The Cannonball Run Countach: Supercar Legend | Full Documentary

the speed limit was 55. we're not gonna drive 55 we're gonna drive 155. in the 1970s there was this mentality of government oppression and different ways that people might rebel against that and so brock yates thought that the perfect automotive manifestation of that would be there are no rules street race across the country the adrenaline's coming 35 hours and 53 minutes many a team never spoke to each other again after the event because it was so grueling it was about putting great drivers in great cars on real roads and seeing what was possible this event goes on without most innocent law-abiding civilians ever finding out about it everyday people they'd have this adventure for their entire lives they'd come home from this and they were heroes so you release this legend into the context of cinema let's get that first car up here we're gonna get this thing underway this is one of the biggest films of 1981. burt was the hot ticket at that particular time the funny part was many of the people in the movie didn't know there was a real thing they thought this was a script [Music] when you look at the reasons we become car guys i'm not sure there's one that's responsible for the continuation of the love of cars more than the opening scene of cannonball run it was for many individuals the first time they got to see a koontash or the first time they got to hear a kunsashi no one at that time thought the way that lamborghini did the countach was unapologetic is the lamborghini countach for everyone no i think is a special car for special people having a car that was 180 miles per hour 190 miles per hour was completely insane this was an emotional a cultural impact that will never be forgotten [Music] [Applause] we have become the nation on wheels with more motorized mobility than ever dreamed of [Music] the day you go for your license is the biggest thing that's happened since you were born the great love affair does not always seem to make good sense but then good sense has never had anything to do with love [Music] by the early 1970s americans at large were facing a lot more external forces than they were really used to we were looking at terrible inflation interest rates were very high unemployment was rampant it was just a really bleak time i've got governor he's going to police this guy yesterday's situation i will not take the blame for this anger and bewilderment are growing as more and more americans cope with gasoline lines and empty pumps for millions of americans this may be the worst weekend they've ever faced for finding gasoline to give them the automobile freedom they take as their dues feedback from the war feedback from fuel crisis ideas how long were you online yesterday not very long about an hour and a half that's not very long today it's over two and a half hours the idea that cars were not allowed to have emissions and they were constraining performance and the muscle car era was certainly coming to a bit of an end north america's most important consumer product is the automobile it has been the main target of consumer concern laws were cracking down on the cars that you loved and the manufacturers that you love to support and it just felt like as a car guy you were being attacked from all angles yes the car would be housebroken and the deviants who dug them as devices of pleasure cleansed from the highways and returned to society as constructive citizens we had speed kills you know 55 mile an hour speed limit all these restrictions all of a sudden you know the nixon administration came down to 55 to save fuel and look we got more fuel floating around we've ever had we're bathing in fuel it's all political and i think that's what brock's statement was for some reason or other i don't know what happened to my some brain went into neutral or something and i decided one day that we ought to have a no holds barred brace from new york to los angeles and there was a great cross-country driver by the name of cannabal baker and he had done a bunch of record runs in the 1920s and 30s and so i named the event after him you get an old issue of national geographic they'd have car ads in there they used to hire a guy named cannonball baker right and he would drive it cross-country trying to promote the performance of the car and in the 20s or teens that was a hell of an accomplishment cannonball baker spent more than 140 point-to-point records in his life and he did him in all sorts of things in cars and motorcycles racing trains doing hill climbs and of course he was doing it at a time where there was no developed roadway there was no infrastructure he would break down he would be lost for days all the things that you would imagine would go with that type of adventure but it was him brock could envision this guy riding coast to coast and challenging himself to conquer the feat of doing something that was legendary hi i'm brock yates as an automotive writer brock yates was a very bright commanding kind of person he was one of the most creative minds i think i ever knew he could put in writing what a lot of people thought but a lot of people couldn't say he was very broad gauged informed about politics and history and cars and racing early on they called him the assassin because he just said what he thought and he didn't care about paying a price i suppose half the fun of the cannonball baker was anticipating the indignant hen clucking that would arise in its wake let nader and his ilk monitor inside their airbags [Music] i wouldn't say he was intentionally jumping he was just charming i mean in those days he was considered a bad boy he wrote for virtually everybody he did time magazine he did american heritage he had a column for the washington post he did sports illustrated he liked the challenge of doing different things he did the first aired daytona 500. let's go to brock yates absolute pandemonium down brock yates was a phenomenal writer he was an accomplished driver he loved to drive because it was life his way and that was very important to him he was associated and knew everybody that was in the automotive scene and it made him kind of the perfect linchpin for a movement like cannonball he had all the connections he had access to the cars and he had the ideas and the gumption to go out and actually exploit them you gotta remember in um in the early 70s everybody went nuts the government was getting involved in automobiles ralph nader was at full cry this man is not in politics yet today he's one of the most influential men in the united states ralph nader brock knew very well and they hated hated each other each espousing a totally different philosophy about cars and speed and fuel the automobile touched all americans and this was to me the the perfect interface between a major of the public issue having pollution safety economic significance and the day-to-day life of millions of people nader was a fierce fierce competitor he's an excellent student of what it takes to gain notoriety or attention for the things that he thinks are important not too many people take on gm and win it's in his headlong pursuit of the car industry that nader has made many of his enemies brock was on a different track speed doesn't kill brock would say people do bad drivers superlative handling braking steering lighting etc coupled with driver competence is the true key to sanity on the highways he wrote a wonderful piece in 1971 explaining to the public and his critics why this event was important and it had nothing to do with let's get out and drive fast and break all the laws that's the way it's going to be car freaks in the first demonstration that some people are aware enough to handle their own destinies behind the wheel of an automobile of course the whole thing is going to raise hell and the day might come when guys are busting across the nation in some sort of nut ball protest that people who know how to keep cars under control are not going to collapse in the face of government bureaucracy the other guys in the automotive press can sit around and recommend letter writing to your congressman but i've had it in the spring of 71 no one showed up brock said you know the hell was it i'm just gonna do it his son brock jr was 15 and the editor steve smith was there and he said get in the car and off they went to do the cannonball all alone we took a dodge van and modified a little bit what they call it moon trash wasn't it we just went across the county we got lost and had some horrible slowdowns and ran out of gas nobody had really documented the experience of driving non-stop from new york to la for time and it was never going to be a wildly impressive time it took us 41 hours [Music] there was a sense of humor to it a sense of the absurd to it we're going to do it because we can you know it's rebellion against this 55 mile an hour speed limit i want to show that we can do something like this and we can have fun on the american roads and be safe they just went out to see truly like how exhausting how grueling was it going to be and that gave way to some invitations readers wrote back well i can do it faster than that so he said well let's meet new york and try it he threw down the gauntlet again in november of 71. it was called the cannonball baker see the shining sea memorial trophy dash well that was too much for anybody to say so it just became the cannonball it was kind of the perfect namesake for uh no excuses no holds bar drive from here to anywhere the only rule is you have to be driving the same car the entire time doesn't matter what route you take it doesn't matter what type of car you drive it's just who's going to get from manhattan to california in the shortest amount of time why would you do anything like that why not good answer because it's there it's there [Music] when you think about the idea of well we need to organize a bunch of cars in manhattan that's pretty inconvenient but fortunately through car and driver brock gates had access to the red ball parking garage so that was the logical starting point it's on east 31st street when they were looking for an endpoint in los angeles there was the portofino inn which was run by mary davis who was kind of a fan of racing and she would host parties there and things like that and so it was just kind of the right coastal ending point with a good parking lot and some cool signs you'd think that amongst a world of car enthusiasts if you proposed a race like this you would get hundreds and hundreds of entries but in fact the first one was a dozen cars or so i ended up with a ferrari daytona with dan gurney my old teammate not all that much preparation with respect to the way 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 seldom drives himself has become the principal spokesman for america's drivers we as a group of people who like automobiles are being pushed to a point where we are beyond the law it was illegal on the face of it you 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 they must be accepted as a fact of life but hardly as canon law after all if the cops don't observe them and they don't believe me then why should we despite the economic squeeze on the european show circuit this year's display of geneva had its fair share of new and noteworthy cars the italian makes were most impressive [Music] in 1971 you have the geneva auto show the lamborghini countach was unveiled it shocked the world before it had been released to the public you had bob wallace and you had one of the other engineers that was going to see the car in bertone for the first time apparently the lights were off in the room and security was letting them in to come see the car and when someone turned on the lights the security guard said kuntas which essentially meant [Music] the countach is radical you look at it you go my god this is a spaceship it's a different approach looking back the beauty of lamborghini was you know ferrari as a manufacturer that was building cars for a purpose it was building production cars to fund racing and the same with porsche lamborghini was completely opposite lamborghini was not a brand that has its history in racing and that's been a criticism at times but that's not always what road cars are about great race cars make terrible road cars and usually great road cars make terrible race cars people don't build race cars to look awesome and that's what this was when frucchio came up with this concept of having something different this was all about the high life and back in the day there weren't many exotic vehicles if you think about it there were only a few frucha lamborghini was a entrepreneur and industrialists in italy he had a tractor company amongst many other companies they had an air conditioning company as well and other things he at the time actually had a 250 gt ferrari and he was basically complaining about the clutch and complaining about other issues with the car the story goes that he'd went to go complain to enzo ferrari and say hey maybe we should change this or do this and ferrari told him to basically get out of his office he said you know you stick to building tractors and you know i'll stick to building cars and i think ferruccio was you know the type of character that wasn't going to take no and decided that he was going to go build a better car first prototype was built in 1963 and then imagine by 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 v12 front engine and if you look at a 350 gt the details are outstanding i mean the fit and finish and 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 he went to the best of the best i mean if you go down the list of the engineers that have worked in lamborghini during those early days you have bitzerini the lara of stanzani you know on and on and on and he allowed great teams to do incredible work there was no we shouldn't do that or no it was really you know 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 you have the launch of the miura there was nothing like it as a production car a transverse mid engine that was beautiful fruitchild lamborghini really set a bold statement as a boutique supercar manufacturer and at that time the concept had not been described yet would those two cars as his first production cars in many ways a lamborghini is a caricature of a normal car yes it has an engine but it's got 12 cylinders it's naturally aspirated yes it has a transmission but it's a gated manual gearbox that gives you an unmistakable and totally distinct driving characteristic yes people spent time trying to make it visually appealing but instead of just doing it to be good enough they took it to the moon and back to make sure that anybody who ever saw it would never forget these cars are a labor of love to the brand and to the engineers and the designers that are behind them remember this was all handmade in bologna they were in a production facility of craftsman from the engine bits to machining parts nothing left that facility you saw artisans that were pounding the aluminum panels the detail that goes into putting the cars together and building that engine it was incredible [Music] how do you follow an act like the miura just probably the most beautiful car ever produced when the car like a lamborghini countach was built you're not necessarily looking to say hey how do we make this most 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 just the experience of the driver but anyone who comes into contact with the car you're talking about something that stirs the emotions and excites the senses in ways that most things never could [Music] the countach was developed over many years bertone design that was the design house that was responsible for the countach body but marcelo gandini is the person who designed it [Music] bob wallace was the original test driver really developed the countach you can see him driving this original lp 500 which was the prototype car that was eventually developed into the first lp-400 the parascopio the original lp-400 is referred to as periscopia cars and the reason why is that there's this indent and a roof and the rear view mirror came up the top and you could see it through the indent just taking a step back at the vehicle and looking at how dramatic it was what other vehicle can you and i think about in the 70s that had that type of design nothing the concept of lamborghini making a bold statement to enzo ferrari and how the company was started almost like an fu to you know society it's like i can do this and i will and i think that dna has stuck with lamborghini from the countach this design is the classic wedge it's 50 years old this year all of these decades later you can still park that car in any lot and it still looks futuristic no matter how old it gets it just seems to be timeless to where it never seems like an older design the ingenuity underneath is really what's out of this world for that time it's chassis the design of all these tubular components that create almost like a bird cage i think you could probably hang a chassis at a modern museum and people would say wow that's incredible the countach when it came out in the 70s and set the bar and it's always been the one that people just said this is the most amazing car anybody's ever made [Music] not just aesthetically was it wild with the doors that went up i mean you're talking about a v12 engine that at the time was producing almost 400 horsepower later variants imagine carbureted almost 500 horsepower in a car that could almost break 200 miles per hour the incredible feeling of stability and purpose and the sheer precision of a car that has no other reason for existence than to spear down the road as far and as fast as possible that feeling is so strong in the countach it can take your breath away after the first run in november of 1971 rock gates had the record but when you set a record like that obviously it's the mark to beat in 72 they had some bad weather so nobody was able to beat it in the second real competitive running i wrote a note to brock gates and said if you ever run this again invite me brock was very selective in who he would allow and and how that was all going to be organized everybody was screened you had to have somebody vouch for you you had to have certain insurance coverage you had to have a skill set as a driver if somebody was too gung-ho they didn't qualify we took no chance 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 driving safely and they were and so is that going to carry the day is that going to compel policy no but it made it a little bit more redemptive now does that little rationale give 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 by prudence and good judgment the cannonball baker will be one with steadiness and smoothness in 75 brock gates said we're going to do it again i get a postcard says we're going to run cannonball in four weeks if you're interested call us and we'll send you the information so i did jack may went out in his white 246 dino a gorgeous ferrari we weren't so prepared we didn't even have a fuzz buster and we didn't have any driving life until we got to new york we did have a fuel cell he had this white dino put a fuel cell in it it's leaking fuel and the photographer wanted a white car in the front and i had the only other white car i had a three-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 it really called away to california really yeah i know you didn't smoke but you didn't smoke every time you would see someone do it you'd learn how they did it and throughout all that they're able to devise their own way to just up the ante a bit and so every time you see better prepared cars better lighting better electronics not only did they have cb radios which were really really useful because the truckers were also trying to outsmart the cops but you also had rudimentary police scanners and you'd also have some radar detectors fuzz busters and things like that that worked okay you'd also have kill switches for your lights maybe both sets of lights and certainly different ways to disguise the car different things to disguise the drivers guys are doing a lot of scams peter brock who designed the cobras he and three other guys ran in 1972 disguised as priests the two troopers stood ready at the sides of the mercedes rear doors with hands on guns tensed for the shootout easy does it said out of myself as i slipped out of the driver's seat exposed my clerical collar as prominently as i could without straining my adam's apple excuse me father i i didn't know that's quite all right i interrupted adding that i could appreciate the dangers of being an officer of the law in today's violent times [Music] this is a situation where you have a multi-variable problem to solve and only about how you're going to drive when you're going to time your passage through all the major cities the way that you're going to prepare yourself physiologically for obviously a race it's much longer than anything else that they would have endured the navigational choices that you're going to make we were sitting there with the road maps trying to figure it out yeah we had a triple a yeah mark who yelled mark we had to calculate weather you had to calculate mileage fuel stops food bathroom stops the winners will maintain a really rapid average speed be fortunate enough to avoid trouble or breakdowns lose minimum time and refueling and other stops and pick a good route we came down from the roof of the red ball garage he said when you want to go i said now he stamps a ticket i pull out and there's a red light that's a great start we left about 10 o'clock at night we started three hours after brock eights because he knew to get to california before the rush hour he didn't bother to tell anybody else that of course [Music] you had to choose who drove when what your skill sets were it's about two o'clock in the morning and i'm whipped so i pull out an arrest there so it's time for you to take over tom he gets in the car and we pull out he's like what's wrong never could drive at night we're averaging close to a hundred we're listening to the cb somebody says there's a smokey out sound post such and such before we got to the next signpost here comes a cop the other way and buzzbuster goes off he turns his light on we come up to the first exit and the truckers had slowed down to keep us from getting off of it they wanted to help the police and get get you you they did we made friends with them before we got to well we weren't as smart as you no we'd call the truckers and tell them we were coming and we were late for whatever it was we were doing and they wanted someone going faster than them so if we said we're a mile behind you you know then they were expecting us but if you came up and blew by without announcing your presence boy they got mad i said well i guess this is it so i just slowed down and pulled into the media had six cop cars that came up and boy they were excited paid to find 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 that's why i knew what our average was from 96 or something said well heck fire we can still do it right over about an hour you got to speed it up let me drive again it was fun at the start and fun at the finish the what 2500 miles in between wasn't a whole lot of fun we made best time on two lane roads we could put it on 120 530 without anybody there go from one grain tower to the next when we got to the edge of california we knew we were getting close to the record got porpino in ran in hit the time clock and they did that stamp i knew exactly what that stamp had to say i looked at it you could heard me holler here from there [Music] he did break the record but only by a single minute 53 one minute one minute when they realized it's a record then everyone got excited about it except brock well he was just mad because he beat him by a minute yeah if you beat him by five you probably wouldn't be as bad [Music] i knew i could do it we had the machine and we had the talent and we had the luck i wasn't as fast as jack i didn't do the right route as guy i'm making excuses for my time which was 40 hours i think in 39 minutes cannonball is the kind of thing that anybody hears about and like that sounds like a movie cannonball run the only movie to get over 200 tickets before it even opens the movie was a product of his relationship with hal needham hal needham as brock would say he's the bravest man i've ever met he would tackle anything there was a movie about the spirit of st louis that was his first gig there's a wing walker [Music] that's how he had never done that before that basically started his career as a stunt person in the movie industry he worked with everybody he did everything he 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 way to go and it's short time to get there hal made a fortune made a fortune for bert made the movie famous when they went to do a sequel brock did some rewriting on smokey too and that's how brock got into the movie business there was a lot of interest in a lot of different people that wanted to have the cannonball movie there were two movies that were based on brock's idea of cannonball anything goes in a squeezing smashing outlaw race across america cannonball fasten your seat belts and get ready for fun the gumball rally the gumball rally came out before cannonball which made brock very mad because they stole his idea brock didn't have the money to fight it so the cannonball in terms of a movie project just kind of dissipated and went away frankly i have always felt a fictional version of the race has limited appeal it seems to me the only unique quality about the cannonball story is that it actually happened pal needham liked the idea and thought it was a good venue for fun stories needham said i'm going to do it and i'm going to do it my way finally brock realized needham was serious brock yates and hal needham had been talking about different ideas for a screenplay and they thought that they might live out some of those ideas in a final running in 1979. hal informed me we're going to do it with an ambulance who's going to stop an ambulance you know with a patient inside and then hal said you're going to be the patient it's a piece of cake you can lay down you know you can sleep they got chrysler to donate a van and it was often literally to the races at the start of the cannonball in darien connecticut this illegal underground nobody knows event there were 2 000 screaming people there it was bedlam it was crazy but in the meantime hal had gotten off plane in hartford dragging this real doctor with him who hal had met in a bar the sunset strip he didn't have a clue what he was getting into but he was going to be our doctor and then everybody took off i was driving and we were trying to figure out all the lights and sirens and stuff and that the new jersey highway patrol nailed us my wife pamela was the patient we had her in the back in a gurney she had a water bottle that was draining down her arm it was supposed to be some kind of an iv bottle i'm scared to death because now it's reality all we hear is where the hell are you guys going hal says los angeles and they're on the bergen county exit of the new jersey turnpike i looked at needham and we knew i mean if we blew it at this point we're going to jail there's no doubt about it we knew that those two geniuses allen brock were just dying we had a forged tag so if they had run the plates and everything they would have known the guy said we got a patient in there and we said yeah and uh and they said well why can't you fly her and i said well you better ask the doctor and we slid that door open my wife's laying there looking dead in this in this in this gurney i mean it was it was edgy what's wrong with the patient and why can't you fly her the doctor says she has fibrocystic disease of the lungs and the senator's wife cannot be flown i'm kind of out under this mask and i'm saying boy that was pretty good you know that's something so that backed the cops down right away and it was so perfect they turned us and they said well you boys better take it easy go slower and whatever because you've got the lights on and doing all this stuff we kind of pulled away and continued to go that year a new record was set david hines and dave yarbrough in a jaguar xjs in 32 hours and 51 minutes so that was the record that stood in terms of brock yates view of the history forever because that was the last real cannonball it went from you know being whoa the cannonball everybody's all excited to brock yates saying no more because brock got a call from a fellow that had run in the prior cannonball terry bernius we went over to terry's house and he raises the garage door and looking us straight 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 than anything you'd see on the street than he said to brock and i bought this because it's going to win me the next cannonball we came back to our car and i said to brooke okay what's up pammy he said i can never 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's going to get really hurt and he said i won't be responsible for that that car killed the cannonball the light went off in brock's head he says these cars are getting too fast for us it's gotten out of hand and you're getting close to 200 miles an hour a very simple reason how the cannonball came to an end i think when terry bernius realized that there was not going to be another cannonball he had to do something with the car by then the movie had started to percolate pal needham and brock yates began kind of writing it together they would be locked into brock's office and hal would be over him like with a ruler it was just intense steve mcqueen he was the one duproc had in mind because mcqueen was a serious car person who understood what it all was about and not too long after mcqueen had to back out of the project because he had cancer they were really up against it needham said i'm going to talk to bird about it never 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 work there was dead air on the other side of the phone he said it was like bert's top breathing it was the most money anybody had been offered up front it was complicated with bert coming in because brock developed this vision and now every day burke would have more things to write in the screenplay the whole philosophy of the movie would change it became farce burt didn't care that it really happened it didn't make any difference to him and he was going to have a lot of fun with it which happened to be a great thing because it became a happening and it became a party atmosphere everybody wanted to be in it and get in on the fun would say i wonder who's off i wonder who's on hiatus maybe they'd like to be in it so the cast kept growing and growing every major motion picture star in the world is in this film farrah fawcett just come off the charlie's angels thing it had dean martin sammy davis jr dom deluise roger moore it was one of jackie chan's early films i mean if you stood still long enough you somehow had a part in it [Music] the movie's comical to us it was dead serious so if you were actually to attempt a cannonball you don't drive a lamborghini countach there was never a lamborghini countach in any of the competitive runnings of cannonball you couldn't put an extra fuel cell in the car it wasn't going to get good fuel economy anyway they're not inconspicuous when you want to be but you couldn't have made a more evocative idea than to use a counter the actual cannonball races were really kind of the stuff of legend these mysterious things that maybe happened or didn't the fish tales of car guys did you ever think it would be a legendary thing i never did just a bunch of nerdy wells who didn't have anything better to do that race was sort of like lamborghini itself it's sort of this mythical thing that you know a teenage boy in syracuse new york it's just one of these things you just read about i always had this passion for exotic cars i used to always wait for the road and track to show up so i could hopefully see pictures of these cars if somebody saw a lamborghini back in the 70s it was probably a photograph and a magazine the chance of actually seeing a countach specifically or infinitesimal to see it you would have to go to a show i mean it's not as common as it is now with youtube videos now cannonball run comes out [Music] the first four minutes of the film are only of the lamborghini countach [Music] it is the first time most people got to see a contact move you think about a car guy in 1981 he probably has never seen a countach in person he's never heard the v12 scream and all of a sudden his senses are just bombarded by that whole experience you've got this lamborghini that just comes out of nowhere in the desert and you're like what in the world is about to happen in my life [Music] that iconic sound of that car over the beginning you know there was nothing like it just that screeching halt in front of the 55. i mean that's just everything it's in one visual that is brought together the brock yates philosophy of life and driving the crossing out of the 55 mile an hour speed limit [Music] it doesn't matter what the rest of the movie is like that's cannonball that is the greatest car you could have imagined at the time driving and then obviously the police are there and you have this crazy police chase [Music] you watch that car fly down that interstate think my god how much fun will this be [Music] i probably wore out my vhs tape just rewinding and watching the intro over and over and over the car just permeates the whole thing that's what makes it the cannonball run countach i think really introduced everybody to the presence of an exotic car in real life you saw it next to normal cars and it really put into people's minds like this is really something special when it's going down the road next to the trans am cop 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 exhilarating it was exciting it was scintillating the world is just different afterwards now you have millions of people seeing this car driving it made a lamborghini a household name all of a sudden people knew what a lamborghini was they knew what a countach was that paved the way for so many different automotive enthusiasts around the world i mean it really was an aspirational front we saw the car in a familiar enough context that you could almost make it a goal that movie in many ways inspired a complete fascination with the countach for many many years and supercars in general the supercar market exploded after that it's everything that the brand needed [Music] 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 already build the world's most exotic supercar the s is even 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 actually work maybe they provided more lift than downforce but i'll tell you what they did is they made it look awesome and that's really what it was all about was like how crazy cool can we make a car and how much of a reaction can we elicit fastest production car in the world they were lower they had unique suspension so if you look at the front wheels they were tucked inside and the rear wheels were protruding from the rear that's what people think of when they think of a countach is they think of a car with the flares they think of a car with a wing they think of a car with those wide pirelli p7 tires it's the car that was the poster on the wall that's really when the countach exploded [Music] all these magazines start writing about the countach as a production car and i think the world went a little crazy after that it elevated the brand in so many ways because when you looked at that vehicle you automatically associated it with lamborghini five speed first gear is down into the left with reverse above it this was standard operating practice for years with this gated shifter you're talking about a four liter v12 engine you've got six weber 45-millimeter carburetors and these are side draft carburetors so three on each side this is a low body car 105 of these cars built for the whole world none came to the united states initially some were brought in grey market including this particular car that car specifically was one of the first cars that was 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 u.s and make it past the epa dot standards the idea they had to do that was a front bumper essentially a front wing those uprights for the wing are attached underneath the hood with shock absorbers and all attached to the frame to suffice as a bumper but it made the car look even more radical they also installed a rear bumper as well and if it wasn't for trevor thomas and jazz i don't believe that the countach would have been imported into the us for many many years after eventually the factory actually used their designs and that developed into what we know now as the us countach that was developed by these two gentlemen that originally imported the cannonball [Music] when someone gets into a countach for the first time it's very intimidating you have to drive a countach you can't let it drive you it doesn't have those kind of luxury things that you might find on other luxury cars i call it automotive masochism you're giving up what most people buy cars for to be very bluntly honest back in the day these cars were extremely unpractical these vehicles did not have power steering there was no clutch assist and you really had to be some sort of a healthy individual to be able to turn that steering wheel push that clutch and harness that type of performance you've got this big v12 literally sitting right behind you in the countach the transmission is in the front of the engine if you will and it's mounted backwards from what you would normally see in a front engine car and even some rear engine cars so you've got your transmission going into the cockpit it gets maybe eight miles to the gallon it's loud the first series one in series two lp 400s cars were called low body that's because they're actually a lower roof inside the car there's not much room at all anyone over about five foot eleven is not going to really fit the car very comfortably at all you have this raked windshield that literally comes almost just into your forehead you're sitting very very low it's challenging to drive because it's so low especially in the front that any sort of dip in the road can be very difficult even lamborghini after building 155 low-body cars raised the car up lamborghini rise like everybody's knocking the front spoiler off these cars are entirely too low you have blind spots everywhere it's nearly impossible to see out rear three quarters it's impossible to see out of the back there's a tiny rear window in this car and then this wing sits squarely in the middle of that valentino balboni who was the lamborghini test driver has made it uh very famous to open up the door sit on the door sill and just look behind you as you're maneuvering the car i think the attitude is what's behind you 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 on the driver's side to put your hand out if you're gonna pay a toll but that's all it comes down there's no storage room in the car you can't put luggage in the car there is a trunk in the front but it's minuscule it's about size of a shoebox while there's a glove box here all this is is your fuse box for the car you have really just two little ac vents with a let's call it a less than fantastic ac system the air conditioning vents are on the console next to your knee so you've got the air conditioning blown on your car and a driver's right knee and a passenger's left knee are freezing interesting placement it's the most useless automobile that's ever been conceived to fit into the context of what a honda or a minivan might obviously with all these uh let's call it nuances it takes a lot of passion to learn the car but once you really truly understand the countach it's an experience like no other [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] ah wow [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] it's made for the highway that's where kunta shines and the car just feels so planted at over 100 miles per hour there's not many cars of that generation that i feel comfortable in and i'm never scared in a countach it was a performing beast there's something about sitting inside a countach that just makes you feel that you're in this italian rocket ship because the hood is so dramatically sloped when you're driving it's panoramic it's amazing view going forward to this day getting in a coum dash is almost an emotional experience for me the smell of the italian leather that sound from the v12 second gear into third gear and the power just pulls through the rpms there's nothing like that feeling i don't think manufacturers will ever duplicate it again this is truly special in the movie there was a visual quality to the way it was shot american consumers were stunned and dazzled by the lamborghini there was a sex quality there was a power quality there's a you can't have it quality that made such an impression on so many young individuals next it was mom i need the poster i need the model i need this i need that all of a sudden there's countach posters all over the place this was the icon lamborghini countach just represents all of that craziness and excess because as tough as the 70s were the 80s were different 80s were fun wild cars wild clothes wild hairstyles the individual that grew up with a countach singing over his high school room that was the level of success of what somebody wanted to aspire to when we think about a dream car that we're fascinated with certainly the goal is i have to own one until i've achieved that dream i got to keep working when you look at your normal production cart in there these square boxes in the 80s and the countach would attract crowds it would attract attention and it still is as exciting [Music] it is the expression of excess and it's the expression of being bold why do people buy it well it's a it's the ultimate sort of outlaw statement isn't it it's uh in a time when you know we've got the the center for automotive safety and all of those people on one side and the baptists on the other trying to sort of corral us and make us behave the way we're supposed to you can very quickly establish yourself as being somewhere else just by parking one of those in front of your house i'll never forget when i first watched the 60-minute special with morley safer and he went to the factory and valentino balboni took him on back roads doing 160 180 miles per hour in a countach cuatro valvole that is a perfect intro into what lamborghini is this was a moment in time this is no special effect this is 180 miles an hour there's a famous interview in the 60 minute special with the marketing director for lamborghini at the time danielle odetto and actually did get in trouble for what he said is there such a thing as a typical lamborghini purchaser a typical owner yes very large because if you're shy you cannot go around with this car it's like to go out in the evening that is with a beautiful woman not everybody can afford not because they don't have enough money or because they have enough power but because they are not the type that like to go out with a very beautiful woman imagine this was the sense of the marketing at that time and i don't think we'll ever see that again in history it's not a very comfortable car of course you cannot go with the baggages today you must have another car like a railroad that follow you with a chauffeur and arrive the day later if you look at the early countaches and you look at who they were delivered to i mean you're talking about saudi sheiks rock stars you have rod stewart getting some of the first cars you have eddie van halen getting an lp 400s et cetera et cetera et cetera so they were produced for playboys you know let's face it it was an eccentric individual imagine pulling up in a countach to somewhere in the 1970s or early 1980s you would stop traffic you 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 that it's very theatrical so the cannonball run coontash was purchased by ron rice he's a larger than life character like many countach owners ron rice grew up in a log cabin today the businessman's home is this remarkable daytona beach retreat i'm a poor boy grew up in the mountains of north carolina plunked out of nearly every school i was in and barely passed when i did pass i came down to daytona beach eventually and uh went into the oil business in a different kind of way i created hawaiian tropic to ron rice creator of hawaiian tropic sun care products this is the lab a place to test his natural royal dark tanning oil i had no idea how to make suntan product i bought a garbage can for four dollars and a broom for a dollar i use that as my stir steak and in our fifth year with hawaiian tropic we were still mixing it in that garbage can we were selling products like crazy a room with the sedum up ants and then i got into product placement every three days hawaiian traffic was in a movie or a tv show oh it was amazing what it did we did four smoking the 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 the set anytime anywhere and i was there a lot when they filmed the movie the car was brand new when the movie was done before i understand he actually bought it off the set and met this guy i looked at cars i said you know this car and he could he said yeah i said you're going to sell it he said yeah i said how much i don't remember what he told me but i took the money out of my pocket and paid him on the spot i just liked it i looked at it and liked it and said i want that we had a lot of money i could have bought any car in the world anything i wanted we were rolling in money i just bought it from him for cash and i gave it to burton hal to use in the movie we were there for all the scenes out in vegas where they're running that thing and working that 55 out [Music] it was amazing car the difference between men and boys is indeed the price of their toys ron can afford to be king of the road the spoilers on the front and the back the 12 pipes on the back it was always in the poster and see hawaiian traffic above it oh yeah we used a lamborghini a lot and i drove it myself at 185 miles an hour on the daytona speedway and i had a lot of pedal left but i was afraid to do it that engine hummed boy it was beautiful to hear i mean the sound they put out with this major major shake inside the car was a chick magnet turned heads everywhere you went i didn't have any trouble getting a date with it that's for sure he had a lot of fun with it he told me stories of driving that car up and down daytona beach having lots of friends in it there are pictures of a lot of bikini-clad girls sitting in the car sitting on the car there's all these great stories of him using the car enjoying the car and listen after that movie it became an icon in the lamborghini world and i don't even think he realized the importance of the car when he owned it we didn't care if he bet rex we'll buy another one i had a lot of years i had a long time kept it in the garage kept it all nice it shined up i told everybody that after i owned that car i said if they make a better one or one that looks better than that i'll buy it right on the spot but they never did they never made a better one the countach was was the top of the line that was as far as i'm concerned it was the best there was take a run through the gears and a lamborghini countach and you eclipse every speed reference on the books first alone will thrust you well beyond america's statutory speed limit the connection between loving cars and loving driving cars fast is actually pretty close after the final running of the cannonball in 1979 brock gates said i'm out but the people who drove weren't done and so some cannonballers that had participated in the 70s along with some new enthusiasts and fans set up an event called the u.s express there were not any new records set until the final running in 1983 where david diem and doug turner in a ferrari 308 set a time of 32 hours and seven minutes the history very much went cold after the 80s the first team that came public with a claim literally since 1983 was richard rawlings of gas monkey 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 79 cannonball time in fact they had also beaten 3207 not exactly by average speed because it was a lot shorter to drive from new york to la in 2007 than it was in 1979 but regardless they did a really really great job and they had done it in a really cool car but a few months later alex roy and dave maher revealed that they had done it a year earlier they waited for the statute of limitations to run out because they were worried about prosecution 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'd released his book cannonball i told him that one day i wanted to do it and he was cordial enough to say good luck kid but he'd been very clear that there's twice as many cars on the road there's twice as many police officers employed and there's much harsher penalties if you ever were to get caught doing this sort of thing and so he thought that even back then when they were doing it if everything had gone right that 30 hours was the wall the only real thing you can kind of think of is well i just need to go out and see how fast i can do it by myself it took years and years of saving and planning and credit card debt in order to get to the point of being able to 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 some friends that i'd convinced to come with me so we decided it was time you kind of get to new york in a reasonably prepared car with a team that has some idea of what they're doing ready dan no and it's just kind of down the roller coaster so you pull out of the red ball garage you immediately get to lexington lights always ready if you sit there it's just agonizing because you're like we have to average over 100 miles an hour and so the anxiety just builds and every minute that you're not going over your average goal speed you're like i'm losing this is not working and then you know you got to stop for gas and you know there might be traffic and you know your tires could explode and so you kind of just earned the right to pull the arm of a mythical cannonball slot machine we kept going faster than we thought we were supposed to but we kind of never had many reasons to slow down we passed five big speed traps in 2800 miles maybe a dozen cops driving in the opposite direction and all were pretty easy to pick out and so you kind of expect when you hear about a cannonball that it's the deuce of hazard and that you're sliding around turns and jumping and hiding from cops it's not it's the most boring thing you've ever heard of if it goes right the car was really happy between 135 and 145 miles an hour and most of the time there wasn't anybody out there with us and so we had people on binoculars and all the gadgets running and we got to the point that if we average the speed limit we'd break 30 hours and then we saw that we could break 29 hours just never really had to slow down so you pull in to this quiet little beach hotel in the middle of the night and nobody has any idea what you're doing why are these three sweaty guys jumping out of this car obviously exhausted but also a little bit insane so we had the valet take a picture probably the worst picture that's ever been taken for some reason dave's shoes were off but we've just done it and it was so surreal because i set the goal 2003 i'm 18 years old i'm 28. standing there tears down my face looking out the pier at the portofino the idea that i'd been able to find a way to encapsulate everything i loved about cars into that very moment 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's a lot of answers to that question oh my goodness so we did it in 28 hours and 50 minutes which was an average right around 100 miles an hour there was not a lot of immediate enthusiasm to try to beat my record but i never expected to hold the record much less hold it forever and so in 2019 a couple friends of mine did that's november of 2019 a few short months later the world gets shut down and in the three months after that it gets broken 12 more times because apparently when there's nobody driving there's nobody commuting to work and there's no cops on the job it's pretty easy to get away with speeding across the country so it appears that doing this during the covid pandemic was at least a three-hour advantage over what we would normally experience and so at that point the whole cannonball sandbox just gets slipped upside down these guys are my heart goes out to them i think they're great they're setting the records but doing it during covid with a gps with helicopters with all that stuff that takes all the fun out of it the the the police were the with a trump card you know today there's not an officiating body or a clearing house or somebody who decides what is a record what isn't i mean there's no guinness but now that the dust has kind of settled on the pandemic runnings the fastest time was 25 hours and 39 minutes in an audi as people have found it very very easy to set records in the last few months i hope that it doesn't keep people from continuing to dream warning quit reading this immediately what follows is a brief summary of a wasted life spent hanging around automobiles in the event you are tempted to travel a similar road while resisting a thrilling career riding a desk as an accountant computer geek or tax analyst i'm telling you messing with cars is a dead end look at me he and i would often talk about it and especially as steve became ill later on i would say you know you've really been very lucky because you've been able to live your life on your terms and he said yeah i've had a wonderful life he had alzheimer's and i couldn't really get my arms around it because he was so bright that he was able to hide or cover up his deficits i went and visited him and i got to tell him you know that that thing i told you i was going to do back in 2004 i did it to get to say like to this hero of mine that allowed me to look out over the portofino pier and say wow was was everything i think he left his readers with a great sense of comfort because they trusted him for the truth i think that's the greatest legacy he could have left it was 12 years he had alzheimer's he was beautiful during it he was wonderfully warm but it certainly did make me appreciate who he was one thing i've learned is that we all tend to think we're pretty much in control of our lives but the most important things in your life profound things you really have little or no control over that's kind of the way life goes [Music] back in 2001 i lost my wife in a car accident um it was incredibly tragic she was 32 years old [Music] jeff and i were together about 120 miles from his home and he got a phone call it was unbelievable the longest and hardest road drive i've ever had in my life coming back and you want so badly to make it right or to to make it change and i i i couldn't just something i couldn't fix [Music] it took a couple years before i could function at all but three years later i got to this point in my life where i wanted to try to bring something positive out of that tragedy and that's a tall order but i felt that there had to be a reason that i was still here so my brother and i formed a foundation and our idea was to take elements of some of the best exotic car events in the world put it into one event but then donate money to make a wish in laura's honor in her memory make-a-wish is an amazing group that grants wishes for children that are battling life-threatening situations so in 2004 our very first celebration exotic car festival happened that year we had 60 cars and we raised 20 000 and it was amazing you know those early days it was just my brother and myself and we worked really hard to build the event everyone who works in the event is volunteer all of the auction items are 100 donated and all the money goes to the kids and it has grown in something that is absolutely massive we've now raised over three and a half million dollars and we've granted the wishes for more than 400 children over the years [Music] right from the beginning we started to get some movie cars and of course to me the ultimate movie car was cannonball run so back in 2006 i called and i said i would love to have the cannonball run car at our event the very next day i got a call hey jeff this is ron rice i have a conflict that weekend however i'm very happy to send the car over to your event this was an amazing moment for me so the car shows up that morning and the woman that ron had sent with the car said you know jeff ron may actually consider selling his car never in my life did i dream that i would actually even see the cannibal run car much less own it and i was already on my phone calling ron and i said ron you know i'd love to to buy this car i've loved this car my whole life and he gave me a number that had a lot of zeros attached to it it was it was out of my budget anything that i could possibly afford well he wasn't going to pay enough money first and we actually put it up for sale but it didn't bring much it didn't have a very good audience that time so i was going to send it out to california where we would really bring his leg box and then he came here and said i want it sold to me have it now and that's what happened after almost two years we finally struck a deal i had recorded the cannonball run theme song on a cassette tape and i drove out of ormond beach driving a cannonball run car listening to the theme from cannonball run that's a moment i will never forget for the rest of my life at one point ron had ripped the interior out and put in a dark red interior and the leather was getting a bit tattered the car had some nicks and dents and bruises you know ron had this amazing life and the car looked like it had been well used so i had the car and sent it directly into a two-year restoration the fact that it needed the restoration was not of consequence to me it was still the car but i wanted it to look like exactly the way it looked when it was in the movie the exact way it looked when i saw it back when i was a teenager on the film you would hope that when it was restored they left everything the way it was in the movie and i think that's super important the restoration effort was headed up by a good friend of mine named tony urdi a very meticulous guy tony had had five countach of his own he knows everything there is to know about kuntoshi so i knew it would be done perfectly every nut bolt everything was done to exact standards virtually the whole car is still original everything has been refinished but it's all original so you have your original engine the transmission the wheels these were all hand sanded down to the original magnesium and refinished with the original paint color full engine out everything's completely disassembled refinished and reassembled we did have some cracks on the intakes so those had to be fixed and re-machined the tan interior the brown dash was the way it rolled out of the factory exactly like this the entire interior was done out in california every stitch of fabric you see on this was brand new when we did the restoration 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 film these two gauges here this voltmeter and oil temperature gauge were in the car for the movie but were never attached to anything when i bought the car it still had the cb antennas all these little things they're such an important part of its time and an important part of the history of lamborghini it shipped up just in time for the celebration exotic car festival in 2012. it came out beautiful the car is just absolutely everything i could have asked for it's an incredible community i mean the best friends i have in the world were 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 incredible person i met her at ferrari central florida she's a car person we were married in 2013 and she is my best friend my supporter everything i do i do with kayla she's my whole world we love taking out for rides and enjoy just the driving experience yes they're beautiful pieces of art and i love the look at the cars as well but they're really made to be driven they run better when they're driven especially on these old carbureted cars that's why the cars were built any lamborghini is a rolling circus especially the can of r1 car so when you park anywhere a lot of people come around if he pulls up someplace when the kid comes over he's the first one to ask the parent if it's sorry for the kid to get in the car you let the kid get in the car the reaction is is always you know shocking off people of a certain age group that remember cannonball run of course associated immediately with the movie it's incredible to me i still can't believe i own the cannonball run countach i've loved this car for 40 years it's certainly the most famous countach in the world i still can't believe it's sitting in my garage i'm just the current steward 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 that will share it and we'll bring it to concourse and we'll drive it when i started probably 15 years ago producing car shows and my passion was vintage lamborghinis because it was what i grew up around you know people would make fun of me and say oh you're selling these old playboys cars and that was sort of a lot of the comments you know ostentatious uh too loud you know serious collectors did not take the cars seriously and i think that's changed the resurgence is finally to where we have the expendable income to actually buy the things that we dreamed about guys are able to finally take it off of the wall and put it in their garage it's kind of a neat time to be around now if you're able to buy one it only is worth more tomorrow than it is today and the more that you drive it the more likely it is to go that next month at one point kundashas were trading for 50 60 70 000 and you know one day we won't see a countach less than 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 the blueprint for all hyper cars today and all supercars when lamborghini welcomed oracio pagani this young italian designer who once worked in the factory to come in and take an already beautiful piece and modernize it slightly make it a little bit more aggressive do stuff that was a little bit cutting edge the result was the 25th anniversary that's essentially the last countach produced rashford pagani has his own company now it makes a handful of hand-built supercars every year when 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 over there if you look at lamborghini's lineage since the countach they've always set the mark in terms of that wow factor [Music] it's been a phenomenal ride with this cannonball thing it's 50 years this year i'm not sure that you ever get many of those things that you're personally involved in in life that has a legacy like this that kind of weaves itself in and out of generations and holds people's imagination you still got your ferrari i still got my ferrari i still got my porsche where are we going i can still drive it i can too the ethos of cannonball was very much i want to do this and i found a way and the ethos of owning and driving of countach is exactly that it's a reflection of how i love 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 when you look at 17 model years of countach production and over 1900 built there's a lot of standouts i mean there's a lot of great examples but i think if you had to pick one that just defines everything that the car ever wanted to stand for you can't do any better than this car it was almost like magic when that car was created it'll never happen again and it was just perfection on that day and in that moment that's what the countach is [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Hagerty Drivers Foundation

Views: 4,048,856

Keywords: cannonball run, cannonball, lamborghini, countach, cannonball countach, supercar, hagerty drivers foundation, documentary

Id: 8b7erU_DOfE

Length: 78min 52sec (4732 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 12 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/terpsarelife]

I thought the sport kind of peaked when the pandemic cleared roads and new records that will likely never be beaten were set.

[u/cleancutmover]

Gotta watch Cannon Ball Run, haven't seen it since probably 85 when I was 8 years old. Fast cars, big tits, just so many unobtainable goals for a little kid. Just magic.

[u/SometimesIposthere]

r/outrun

[u/random_generation]

This car was just on display in DC over the summer on the National Mall - was pretty cool to see up close!

One of the little placards said the raised “wing” on the car was to satisfy a bumper height requirement in the US.

[u/c74]

i had the posters and models of this... the transformer, remote control cars etc as a kid. fun memories. i think it had a big part in making me a 'car guy/fan'

lambo is doing a 50th anniversary of the countach with a limited edition of 112 cars. of course, got to be chosen by them to buy one. i believe they were all sold before the car was announced to the public link to lambo countach lpi 800-4 info

[u/Vidofnir_KSP]

I just knew Ed Bolian would narrate this.

[u/sssssnakesssss]

Bookmarked

[u/tehjeffman]

I love that my auto insurance company is funding things like this.

[u/Fuzakenaideyo]

How dare they ugly up a countache