Sunday, January 17, 2010

Lamborghini Countach



The car you see here is truely a supercar. It is a Lambo with crisp spirit of late 80' when the supercars used to have no ABS, no traction control, no computers, tires wide as English Channel, plenty of power and will to rip driver's head off on the first occasion when he is not properly focused. The bull from the Italian stable is really hard to drive on the limit, it is unforgiving, it is extremely fast, it is looking like a car-pornography and it is awesome fun. The design of the Countach remained true to original. Only rear axle of the car releases hundredes of mechanical horses onto the tarmac. When launching from a stand-still, the wheels are spinning wildly even up to 4th gear. At first the car swings its rear very predictibly giving plenty of time to countersteer for a RWD car. When the car is pushed to the limit, however, you'd better be awake. The beast has plenty of downforce and huge amounts of grip on front wheels. You can enter corners with much higher speed than you would expect is approppriate. Pushing throttle midcorner however is not a good idea. There is plenty of torque available to be unleashed on the higher revs, so the car can start unrecoverable sideways drift without warning, especially at low speeds. Remember to watch the revcounter when cornering - if the revs are high better be gentle with the gas. Steering wheel does not turn very fast and max steering angle is not very high, so countersteering is difficult. High speed control is, on the other hand, completely different story. Amount of downforce generated is huge. Limit of the grip is moving even further and high speed corners are relatively easy. One mistake however, too much throttle on the exit of the corner and the car is catapulted into the nearest barrier without any warning at all.

The car's shape belongs to the long gone 80's when every vehicle was more or less reminiscent of a cube. It is, however, really good looking. The model is really neat. All the detail are there - the doors opening upwards, the headlights emerging from the hood, opening boot. The only flaw, that can be pointed out, is the fact that the car does not crash in a realistic way.


I must tell the car is fast. Really fast. It was a competitor to MeanMachine straight from the beginning. The car is very easy to drive when not trying to reach the limit - I did 1.24:44 when I was trying just to make a full lap without breaking any records. You can see the lap here (the quality is awful, I know - was just trying GameCam unregistered version, hope to have it registered next time). Best theoretical lap is 1.21:155.

Section Time
1. 10.574
2. 18.752
3. 17.552
4. 9.197
5. 25.08
Sum
81.155