would allow and how everything would be organized. They were all evaluated. You had to have someone to vouch for you. You had to have some insurance coverage. You had to have a skill set as a driver. If someone was overzealous, they didn't qualify, we didn't take any chances, we never scared or endangered anyone else, we wanted to be careful, we didn't want to embarrass Brock, right, yeah, these are capable drivers and capable cars that drive safely and They were, like that. It's that it's going to prevail, it's that it's going to force the policy, no, but it made it a little more redeeming.

Now that little justification gives us license to run across the country at 150 miles per hour? Of course, not driving is a social responsibility and has to be measured with prudence and good judgment the cannonball baker will be one firmly and gently at 75 Brock Gates said we will do it again. I got a postcard that said we're going to run cannonballs in four weeks if he's interested, call us and we'll send you the information, so I did. Jack May came out in his white 246 dino, a beautiful Ferrari. We weren't that prepared, we didn't even have a lint buster and we couldn't drive.

Life until we got to New York we had a fuel cell. He had this white dinosaur. He put a fuel cell in it. He is leaking fuel and the photographer wanted a white car in the front and I had the only other white car. I had a three. One-year-old Porsche 911, so they put my car in the front. You know, I finished 13th, but I got pole position on the roof and it didn't fix the leak. He really called California, really, yeah, I know you didn't smoke, but. You didn't smoke, every time you saw someone do it you would learn how they did it and through all that they are able to come up with their own way to up the ante a little bit and so on every time you see better prepared cars. better lighting, better electronics, not only did they have CB radios which were really useful because the truckers were also trying to outsmart the cops, but they also had rudimentary police scanners and also some radar detectors, lint detectors and things like that that worked.

Okay, you'd also have kill switches for the lights, maybe both sets of lights, and certainly different ways to disguise the car. Different things to disguise the drivers. The guys are doing a lot of scams. Peter Brock, who designed the cobras that he and three other guys raced. 1972, disguised as priests, the two soldiers were ready on the sides of the rear doors of the Mercedes with their hands on their weapons tense for the shootout. Easy? I said it out of my mind as I slid out of the driver's seat, exposing my clerical neck as prominently as I could without straining my Adam's apple, excuse me father, I didn't know it's okay, I interrupted him and added that I could appreciate the Dangers of being a law enforcement officer in today's violent times, this is a situation where you have a multi-variable problem to solve. and just about how you're going to drive when you're going to time your way through major cities, the way you're going to physiologically prepare yourself for obviously a race is much longer than anything else they would have endured. the navigation choices you're going to make we were sitting there with the road maps trying to figure it out yes we had a triple mark a yes it shouted mark we had to calculate the weather you had to calculate the mileage fuel stops food bathroom stops the the winners will keep a really fast average speed they will be lucky to avoid problems or breakdowns they will waste the minimum time and refuel and other stops and choose a good route we go down from the roof of the red ball garage he said whenever you want to go I said now He stamps a ticket, it I pull out and there's a red light, that's a great start.

We left around 10 at night. We started three hours after Brock Eights because I knew he had to get to California before rush hour and didn't bother to let us know. Someone else of course you had to choose who drove when what were your skills it was around two in the morning and I got whipped so I made an arrest there so it's time for you to take care of Tom he enters. the car and we get out he says what's wrong I could never drive at night we have an average close to a hundred we are listening to the cb someone says there is a smoking sound post so and so before we get to the next sign here comes a policeman on the other side and the buzzbuster sounds, the light turns on, we arrived at the first exit and the truckers had slowed down to prevent us from getting off, they wanted to help the police and catch you, we did it. friends with them before we got there well, we weren't as smart as you, no, we would call the truckers and tell them we were coming and we were late for whatever we were doing and they wanted someone to go faster than them, so that if we said we were a mile behind you, you know, then they were waiting for us, but if you showed up and drove by without announcing your presence, boy, they got mad, I said well, I guess this is it, so I just slowed down and I got into the media.

There were six police cars that showed up and they were excited, they paid to find out that got us back on the road and that took about an hour and my co-driver was Rick Klein and they said, well we're screwed, we weren't doing it. for fun we were doing it to beat the record so he knew what our average was 96 or something he said well damn we can still do it right in about an hour you gotta speed it up let me drive again it was fun. The exit and the fun at the end. The middle 2500 miles weren't much fun.

We made the best time on two-lane roads. We were able to put it at 120,530 without anyone moving from one grain tower to the next when we arrived. to the edge of california we knew we were getting close to the record i got porpino ran in he hit the clock and they made that stamp i knew exactly what that stamp had to say i looked at it you could hear me scream here from there he broke the record but only by one minute 53 one minute one minute when they realized it was a record then everyone got excited except Brock well he was just mad because he beat him by one minute yeah if you beat him by five it probably wouldn't be that bad I knew that I could do it we had the machine and we had the talent and we were lucky I wasn't as fast as Jack I didn't do the right route like boy I'm making excuses for my time, which was 40 hours, I think in 39 minutes, the cannonball is the kind of thing that anyone hears and that's how it sounds like a movie, cannonball, the only movie that got over 200 admissions even before its release, the movie was a product of their relationship. with hal needham hal needham as brock I would say he's the bravest man I've ever met, he'd take on anything there was a movie about the spirit of St.

Louis that was his first concert there's a Wing Walker that's how he'd never done that before that basically started his career as a specialist in the film industry worked with everyone did everything became a very good friend of burt reynolds they shared a house together burke gave him his first opportunity to direct smoking in the band we've got a long time way to go and it's a short time to get there hal made a fortune he made a fortune for bert he made the movie famous when they went to make asequel brock also rewrote smokey a little bit and that's how brock got into the movie business there was a There was a lot of interest from a lot of different people who wanted to have the Cannonball movie.

There were two movies that were based on Brock's idea for Cannonball. Anything goes in a crushing, fast-paced outlaw race across America. Cannonball, fasten your seat belts and get ready to have fun with Gumball. rally gumball rally came out before cannonball, which made brock very angry because they stole his idea. Brock didn't have the money to fight him, so the cannonball in terms of a film project just dissipated and went away, frankly I've always felt a The fictional version of the race has limited appeal. It seems to me that the only unique quality of the Cannonball story is that it actually happened.

Friend Needham liked the idea and thought it was a good place to tell funny stories. Needham said I'm going to do it and I'm going to do it my way Finally Brock realized that Needham was serious Brock Yates and Hal Needham had been talking about different ideas for a script and thought they could put some of those ideas into practice. in a final presentation in 1979. Hal reported I'm going to do it with an ambulance that's going to stop an ambulance, you know, with a patient in it and then Hal said you're going to be the patient, it's a piece of cake, you can lie down, you know , you can sleep.

I got Chrysler to donate a van and often it was literally for the races at the start of Cannonball in Darien Connecticut, this illegal underground, no one knows. There were 2,000 people screaming there, it was chaos, it was crazy, but in the meantime, Hal had gotten off. plane in Hartford dragging with him this real doctor that he had met at a bar on the Sunset Strip, I had no idea what he was getting into, but he was going to be our doctor and then everyone left. I was driving and we were. trying to figure out all the lights and sirens and stuff and the New Jersey highway patrol caught us my wife pamela was the patient we had her in the back on a stretcher she had a bottle of water running down her arm it was supposed to be a kind of intravenous bottle.

I'm scared to death because now it's reality. All we hear is where the hell are they going? Hal says Los Angeles and they're at the exit of the new Bergen County Jersey Turnpike I looked at Needham and we knew, I mean, if we screw up at this point, we're going to jail, there's no doubt about it, we knew those two geniuses, Allen Brock , they were dying, we had a forged tag, so if they had fled. the plates and everything they would have known the guy said we had a patient there and we said yes and uh and they said well why can't you fly her in?

And I said, well, you better ask the doctor and we'll open that door. The wife is lying there, looking dead on this, on this stretcher, I mean, she was nervous. What's wrong with the patient and why can't you take her on a plane? The doctor says he has fibrocystic lung disease and the senator's wife can't travel by plane. I'm like out under this mask and I'm like boy, that was pretty cool, you know, that's something that made the cops back off right away and it was so perfect that they turned around on us and said, well, guys, you better take it. calmly, go slower. and whatever, because you have the lights on and you do all these things, we walk away and continue that year.

A new record was set with David Hines and Dave Yarbrough in a Jaguar real cannon than the one that happened, you know, being whoa the cannonball, everyone is excited for brock yates to say no more because brock got a call from a guy who had run in. the previous cannonball terry bernius we went to terry's house and he lifted the garage door and looking us right in the face was this black lamborghini countach and he was so excited and who wouldn't be, it was so exotic and totally different from anything you've ever seen. seen. I saw him on the street and he told Brock and I bought this because I was going to get the next cannonball.

We got back to our car and I said to Brooke, okay, what's up Pammy? She said I'll never be able to run another cannonball. I was stunned. and I said what are you talking about, what do you mean and he said that man is a very nice man and he's a decent driver, but he's not good enough to drive that car fast, someone is going to get really hurt and he said I won't do it. Be responsible for that car killing the cannonball. The light went on in Brock's head. He says these cars are getting too fast for us.

He got out of hand and you're approaching 200 miles an hour. A very simple reason why the cannonball arrived. until the end, i think when terry bernius realized there wasn't going to be another cannonball, he had to do something with the car by then, the movie had started to leak, pal needham and brock yates started writing it together, they would be trapped in brock's office and hal would be all over him like it was a rule it was just intense steve mcqueen he was the one duproc had in mind because mcqueen was a serious person who understood what it was all about and not long after mcqueen he had to back out. of the project because he had cancer, they were really against Needham said he was going to talk to Bird about this without thinking that was going to happen, so Andre Morgan called bert and said: I'm going to offer you 5 million dollars for five weeks at work there was dead air on the other end of the phone, he said it was like Bert was breathing hard, it was the most money they had ever offered anyone up front, it was complicated with Bert coming because Brock developed this vision and now every day Burke would have more things to write in the script.

The entire philosophy of the film would change. It became a farce. Burt didn't care that it actually happened. It made no difference to him and he was going to have a lot of fun with it. which turned out to be a great thing because it became a thing and it became a party atmosphere, everyone wanted to be there and have fun they would say I wonder who's out, I wonder who's on hiatus, maybe they'd like to be in this . so the cast kept growing and growing, all the biggest movie stars in the world are in this movie farrah fawcett just came out of charlie's angels that had dean martin sammy davis jr dom deluise roger moore it was one of jackie's first movies chan, I mean, if you stayed still long enough, you somehow had a part in it.

The movie is comedic for us, it was very serious, so if you really tried a cannonball, you don't drive a Lamborghini Countach. There was never a Lamborghini Countach in any of the competitive races. cannonball you couldn't put an extra fuel cell in the car, it wasn't going to get good fuel economy anyway, they don't go unnoticed when you want to, but you couldn't have come up with a more evocative idea than to use a counter real cannonball races were really some kind of legend these mysterious things that may or may not have happened the car guys fish tales did you ever think it would be something legendary?

I never did just a bunch of nerds that didn't have anything better to do, that race was kind of like Lamborghini itself, it's kind of a mythical thing that you meet a teenager in Syracuse, New York, it's just one of those things about the ones you just read. I always had this passion for exotic cars. I used to always wait for the road and track to show up, so hope

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y I'd be able to see photos of these cars. If someone saw a Lamborghini in the '70s, it was probably a photograph and a magazine. The possibility of seeing a Countach specifically or was infinitesimal to see.

You'd have to go to a show, I mean, it's not as common as it is now with YouTube videos. Now Cannonball Run is coming out. The first four minutes of the movie are just the Lamborghini Countach. It's the first time most people can see it. a touch move, you think of a car guy in 1981, he's probably never seen a Countach in person, never heard the scream of the v12 and suddenly his senses are bombarded by that whole experience, you have this lamborghini that just came out . out of nowhere in the desert and you're like what in the world is about to happen in my life, that iconic sound of that car at the beginning, you know, there was nothing like it, just that screeching stop in front of the 55.

I mean , that's all it is in a picture that brings together Brock Yates' philosophy of life and driving to cross outside the 55 mile per hour speed limit, no matter what the rest of the movie is like, that's a cannonball, That's the best car you've ever seen. I could have imagined at that moment driving and then obviously the police are there and you have this crazy police chase, you see that car fly down that interstate, you think, Oh my God, how fun this is going to be. I probably spent my VHS tape just rewinding and watching the intro over and over again the car just permeates everything, that's what makes it the cannonball run countach.

I think it really introduced everyone to the presence of an exotic car in real life, you saw it next to normal cars and it really got me into people's minds. like this is something really special when it goes down the road next to the trans am police car you can see it's half the size you can really get a glimpse of how low and wide and radical the car really looked it was exciting it was exciting . it was shining the world is just different afterwards now you have millions of people seeing this car driving around it made the lamborghini a household name suddenly people knew what a lamborghini was they knew what a countach was that paved the way for so many cars different. enthusiasts around the world, I mean, it really was an aspirational front.

We saw the car in a familiar enough context that it could almost become a target. That movie in many ways inspired a total fascination with the Countach for many years and

supercar

s in general. The supercar market exploded after that. That's all the brand needed. The car is a 1979 Lamborghini Countach LP 400s. The Lamborghini Countach S is the answer to this question. What do you do for an encore when you're already building the most exotic supercar in the world? ? faster and more refined with even better handling the lp-400s that's what changed the world those were the first countaches with a rear wing maybe the wings didn't really work maybe they provided more lift than downforce but I'll tell you what They made it look amazing and that's what it was really about, how incredibly cool we can make a car and how much of a reaction we can get.

The fastest production car in the world. They were lower, they had a unique suspension, so if you look. the front wheels were tucked in and the rear wheels were sticking out of the back, that's what people think of when they think of a countach, they think of a car with flares, they think of a car with a wing, they think of a car. with those wide pirelli p7 tires that's the car that was on the poster on the wall that was really when the countach blew up all these magazines started writing about the countach as a production car and i think the world went a little crazy afterwards That elevated the brand in many ways because when you looked at that vehicle you automatically associated it with a five-speed Lamborghini.

First gear is to the left with reverse on top. This was standard operating practice for years. With this gear lever closed, you're talking about a four-liter V12 engine. you have six 45 millimeter Weber carburetors and these are side draft carburetors so three on each side this is a low body car. 105 of these cars manufactured for the entire world. None came to the United States initially. Some were brought to the gray market, including this particular car, that car specifically was one of the first cars imported to the US by Trevor Thomas and Jaz Rawala. Their goal was to basically import the Lamborghini Countach, which was not legal in the US, and pass EPA Dot standards.

The idea. they had to do that was a front bumper essentially a front spoiler those spoiler struts are attached under the hood with shock absorbers and all attached to the frame so it's enough of a bumper but it made the car look even more radical they also installed a rear bumper as well and if it weren't for Trevor Thomas and Jazz, I don't think the Countach would have been imported into the US for many years after the factory finally actually used their designs and that became what we know now. like the American countach which was developed by these two gentlemen who originally imported the cannonball, when someone enters a countach for the first time, it is very intimidating, you have to drive a countach, you can't let it drive you, it doesn't have that kind . of luxury things you can findin other luxury cars I call it automotive masochism, you are giving up what most people buy cars, to be very honest in the past these cars were extremely impractical, these vehicles had no power steering, there was no power assist clutch and you really had to be some kind of sane individual to be able to turn the steering wheel, press the clutch and take advantage of that kind of performance.

You have this big v12 literally sitting right behind you in the transmission count. in the front of the engine, so to speak, and it's mounted backwards from what you would normally see on a front-engined car and even some rear-engined cars, so you have the transmission in the cabin and it goes maybe eight miles per gallon. Out loud, the first series one of the series two LP 400 cars was called a low body, that's because they actually have a lower roof inside the car, there's not a lot of room, anyone that's about five feet tall and eleven is not going to fit in the car very comfortably. all you have is this raked windshield that literally comes almost right up to your front, you're sitting very, very low, it's a challenge to drive because it's so low, especially in the front, that any kind of dip in the road can be very difficult, even a lamborghini after building 155 low body cars they raised the lamborghini car rises like everyone is removing the front spoiler these cars are too low you have blind spots everywhere it's almost impossible to see out the back three quarters it's impossible see from behind there is a small rear window on this car and then this wing is located exactly in the middle of that Valentino Balboni, who was the test driver of Lamborghini, made it very famous by opening the door, sitting on the threshold of the door and simply look back while maneuvering the car.

I think attitude is what's behind you, it doesn't really matter, you're always going forward, you have the bars on the window and then the window probably goes down maybe an inch and a half, two inches, I think the idea is enough to driver. side to extend your hand if you're going to pay a toll, but that's it. There is no space to store things in the car. You can't put luggage in the car. There is a trunk in the front, but it is tiny. It is approximately the size of. a shoe box, while here there is a glove box, this whole thing is your fuse box for the car, you really only have two small air conditioning vents with an air conditioning system, let's call it, less than fantastic, the air vents conditioner are on the console next to your knee so you have the air conditioning in your car on and the driver's right knee and the passenger's left knee are frozen interesting location it is the most useless car that was ever conceived to fit in the context of what could obviously be a honda or a minivan with all these, let's call it nuances, it takes a lot of passion to learn how to drive the car, but once you really understand the Countach, it's an experience like no other.

Oh wow, it's made for the road, that's where Kunta shines and the car feels so planted. At 100 miles per hour there aren't many cars of that generation that I'm comfortable with and I'm never afraid in a Countach, it was a high performance beast. There's something about sitting inside a Countach that makes you feel like you're in this Italian rocket ship. boat because the hood is very inclined when you drive panoramic, it is an incredible sight to this day, getting on a dashboard is almost an emotional experience for me, the smell of Italian leather that sounds from the second gear of the v12 to third and The power just goes through the revs, there's nothing like that.

Feeling like I don't think manufacturers will duplicate it again. This is really special in the movie. There was a visual quality to the way it was filmed. American consumers were stunned and dazzled by the Lamborghini. There was a sexual quality. There was a quality of power. You can't have the quality that made such an impression on so many young people. Then it was mom. I need the poster. I need the model. I need this. I need Countach posters to suddenly be everywhere. This was the The iconic Lamborghini Countach simply represents all that madness and excess because, as tough as the '70s were, the '80s were different.

The 80s were fun. Wild cars. Wild clothes. Wild hairstyles. The guy who grew up with a Countach singing in his high school classroom, that was the level of Success that someone wanted to aspire to when we think about their dream car that fascinates us. The goal is certainly to own one until you've achieved that dream. I have to keep working when you look at your normal production car. There, these square boxes from the 80s and the countach would attract crowds, attract attention and are still so exciting, it is the expression of excess and it is the expression of being bold, why do people buy it well?

It's the best kind of outlaw statement, isn't it? It's at a time when you know we have the center for auto safety and all those people on one side and the Baptists on the other trying to corner us and make us behave the way you're supposed to establish yourself very quickly like somewhere else just by parking. one of those in front of your house. I'll never forget when I first saw the 60 minute special with Morley Safer and he went to the factory and Valentino Balboni took him down the back roads at 160 180 miles an hour in a four valve countach which is a perfect introduction to what it's like. lamborghini this was a moment in time it's not a special effect this is 180 miles per hour there's a famous interview on the 60 Minutes Special with Lamborghini's marketing director at the time, Danielle Odetto, and he actually got into trouble for what he said.

Is there a typical Lamborghini buyer? A typical owner. Yes, very big, because if you are shy you can't walk around. with this car it is like going out at night with a beautiful woman that not everyone can afford it, not because they do not have enough money or because they have enough power, but because they are not the type who like to go out with a very beautiful woman, imagine that this It was the marketing sense at that time and I don't think we will see that again in history, it is not a very comfortable car, of course, you can't go with luggage today, you must have another car like that. a railroad that follows you with a driver and arrives the next day, if you look at the first countaches and you look at who they delivered them to, I mean, you're talking about Saudi sheikhs, rock stars, you've got Rod Stewart getting some of the first wagons. you have eddie van halen getting an lp 400s etcetera etcetera etcetera so they were produced for playboys you know let's face it he was an eccentric individual imagine you arrived in a countach somewhere in the 1970s or early the one from 1980, you would stop traffic.

I would stop everything, I love this car, man, I love this car, the Lamborghini is, look at me, car, yeah, it looks like a spaceship, yeah, it's very theatrical, how should we say it's very theatrical? Then Ron Rice bought the Cannonball Run Coontash, he's bigger. that life character like many countach owners ron rice grew up in a log cabin today the businessman's home is this extraordinary retreat in daytona beach i'm a poor kid i grew up in the mountains of north carolina i was kicked out of almost every school the ones I was in and just passed when I passed, I finally went down to Daytona Beach and got into the oil business in a different way.

I created the Hawaiian tropic for Ron Rice, creator of Hawaiian tropic sun protection products, this is the laboratory, a place to test the natural royalty of it. dark tanning oil I had no idea how to make a tanning product I bought a trash can for four dollars and a broom for a dollar I use it as my steak stir fry and in our fifth year with the Hawaiian tropics we were still mixing it in that trash can We were selling products like crazy in a room with sedum ants and then I started placing products every three days.

Hawaiian traffic was in a movie or TV show. Oh, it was amazing what he did. We did four smoking bandits, two cannonball runs and a bl striker so I was busy working with burt reynolds hal needham for all those years through all those movies we were welcome on set anytime anywhere and I was there a lot when they filmed the movie, the car was new when the movie ended before I understood, he actually bought it on set and he met this guy, I looked at cars, I said do you know this car and he could, he said yeah, I said that you are going to sell it, he said yes, I said no.

I remember what he told me but I took the money out of my pocket and I paid him on the spot I just liked it I looked at it and I liked it and I said I want us to have a lot of money I could have bought any car in the world, anything I wanted, we were making money . I bought it from him for cash and gave it to Burton Hal to use in the movie. We were there in all the scenes in Las Vegas where they run that thing and work that 55. It was an amazing car, the difference between men and boys is, in fact, the price of their toys.

Ron can afford to be the king of the road. Spoilers at the front and rear. The 12 tubes in the rear. It was always on the poster and looks Hawaiian. traffic on top oh yeah, we used a lamborghini a lot and I drove it myself at 185 miles per hour on the Daytona circuit and I had a lot of pedal left, but I was afraid to do it, that engine was humming, it was beautiful to hear. I mean the sound they made with this big shake inside the car was a girl magnet that caught attention wherever you went.

I had no problem getting an appointment with him. That is sure. He had a lot of fun with it. He told me stories. of driving that car up and down Daytona Beach with a lot of friends in it, there are pictures of a lot of girls in bikinis sitting in the car, sitting in the car, there are all these cool stories of him using the car, enjoying the car and listening afterwards that movie became iconic in the Lamborghini world and I don't even think he realized the importance of the car when he had it, we didn't care if he bet Rex, we'll buy another one.

I had many years. I kept it in the garage for a long time. He kept it all right. He was shining. I told everyone that after I had that car I said if they made a better one or one that looked better I would buy it on the spot, but they never did, they never made a better one, the countach was the top of the line, as far as As far as I'm concerned it was the best, check out the gears and a Lamborghini Countach and you eclipse every speed reference in the books first alone will take you well beyond the US legal speed limit.

The connection between loving cars and loving driving them fast is actually pretty close after the final cannonball run in 1979. Brock Gates said I'm out, but the people who were driving aren't. But it didn't happen, so some gunners who had participated in the 70s along with some new enthusiasts and fans organized an event called u.s express. No new records were set until the final race in 1983, where David Diem and Doug Turner in a Ferrari 308 set a time of 32 hours and seven minutes. History cooled down a lot after the 1980s when the first team to make a public claim. literally since 1983 it was richard rawlings of gas mono garage and dennis collins and they drove dennis's 1997 ferrari 550 marinello with a time of 31 hours and 59 minutes now they claimed to have beaten 3251, which was the time of 79 cannonballs, of In fact, they had also beaten 3207, not exactly by average speed because it was much shorter to drive from New York to Los Angeles in 2007 than it was. in 1979, but they did a great job anyway and had done it on a really cool car, but a few months later Alex Roy and Dave Maher revealed that they had done it a year earlier and waited out the statute of limitations. because they were worried about processing and he goes public with his new record 31 hours in four minutes when I spoke to brock yates in the mid 2000s, after he published his book cannonball, I told him that one day I wanted to do it and he was the cordial enough to say good luck, kid, but I had been very clear that there are twice as many cars on the road, there are twice as many police officers employed, and there are much harsher penalties if you ever get caught doing this sort of thing. and so.

He thought that even back then, when they were doing it, if everything had gone well, those 30 hours were the wall, the only real thing you can think about is, well, I just need to go out and see how fast I can do it myself . It took me years and years of saving, planning and credit card debt to get to the point where I could one day buy a car that I thought was the right choice, the Mercedes CL55 AMG in 2013, I finally had the car I finally had. I convinced some friends to come with me, so we decided it was time to get to New York in a reasonably prepared car with a crew that has an idea of ​​what they're doing, ready, but no, and it's just down the mountain.

Russian and you leave the red ball garage. You immediately arrive atLexington lights, always ready. If you sit there, it's nerve-wracking because you think we have to average over 100 miles per hour, so the anxiety just builds and every moment you're not beating your average target speed, you think I'm losing, this isn't working. and then you know you have to stop for gas and you know there might be traffic and you know your tires could blow out, etc. you simply earned the right to pull the arm of a legendary cannonball slot machine. We were still going faster than we thought, but we never had much reason to slow down.

We passed five big speed traps in 2800 miles, maybe a There were dozens of cops driving in the opposite direction and they were all pretty easy to spot, so when you hear about a cannonball you expect it's twice as dangerous and you slide around curves, jump and hide from the cops, it's not. the most boring thing you've ever heard of, if it's going well, the car was going really happy at 135 to 145 miles an hour and most of the time there was no one with us, so we had people with binoculars and all the gadgets going and we got to the point where if we averaged the speed limit we would go over 30 hours and then we saw we could go over 29 hours but we never had to slow down so you stop at this quiet little beach hotel in the middle of night and no one has any idea what you're doing, why do these three sweaty guys jump out of this car, obviously exhausted but also a little crazy, so we asked the valet to take a picture, probably the worst picture ever ever taken?

For some reason, Dave didn't have shoes, but we just did it and it was very surreal because I set the goal 2003, I'm 18, I'm 28. Standing there, I'm tearing up looking at the Portofino dock. The idea. that I had been able to find a way to sum up everything I loved about cars at that time was perfect, we went to Denny's house, okay I have to ask you where were you when you hit 150 miles per hour, there are many answers to that question, oh my goodness, so we did it in 28 hours and 50 minutes, which was an average of about 100 miles per hour.

There wasn't much immediate enthusiasm for trying to beat my record, but I never expected to keep the record much less sustain it. it's forever and that's what a couple of my friends did in 2019, that's November 2019, a few months later, the world shuts down and in the three months after that it breaks 12 more times because apparently when there's no one driving, it doesn't There is no one going to work. and there are no cops on duty, it's pretty easy to get away with speeding across the country, so it seems like doing this during the covid pandemic was at least a three hour advantage over what we would normally experience and in that moment, the whole cannonball.

Sandbox just turns these guys upside down, my heart goes out to them, I think they're great, they're setting records but they're doing it during covid with a gps with helicopters with all that stuff that takes all the fun out of it. The police had a trump card, you know, today there is no arbitration body or a clearinghouse or someone to decide what is a record and what is not. I mean, there's no Guinness, but now that the dust has settled on the pandemic. The fastest time was 25 hours and 39 minutes in an Audi, as people have found it very easy to set records in recent months.

I hope that doesn't stop people from dreaming. Warning: stop reading this immediately. What follows is a brief summary of a life wasted hanging out among cars in case you are tempted to travel a similar path while resisting an exciting career sitting at a desk as a computer-savvy accountant or tax analyst. . I tell him that playing with cars is a dead end. Look at me, he and I often talked about it and especially when Steve got sick later, I told him you know you've been very lucky because you've been able to live your life on your terms and he said yes.

I've had a wonderful life, he had Alzheimer's and I couldn't really hug him because he was so brilliant that he could hide or cover up his deficits. I went and visited him and I had to tell him, you know, that thing I told you I was going to do in 2004 I did it to tell him something. So to this hero of mine who allowed me to look at the Portofino. dock and saying wow was it I think he left his readers with a great sense of comfort because they trusted him to know the truth I think that's the greatest legacy he could have left was the 12 years he had Alzheimer's it was beautiful during that it was wonderfully warm , but it certainly made me appreciate who he was.

One thing I've learned is that we all tend to think we have control of our lives, but the most important things in your life, the deep things, you really have little or no control over that's what life is like in 2001, I lost my wife in a car accident, it was incredibly tragic, she was 32 years old, Jeff and I were together about 120 miles from her house and she received a phone call. Unbelievable, the longest, most difficult road trip I've ever been on comes back and you desperately want to get it right or change it and I couldn't just something I couldn't fix, it took a couple of years before.

It could work, but three years later I got to this point in my life where I wanted to try to make something positive out of that tragedy and that's a difficult task, but I felt like there had to be a reason why I was still here. So my brother and I formed a foundation and our idea was to take elements from some of the best exotic car events in the world, put them into one event, and then donate money to make a wish in Laura's honor in her memory. It's an amazing group that grants wishes to kids struggling with life-threatening situations, so in 2004 our first Exotic Car Festival celebration took place that year.

We had 60 cars and we raised 20,000 and it was amazing, you know? Those first few days were just me and my brother and we worked really hard to build the event. Everyone who works at the event is a volunteer. All auction items are 100 donated and all money goes to the children. It has grown into something absolutely huge. We have now raised over three and a half million dollars and granted the wishes of over 400 children over the years. Early on we started getting some movie cars and of course for me the ultimate movie car was the Cannonball Run, so back in 2006 I called and said I would love to have the Cannonball Run car at our event at next day.

I received a call. Hi Jeff, I'm Ron Rice. I have a conflict that weekend. However, I am very happy to send the car. Your event was an amazing moment for me so the car showed up that morning and the woman Ron had sent with the car said you know Jeff Ron might consider selling his car, never in my life did I dream I would actually see it. the cannibal run car let alone own it and I was already on the phone calling ron and I said ron, you know I would love to buy this car. I've loved this car my whole life and he gave me a number that had a lot of zeros on it, it was out of my budget, anything I could afford, well he wasn't going to pay enough money first and we actually put it on the market. sale, but it didn't contribute much.

He had a really good audience that time so I was going to send him to California where we were actually going to bring his box of legs and then he came here and said he wanted them to sell it to me, I have it now and that's what happened after almost two years . I finally reached an agreement. I had recorded the Cannonball Run theme song on a cassette tape and drove out of Ormond Beach in a Cannonball Run car listening to the Cannonball Run theme. That is a moment I will never forget for the rest of my life.

Point Ron had ripped out the interior and put it in a dark red interior and the leather was wearing a little. The car had some nicks, dents and bruises. You know, Ron had an amazing life and the car looked like it had been well used, so I had the car and sent it right in for a two year restoration. The fact that it needed restoration was not important to me. It was still the car, but I wanted it to look exactly like it did when it was in the movie. Exactly how it looked when I saw it as a teenager in the movie, you would hope that when it was restored they would leave everything as it was in the movie and I think that is very important, the restoration effort was led by a good friend of mine named Tony Urdi a very meticulous guy tony had owned five countachs of his own he knows everything there is to know about kuntoshi so he knew every nut bolt would be done perfectly everything was done to exact standards practically the entire car is still all original has been refinished but It is all original, so it has its original engine, transmission, wheels, they were all hand sanded to the original magnesium and repainted with the original paint color.

Complete engine, everything is completely disassembled, repainted and reassembled. We had some cracks. in the air intakes so they had to be fixed and re-machined, the tan interior, the brown dash was the way it came from the factory exactly like this, the entire interior was made in California, every stitch of fabric you see In this I was completely new. when we did the restoration we even took the detail to get the original license plate number and as if the car wasn't outrageous enough from the factory, these 12 exhaust pipes were added for the movie, these two gauges here were this voltmeter and the fuel gauge. oil temperature. the car for the movie but it was never connected to anything when I bought the car it still had the cb antennas all these little things are a very important part of your time and an important part of Lamborghini history that was sent right in It's time to celebrate the exotic car festival in 2012.

It turned out beautiful, the car is absolutely everything I could have asked for, it's an amazing community, I mean the best friends I have in the world I met through the car world, I met my wife through the car world ten years after i lost laura i met kayla who is the most amazing person i met her in ferrari central florida she is a car lover we got married in 2013 and she is my best friend, my supporter, everything I do, I do with Kayla, she is Everyone in my world loves to go out for walks and enjoy the experience of driving.

Yes, they are beautiful works of art and I also love the way the cars look, but they are really made to be driven. They work best when driven. especially on these old cars with carburetor, that's why the cars were built, any lamborghini is a rolling circus, especially the r1 auto can, so when you park anywhere a lot of people come, if you stop somewhere when the child comes, he is the first to Ask the parents if they regret the child getting into the car. You let the child get into the car. The reaction is always, you know, surprising people of a certain age group who remember the cannonball race, of course, immediately associated with the movie.

Is incredible. For me I still can't believe I own the Countach Cannonball Run. I have loved this car for 40 years. It is undoubtedly the most famous Countach in the world. I still can't believe it's in my garage. I'm just the current butler. of this car, I mean I'm the third owner but eventually someone else will have it and I hope it's someone else who loves this car as much as I do and someone who will share it and let's take it to the forecourt and I would drive it when I started probably ago 15 years, producing car shows and my passion was vintage Lamborghinis because that's what I grew up with.

You know, people would make fun of me and say, "Oh, you're selling these old playboy cars and that was something like that." from a lot of the comments, you know, flashy, uh, too loud, you know, serious collectors didn't take the cars seriously and I think that's changed, the resurgence is finally where we have the expendable income to buy the things we dream about . to finally get it off the wall and put it in your garage, it's a good time to be present now, if you can buy one, tomorrow it's worth more than today and the more you drive it, the more likely next month at some point the kundashas will be listed for 50 60 70 000 and you know, one day we won't see a countach under a million dollars.

People are realizing how important these cars are in terms of automotive history. You really have to look at the Countach as a model for all current hypercars and for all supercars when Lamborghini welcomed Oracio Pagani, this young Italian designer who once worked at the factory, to come in and take an already beautiful piece and modernize it slightly to make it a little more aggressive do things that were a little cutting edge the result was the 25th anniversary which is essentially the last Countach produced Rashford Pagani has his own company now makes a handful of hand built supercars each yearwhen you look at today's modern hypercar. or supercar like a pagani, you were entering a part of this family that ferruccio cultivated and created there.

If you look at Lamborghini's lineage going back to the Countach, they've always left the mark in terms of that wow factor. It's been a phenomenal ride with this cannonball. It's 50 years this year, I'm not sure you'll ever get many of those things that you're personally invested in in life that have a legacy like this that weaves in and out of generations and holds people's imaginations. I have your Ferrari I still have my Ferrari I still have my Porsche where are we going I can still drive it I can too the spirit of Cannonball was very much I want to do this and I found a way and the spirit of owning and driving Countach is exactly that, it is a reflection of how I love the cars.

I want that and I figured out a way to buy it and now I'm going to use it and it means a lot to me to be able to do that when you look at the Countach's 17 years of production and over 1900 built, there are many outstanding examples, I mean there are many excellent examples, but I think if you had to choose one that defines everything the car ever wanted to represent, there is nothing better than This car was almost like magic when that car was created, it will never happen again and it was just perfect that day and at that time that's what the Countach is.