Whatever your opinions are on Rod Stewart’s music, the guy has good taste in ridiculously expensive automobiles. (Not a given with filthy rich people, as we’ve seen!) In his heyday, he took ownership of various enviable rides from Porsche, Rolls-Royce and Ferrari, and now you have the chance to pick up one of these beauts: a 1989 Lamborghini Countach 25th Anniversary.
As of this writing, this rare Countach once owned by Stewart has been bid on 16 times at the online auction site Bring a Trailer, with a leading bid of $345,678 (when you’re a millionaire, you can afford to make your six-figure auction bids tongue-in-cheek). The sale ends on Tuesday, March 14, so you can expect this price to climb higher, especially as the average market value for this model in good condition is $405,000, according to Hagerty. (To be clear, Stewart isn’t the one selling; the current owner bought it in 2022.)
The 25th Anniversary model, of which around 658 were made, was built to celebrate a quarter century since the marque’s founding in 1963 (Lamborghini being the relative newcomer among its rivals, with Ferrari going back to 1947 and Maserati to 1914). To update the sports car, which had been introduced as a 1974 model year, Lamborghini tapped Horacio Pagani (who would go on to found Pagani Automobili) to refresh the original bodywork from Marcello Gandini of Bertone.
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This bubble-era masterpiece is a supercar tour de force that almost no one is collecting“The Countach 25th Anniversary was based on the LP5000 Quattrovalvole (abbreviated “5000 QV”) chassis, but was significantly updated both aesthetically and mechanically, adding up to a reported sum total of some 500 tweaks for the anniversary car,” Alexander Byles explained in a deep dive on the model for Petrolicious in 2019. He added, “Horacio Pagani’s team began with Gandini’s original shape drawn almost two decades ago, added the bumper with the front brake air intakes, side skirts, enlarged the rear brake air intakes, added more slats, then modified the suspension geometry and improved its overall comfort on the road.”
For those not as interested in this kind of supercar minutiae, there are plenty of headline-worthy aspects to this lot (besides the Rod Stewart provenance). There’s the 5.2-liter V12 engine, a 0-60 mph time under five seconds, a top speed of around 185 mph and the unimpeachably cool scissor doors. On the con side of the sheet, there’s an old-school car phone that was added “under previous ownership” that doesn’t currently work, not that you would use it if it did. Or maybe a broken brick-sized phone is just the sort of retro accessory you’re looking for in an ’80s sports car?
For those actually interested in bidding, there are a number of videos available to show you the full extent of the car’s condition, from a walkaround to a cold start to a driving view from inside the cabin. If you’re not seriously interested in bidding, at least watch this fantastic little ASMR montage. Now that’s music to our ears.
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