Lamborghini Countach Euro tour part 2. Switzerland to Italy via Andermatt & the Gottard Pass

Welcome to a new Harry's Garage video and this is part 2 of this Lamborghini tour to Italy celebrating 50 years of Countach which first appeared in 1974 in production form. Yesterday was quite a day. Coring in Bugatti and just seeing the Tourbillon and seeing the team there. Every time I go to Bugatti, what I love about it, it's a small intimate team that create that car of passionate designers, engineers, test drivers. I saw Pierre Henry yesterday as well, he was the guy I did the high-speed run in a Veyron, it was I think we went to 220-230 miles an hour. I should know what top speed I did because that's the highest speed I've ever done and what gets me every time I see that video, Pierre Henry just had his sunglasses on his head and there we are in an open top Bugatti Veyron doing 200 and lots of miles an hour. Sunglasses just there, very cool to see him again. I think he has the coolest job because he actually has a company Chiron that he rocks around in and it's just a modest thing, it's what the manufacturers do. He says the one he was driving is up to 55,000 kilometers, that's his job and then after Bugatti we then hit Germany. I wasn't expecting much at six o'clock in the evening, de-restricted autobahn but yeah we got to exercise this thing properly and as I said on the video, I hope you've watched part one where we went that we did that, it's because cars of this era were geared for their top speed so there's no changing down of rattling through gears to accelerate away when you've got someone doing like 90 miles an hour and he pulls in and you charge off. This thing just goes in fifth and yeah I think it surprised a few Germans, there was that Mercedes wasn't there that he thought he shouldn't be seen off by this old car and he pulled across Wallet straight past him so he's got serious go. We did not go for a top speed run on it, that's not what I did this trip for and we've got many thousands of kilometers to do. How many are we up to at the moment? Yeah we've done 1,063 kilometers since setting off from the UK. The other thing, the downside of Kuntas and doing tour is I don't like driving this at night, you've got tricky visibility at the best of times but once it goes dark you get all sorts of reflections of headlights on here and it's really confusing when you've got a right-hand drive car in a left-hand drive country and you've so rely on the mirrors and I just don't like driving this now at night and also the headlights are pretty rubbish and you can't see the speed on your dials because instrument lights are just hopeless. I should get that changed, put LEDs in or something but I just say no, don't drive this car at night. I've done a quick check around, I might as well just show you, oil and water all good, nothing you know, that's the thing I've owned this car for so long, there's nothing really to look at, or it's used the tiniest amount of oil but nothing to worry about. But where are we going today? Let's have a look. First of all I have to find where we are so in Basel we came there last night and then we just did a little bit of Switzerland, just motorway, Erdkingen here, is it Erdkingen there? Just an easy stop for tonight and then today we are going to head down to Gotthard Pass here. Now there are a number, we're going down to Modena tonight but there's a few places I want to drop by. My ancestors were pioneer skiers and they used to go to Andermatt and I've got this photo album, pioneering skiing, there they are wooden skis, guy of top hat I think used to take them up the mountain with a horse and sleigh, that sort of thing and I just want to go back to Andermatt, I've never been there, I want to see that and then the Gotthard Pass. Unfortunately today we have weather issues. There has been a large amount of snow in the Alps very early. Today is the 18th of September and there's a surprising amount of snow. Looking at the Swiss forecast this morning it seems to be over 2000 meters there's a little bit of snow. The one thing you don't want to do with a Kuntas is drive on any form of salted road. There is no protection on it, you've got rose joint suspension, just nightmare, so don't go anywhere near a salted road in a Kuntas. So we'll have to see. Andermatt is about 1200 meters but the Gotthard Pass is 2100 something meters, so over the 2000 meter mark, so I'm just wary of that. The other thing we've got to worry about, there's a rain event happening in Italy and in the Modena Bologna region in particular. Storm Boris did all that damage to Eastern Europe, floods, that was last weekend. Now that storm is not as active but is hitting Italy and I really don't want to drive this in serious rainstorms but we'll just have to see. We're just creeping to Modena if that's okay and come off the motorway and just use back roads. We're about 30 miles from Andermatt and we just popped out of a tunnel. We're in roadworks you can see but god it is beautiful. These first signs of snow as well just on the tips up here, this hanging cloud. You know Switzerland is a very beautiful country. Every time we come here there's lakes, just vistas, just looks tidy. The only downside are all the speed limits. It really keeps you on the toes, even changing tunnels, the speed limit. Yeah and it's pretty draconian if you do get caught so yeah you have to keep an eye on it. Gotthard though, there it is. Clausen Pass, well we did that last time. Really more scenic from the other side so yeah we're Gotthard today. A series of hairpins here. Suddenly I wish I had power steering back on this Countach. Straight on for the Gotthard Pass, Foucault Pass. This is Andermatt, we've just arrived. More roadwork stuff and we're stopped by, you can see a level crossing here because I think it's served by a railway. I presume, oh there we go, I reckon my ancestors 110 years ago probably arrived by rail. I don't know because they were actually very early adopters of the motor car and did a bit of competition with sort of hill climbs which was almost a social sport back in the early days of the motor car so to 1905, 1910 and I've got these pictures of them all ladies and gents all piling to these cars and the start line and they were actually competing but I think it was very social activity rather than full-on racing. It was just showing off their motor cars to each other and having a bit of a party on the side. I have no idea where to go here. Let's just do it, this is the sort of high street and see if there's any of the old buildings. We've got these photographs we'd quite like to match. Whoever anything survives today, they've no idea. So straight on for Andermatt. Just been wandering around Andermatt, what a lovely place. We had a coffee here, this hotel with the sun and found out those vistas. Basically what we're trying to do is just match out those images from this photo album from over 110 years ago of my family skiing here very early on in the days of skiing, especially if you came from the UK. We spotted one vista which they're standing on a bridge, we can match that up. The hotel they were outside with those horses and the sledges and about to set off, we've discovered is in Hospitaal, so we're going to go here next. It's very close, there's this is Andermatt here, so literally next town, about two, three kilometres away. We'll go and see that, but just seeing the Kundtash, that's that tower we were just looking at with that photograph, but just fantastic. It's one of those places I think we need to come back to, Andermatt. It's just what you want, a sort of Swiss chocolate box sort of ski village to be like. And the motor caravan. Top of the Gotthard, we've got a crack on, but it's quite an open pass, it's sort of scenic, it's an easy pass, but it's not full of hairpins, but it's in a very beautiful part of Switzerland. But there's one epic bit when we go down and there's this hairpin suspended off the face of the mountain and I'm going to stop there. It's a favourite spot on this pass because we've really got a crack on because getting to Modena tonight, it was about 600 kilometres all told, we've got to do today. Little flashes of snow, apparently they had snow a few days ago. We also did find that hotel that my ancestors used to stay at and it's been in the process of being rebuilt at the moment. But yeah, we just had to do a photo shoot just there with the car and where they were standing. What pioneers, you know, to be there that early on skiing and how you got up the mountains. I'd love to know how they do that. Do they just climb themselves? Were they taken up on a sledge behind horses? I've no idea, but the ladies are all in full dress and they obviously take a picnic with them. It was, yeah, before the First World War. What a time it must have been if you were lucky enough to experience that sort of lifestyle. That isn't where I was thinking. I'm amazed how popular this has got. It was never like this when we used to come up here. It's quiet, undiscovered past. Now look at it. Good heavens. We won't be stopping there. We've lucked out with the weather here. My goodness, they did have snow a few days ago. Now it's just incredibly scenic, not too windy. You can hear crickets here. It's a nice spot, but we've got quite a bit to do today still. Here we are. So this is where we were, under map there. Now we're going to get onto the Italian Autostrada and basically going to head towards Milan. But from there we've got a bit of a choice. The weather warning is still in place and it's really heavy rain in this area here. Modena is where we're heading and I'm tempted to go Brescia and actually come in to where we're staying. We're staying in a little agriturismo. We've stayed in before just above Modena and I think it'd be better to attack it from here rather than down below. There's strange, there is an army range, there is sort of gunfire going on down there. What is going on? I've no idea. Of course it stops now, but yeah, that's where we're going. I'm just really worried. This is a really quick Autostrada, the one between Bologna and Milan. Everybody flies along and I don't want to be traveling that if it's wet. It's a horrible one for flooding and crowded. Well, this is much quieter, this one that comes into Modena this way. So yeah, that's what we've got to do. A fair few miles to do, but at least it's not raining here. Well we dropped down, got into Italy, a few spots of rain and then we hit the ring road around Milan at about five o'clock, which was not a good time to hit it. It's always pretty snarled up but it was particularly snarled up tonight. But we are now, as you can probably tell, on the route to, well, Bologna. It's the signpost, it's Modena we're going to get off at, Modena Sud, and the Kunta is actually back in its element. It does Autostrada and Autobahn very well. Your main difficulty is just keeping the speed down. You can keep it at about 140 clicks but if you want, if you just add throttle, it's like a cam. You normally add more throttle than you really want and I have no idea what speed this car gets from 80 to 100, but I bet it is impressive, especially for a normally aspirated engine. It's because you're in that zone between 3,000 and 4,000 there's plenty of power to be had in this engine and you're just tapping into that and it's quite good to see the Italians, they don't move over for many things, but they see a Kuntash in the mirror straight across. So anyway, we're on our way to this Carruti Agriturismo, not very far away, 57 miles to the turn off of Modena Sud and it's state drive, simple and it's dried up, which is great news. Well, we're off the Autostrada, we're getting very close to where we're staying tonight and yes, it's properly raining in Modena. Yeah, how far we got to go? 2.8 miles away. And it's quarter past seven in the evening. Yeah, just about 30, 40 miles from where we turn off of Modena. It really started to rain and everything slowed down and it's like this now and it's just getting to the hour where I just want to park up the Kuntash really. I've got a squeaky wiper blade. I think it's time for a new wiper blade, but at least it works well and clears the screen. If you don't want to meet a car, there's some tiny lanes on the approach. I don't remember it being on quite as tiny a lane as this, but I think there's a bigger road the other side. Here we go. This is where we're staying. Now we stayed here before. This is an Agriturismo, quite like these because these are very traditional places to stay in Italy and this particular one, Garruti, makes balsamic vinegar, which we'll probably see up there. They have a winery over there and they make fresh pasta as well, so it's a great restaurant and it's sort of pretty famous in this area and it's got a few rooms. So yeah, we're going to stay here for the next two or three nights and I'm very glad to get here. The poor old Kuntash had had enough. The noisy wiper was starting to mess up. It's just not good at night in the rain, this car, but this is basically the end of this video and then tomorrow we're going to be at Lamborghini. I'm taking the Kuntash to the factory and I'm just going to do a sort of back story on the history of the Kuntash and just see where it was made and have a look at some of the new production lines. So I hope you enjoyed this video. Keep watching, keep subscribing, more videos coming along very soon.