#1703, 09 March 2017, page 90. WORDS TWO EPIC TOURS, 40 YEARS APART, MEL NICHOLS PHOTOS LAMBORGHINIONAMBORGHINI SOME OF EUROPE’S FINEST ROADS JOHN MASON CONVOY! #1703, 09 March 2017, page 92. #1703, 09 March 2017, page 92. OCTOBER 1976, ON THE ORIGINAL CONVOY! DRIVE, DOING 258KM/H IN A LAMBO URRACO. BACK THEN, FRENCH MOTORWAYS DIDN’T HAVE SPEED LIMITS... CONVOY! AST TIME, it started with a phone call and When we picked up the A6 Autoroute culminated in a story called Convoy! I wrote du Soleil at Mâcon for the 730km run via for CAR (the magazine I was editing in Paris to Calais, Roger flattened the mighty London) and Wheels’ sister magazine, Sports Countach. Steve and I, in the Urraco and Car World. It told how four of us drove a Silhouette, tried to stay with him but ran Countach, Silhouette and Urraco flat out out of steam when their speedos touched from the Lamborghini factory to England. 265km/h. The Countach thundered past a On a Thursday afternoon in October stationary motorbike cop and faded into the 1976, Roger Phillips, the UK’s Lamborghini distance. The gendarme watched the little importer, phoned to say he was flying to V8s go by too, then mounted up. Italy with two pals (Steve Brazier and David We stopped at the next service area. He Jolliffe) to collect three Lamborghinis for pulled in, sauntered over, nodded hello and the Earl’s Court Motor Show. If I got to admired the cars. Two more bike cops did Heathrow in two hours I could join in. the same and then a group of gendarmes At Sant’Agata, we waited a day while the from a bus came over to look. Word was Silhouette was finished, then took spreading, but we knew we were going to off on a Saturday morning. We got be okay. France was still without motorway into our stride at a steady 180km/h speed limits and the cops’ demeanour said or so on the Autostrada del Sole up “fair enough, chaps”. to Milano, and used the cars’ grunt to nip- After breakfast, we accelerated away nip-nip past the trucks in the Aosta Valley and gobbled the long, lazy curves where up to the Mont Blanc Tunnel, and to clear the A6 climbs through the Cote-d’Or’s soft the gaggles on the D roads beyond Geneva. hills. While David was driving the Urraco, At nightfall, after a struggling Citroen 2CV I took the picture of its speedo on 160mph nearly took out the Silhouette, we stopped (258km/h) from the passenger’s seat, with at a hotel near Nantua in France. the Silhouette and Countach drifting along We fired up the Lamborghinis at six the ahead. It was a surreal experience seeing next morning. They were properly warm those dramatic bronze-gold shapes glittering when we struck the D979 that swoops in in the sun as they ate the empty pale grey and out of the River Ain valley. It’s the kind ribbon of motorway and speared into the of road you dream about. And that day it blue of that Sunday morning was magical: mist turned the valley below When we switched off in London, we us silver, and as we zoomed down we stayed knew we’d experienced something unique. nose-to-tail, windows open, relishing the Steve Brazier, who spent 56 years working thunder of a 4.0-litre V12 and two 3.0-litre with fast cars, says: “It was stunning; the V8s – 28 cylinders, 12 camshafts, 14 Webers best driving experience of my life.” and eight exhausts – bouncing off the banks Roger Phillips: “We were lucky to be in in the still air. It was an anthemic prelude the right place at the right time. It was to the glories ahead. truly epic.” #1703, 09 March 2017, page 94. CONVOY! THE COUNTACH, ITS EXHAUSTS SPITTING SPARKS, IS HOUNDED BY THE THUNDEROUS DIABLO AND SINISTER MURCIELAGO THIS time, it begins with Silhouette owner lose the first of the cars, Tadek and Verna hurried make this a physical experience. Richard Head. At his house near London, Lipinski’s Countach. A coil lead has started The more recent Murcielago SV, despite he re-reads the Convoy! story and realises arcing. A recovery truck takes it to former its paddleshifters, is brutishly tactile too. it was 40 years ago. Over a bottle of red, Lamborghini engineer Vigorito Biagio’s The oh-so-easy-to-hustle Huracan delivers Richard and fellow Lamborghini enthusiast garage Autofficina Bielle. Then the front today’s kind of supercar experience where Alan Robb hatch a plan for a re-run with brakes on Richard Head’s Silhouette start the driver has more performance than all a Countach, Silhouette and Urraco. Alan binding; and the very moment we reach the but the SV with little effort. is after-sales manager for Super Veloce factory, Chris and Sandra Notley’s Urraco I know by now how well the Huracan Racing, a high performance car sales, dumps its clutch fluid. Old cars… rides and behaves – and why its stonking service and events company outside Lamborghini’s workshop, normally 5.2-litre V10 need suffer no inferiority London. Alan emails me, starts talking to dedicated to restorations and soon getting complex in the company of V12s. As we Lamborghini owners keen to participate, new premises as part of an expanding Polo climb towards Monte Bondone, it grips and and we put together a plan for Convoy! 2. Storico program, willingly squeezes in the tears through the bends and feels accurate, We need a different route. In 1976, the Silhouette to fit new front brake calipers. dependable, and very fast: the Spyder might fastest way was through the Mont Blanc So work can run in parallel on the Urraco to be a smidgen slower than its coupe sister Tunnel to Geneva, then west to Nantua speed us on our way, the manager arranges yet its 449kW torrent of power will still and along the D979 to Bourg-en-Bresse for for Vigorito to help with Chris’s car. Before whip you from standstill to 300km/h in just the A6 at Macon, and on north via Paris to long, phone calls bring good news: the over 20 seconds. Calais. Now, there are several all-motorway Countach will be ready tonight and the But it is coming back from the top of options. We want as many miles on pristine Silhouette and Urraco 24 hours later. SP85, on the 18km-long stretch that’s been roads as possible – and I have two in mind. Meanwhile, we have a date with a road one of Europe’s best hillclimbs since 1925, Peter Robinson, my friend who lived in Italy 200km north, the SP85. The Huracan, that I learn what the Huracan is about. for 16 years, reckons the SP85 up to Monte Diablo, Murcielago, and Espada head for Switching the ANIMA setting from Strada Bondone, near Trento, is Italy’s best driving Riva del Garda, our base for the SP85 to Sport sharpens the engine mapping, road. And those epic opening scenes with jaunt. As we sit down to dinner, we hear the seven-speed gearbox, Haldex all-wheel the Miura in The Italian Job were filmed on Countach arrive. One back, two to go. drive, steering and stability-control systems. the SS27 Colle del Gran San Bernardo north Next morning, the SP85 shows us its The exhaust note snaps to spine-tingling, of Aosta. Irresistible. delights – a 60km mix of visually clear with fortissimo pops and crackles on the So the six privately owned Lamborghinis hairpins, zigzag sequences and fast open over-run, and ferocious ‘toe-and-heel’ blips of Convoy! 2 – Countach 5000 QV, bends interspersed with straights. We soon on the downshifts. Silhouette, Urraco 3000, Diablo SE30, have the stirring sight of the Countach, With the throttle flat between bends, Murcielago SV and Espada – travel by its exhausts spitting sparks on the over- the V10 hangs onto its gears to 9000rpm, transporter to a hotel near Bologna, along run, hounded by the thunderous Diablo well past its 8250rpm power peak. It will with a $470,800 UK-based Huracan LP 610-4 and sinister Murcielago, braking hard flash up two, three and even four gears (the Spyder that Lamborghini has kindly lent into the bends, squatting onto their fat ratios max at 71km/h, 106, 140, 177, 225, me. We fly down, and are set to start rear tyres to power out and bolt through 282 and 323). Initially, I underestimate the our drive from the Lamborghini factory the gears to triple-digit (mph) speeds. In carbon-ceramic discs’ voracious bite and on Monday morning. the SE30, and especially the Countach, brake too soon. When I get braver, in the They say bad things happen in threes. unassisted steering, hard brakes, meaty then amazingly short braking distances, Before we get to Sant’Agata Bolognese, we clutches and gated gearshifts that can’t be the transmission snips down – blam, blam, #1703, 09 March 2017, page 94. #1703, 09 March 2017, page 96. Urraco in Oz Convoy’s 1976 Earl’s Court Motor Show Urraco, chassis number 15992, “THAT’S WEIRD — started life as a 1975 P250 THERE’S A HAMSTER WHEEL WHERE THE with a 2.5-litre V8. It’s CLUTCH SHOULD BE...” believed the coupe was unsold, instead being returned to the factory and converted in 1976 to a P300 (one of four). It was consigned to a UK importer and bought by Australians in London before being exported to Brisbane, where it remained for three decades.