Countach kit

[530dTPhil]

For some time I have been puzzled by what appeared to be a Countach lying idle in a garden near where I live. I finally managed to get the VRN and did a check; it comes up as a 1979 Fiat X1/9. This matches with the age of the VRN.
From a distance, the car looks fairly convincing but I have never heard of such a kit. I'm not interested in building or buying one, just curious; does anyone know anything about this conversion?

[Furyblade_Lee]

Never heard of this, but as a guess a countach is roughly twice the size of an x/19 so if its an x/19 re-body it'll look crap, if its got x/19 bits in a full size replica it'll drive crap. Hopefully, it'll stay in that front garden........

In the 80's and 90's there was a whole cottage industry of people selling "countach" bodies of varying quality from "OK...." to "oh, dear....", which unless you had exceptional car building qualities you could NEVER build into a finished car. I'd guess less than 10% of those bodies ever made it into driveable state. There was one on a driveway in Beckenham for about 5 years, probobly still be there under 6' of weeds. Only company I can think of which built good Countach's in England were Prova. Some of the other companies versions were quite comical, from having absolutely flat bodywork and glass so they looked like a paper-folded model to having such a short wheelbase they looked like they had been in the middle of a 10-car pile-up, probobly with a 100 bhp Pontiac Fiero underneath to haul it round. Thankfully now, the kit car industry is almost rid of those sorts of cars and companies.

Edited by Furyblade_Lee on Sunday 25th June 13:53

[Sam_68]

There was an X1/9 based Countach replica called the Amalfi a few years ago. Obviously, the size difference meant that it wasn't an accurate replica, but the proportions were actually pretty good and the car tested by the magazines was reputedly of very good quality.

[wedg1e]

ISTR reading an article about a guy who built a Countach kit that used a Jag V12: by the time he'd had the full leather trim and full rose-jointed suspenion etc. it owed him £40K... which he could have used to buy a real one at the time...

It was white with a white interior IIRC: 70s-pimp-tastic

[530dTPhil]

Sam_68 said:

There was an X1/9 based Countach replica called the Amalfi a few years ago. Obviously, the size difference meant that it wasn't an accurate replica, but the proportions were actually pretty good and the car tested by the magazines was reputedly of very good quality.

That's the strange thing, I was almost convinced that it was the real thing apart from the fact that it was parked outside and never moved. The proportions do look right as does the shape. I will have a closer look next time I pass.

[ozzie dave]

It always looked good , even better it didn't have the baulk of the later countaches , it had the size of the LP400 and the style of the later cars.