Rock And Roll Lambo: Quiet Riot Guitarist’s Countach Is Up For Sale

In the 1980s, the Lamborghini Countach was the dream car of countless new teenagers like myself – and countless others that had actual driver’s licenses – despite its reputation as an uncomfortable, hard-to-drive task master for whomever was lucky enough to afford such a vision of the future. Uncomfortable seats? Gym machine clutch effort? Really? Who cares! “Have you seen the damn thing?” we’d say to each other while exchanging car magazines in the decades ahead of the internet and smartphones.

Following the star turn in the movie The Cannonball Run (best car movie opening scene ever, above), the Countach could require a pint of blood every time it was driven and we’d all still be in line with an aluminum suitcase full of cash to get one.

One person who did pony up a likely six figures was rocker Carlos Cavazo, guitarist for breakthrough hair metal band Quiet Riot, who gifted the 80s airwaves with bangers including Cum On Feel The Noise and the title track from their album Metal Health, which sold in the millions.

Flush with fame and cash, Cavazo reeled in the very first production example of the then-newest update of the Countach, the LP500 S-Spec, which had been on the car show circuit before the rocker bought it. While it looked much like the previous iteration in most ways, the LP500 was thoroughly updated, with a bigger, badder 4.8-liter V-12 that spun to 7,500 rpm in order to make 375 horsepower – a monstrous number at the time. New Corvettes were struggling to break 200 ponies as stock as the automotive world worked to juggle power output with escalating emissions regulations and new-to-consumer technologies like fuel injection, so making close to 400 horsepower was akin to driving a Z06 ‘Vette or Redeye Challenger today – except the Countach was far, far more exotic.

Appropriately, Cavazo clearly enjoyed living (and driving) the rock-and-roll fantasy as the Countach shows it rolled over 40,000 miles instead of sitting in a climate-controlled garage being dusted by an assistant every other week. However, as the millennium arrived, the Countach did go into storage, and has apparently sat unloved and unkempt for the most part ever since. The air filter assembly is off the carbs, some of the white paint is peeling in spots and a thick layer of dust covers the car. Otherwise, it’s “all there” as they say, including the red leather interior, which looks to be in decent shape, the original keys and documents, some spare parts and a mandatory-for-any-1980s-Countach rear wing, which is not installed on the car.

While a good scrub and some mechanical attention would likely bring the Countach closer to its ‘80s glory days, auction house Gooding and Company is selling it in (clearly more valuable) “as found” condition and leaving that choice up to the buyer.

The car is not being sold at auction, so whoever wants to collect the Countach will need to bring $785,000 in an aluminum case (or maybe just send it via Venmo) to acquire this rare automotive and cultural artifact and hopefully, allow it to play its own 1980s mechanical soundtrack once again. Hopefully the cassette player also still works.