Not 1 but 2 BARN FIND Countaches rescued!!

Hi All,

Who said that barn finds have all been found? For all you Countach lovers this amazing find might be as thrilling as it's been for me. For 2 1/2 years now I been working on getting these two long-lost Countaches out of their resting places.

1st car: 1985 QV DD vin#12806 white over white with just 2700 original Km. Former Monaco Grand Prix pace car (still have the Monaco plates). One owner car with custom Scaglioni language (I heard that's very rare). Currently has a US rear bumper. Not found in the Lambo registry, totally off the radar!

2nd car: 1978 LP 400S Vin#21008 low body first 50 small gauge cars. 5th 400S produced. Twin Turbo Bob Wallace special! Originally black metallic over black.

Both cars have not ran for about 10 years. Any thoughts would be appreciated on what to do with the low body. Restore to factory specs or keep as-is with the hopes old Bob will be celebrated as the god of all of the very best auto engineers that are no longer with us.

Geno
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Some of us had tried pretty hard to get that 78.
I made many phone calls.
Restore back to normal and send to Bonhams.....

 

The R. Rusie cars. Good to see them out of that shed and on to being saved.

 

Wow. I remember those. I think on Ltalk IIRC. Restore back as original. Great find & please post more pictures when you can.

 

I bumped that link and there are lots of photos of the DD. There is a companion post on the Turbo car with photos as well.

 

Good job Geno!
Will be great to see them restored...please keep us posted on the progress.
I agree...should be restored as they left the factory.

Brian

 

Nice acquisition! If the TT'd one was in nice condition, I would say to leave it be and freshen it up a bit. However, since it's been 10+ years since it ran, it would make the most financial sense to restore it to original rather than restore to the modded version. Either way, awesome set.

 

Sweet one Geno! I'd recommend restoring 21008 back to stock. When I saw Bob, a couple years ago, he made a point of telling me that the turbo engines were a mistake and really nothing but a grenade waiting to go off. The base engine just isn't robust enough to survive the extra horsepower.

 

I know the general consensus is to restore back to stock but...

What if the car was modified and was subsequently on a poster?

 

I like the Monaco F1 car.

 

This is amazing! Especially the white looks really good.

 

Amazing!!

Pretty sure the white car was originally here in Florida at Royal Motorcars. That is a pretty rare US-DD car. Cool story.

 

Wonderful, please post more pictures....

 

I think I remembers that lp400 on sunset blvd for sale years so. Same tail pipes but no 25th deck.

Wallace was an trained engineer? That's news to me... Nevertheless what a remarkable man

Great find. Thanks for sharing

 

Congratulations on a fabulous acquisition!

Since you solicit thoughts, the LP400S ought to go back to original guise as part of its rescue operation. In this case, it will be a full rebuild and if it were my car it would go back to Italy to the original artisans under Valentino Balboni's supervision.

As regards the QV DD, as far as my research takes me, the last Countach Monaco Pace car was a Countach LP500S. Do you have period pics or documentation to confirm this car was a Monaco Grand Prix pace car?

 

The picture of the ’85 with the leaves on it is what dreams are made of. Wow...

 

The white interior actually looks cream - or has all these years just taken a toll on the white coloring?

 

Thats exactly what I thought.
Has he (Mr. Rusie) owned two of them? Countachs with Bob Wallace modifications?
This one was sold 2004 at Christies for $ 39.950.
Looks very close to the one above?!
1974 LAMBORGHINI LP400 COUNTACH | Christie's

 

I'm (slowly) restoring 1120004, which was the Lp400 owned by Rusie and built by Wallace. Would be interesting to see Wallace used a similar turbo and injection setup on the low body. The exhaust at least looks identical.

"Grenade" is right - its not a great setup and some of the work was really sub-par. One nice mod you may find was a conversion to shim-on bucket valve adjustment...best thing Wallace did to those cars LOL.

I wasn't aware Rusie had other CT's but would love to know more about the man and his cars. I tried to contact him several years ago to no avail. There were some weird stories surrounding Rusie, and from what I can tell he tried to turn 004 into some sort of fake LP400SV prototype.

Geno, if I can be of any help regarding the Wallace mods, feel free to PM me.

 

EDIT - looks like Rusie added SV badging to Geno's red car as well. Interesting stuff!

 

I think that's the car... I have pics somewhere.

Jeez... 39k usd.

 

There are a lot of photos of both of these cars posted in the Countach section of the other site (I don't think posting links are allowed, so I won't). This was 3 years ago when the cars came to light. A young man was trying to help an ailing Mr. Rusie with starting up the DD. It is in very rough shape and yes, there were several interested parties. Congrats to Mr. Berns for prevailing here and getting these out of that leaking shed.

 

Some were critics several years ago at $39K, I am sure none of them are critics now.

 

Rusie had at least 3 Countachs, and I recall them being for sale for well over 20 years (Purveyors of Jim Kaminski's Lamborghini Owners Club Newlesster will see Ads going back 25-plus years). He was quite a Countach enthusiast, but we have to remember that the Wallace Turbo applications and all the mods are all post-production applications that have nothing to do with Automobili Lamborghini. It would be wonderful to see the LP400S come back to a standard LP400S, as it ought to.

 

Thanks Joe. Who would be your second or third choice if you would use some one in the US to restore the LP400S?

I will keep digging but no solid proof that the car was in the GP. Maybe it was at the GP but not "in" the GP. Right now only the claim of the owner is what I am going on.

Geno





QUOTE=joe sackey;143372086]Congratulations on a fabulous acquisition!

Since you solicit thoughts, the LP400S ought to go back to original guise as part of its rescue operation. In this case, it will be a full rebuild and if it were my car it would go back to Italy to the original artisans under Valentino Balboni's supervision.

As regards the QV DD, as far as my research takes me, the last Countach Monaco Pace car was a Countach LP500S. Do you have period pics or documentation to confirm this car was a Monaco Grand Prix pace car?[/QUOTE]