There are three posters that I remember having on my bedroom wall as a child. Three posters that I used to stare at every day for years and that I can remember every single line and colour of. One of them is the Back to the Future movie poster. A classic Drew Struzan image. They’re easy to get these days. Another was a poster, probably from Athena, the UK poster shop, of an airbrushed whale’s tail breaching a blue ocean. Very 80s cliche, but stunning artwork. But the third poster, the one that I probably have the most affection for, was of a Lamborghini Countach.

It wasn’t just a standard photo of a red Lamborghini Countach, but it was an airbrushed image. And it wasn’t your standard red Lamborghini, or even a cool white one. It was a black Lamborghini Countach, against a black/blue background. It just oozed cool. The Countach really was THE car of the 80s. It epitomises the decade. I know the car originally came out in the 70s but it really shone in the 80s. See my Top Ten Lamborghinis list to see more of my love for this car.

I absolutely loved this poster in my youth and I really wanted to get a copy of it again in adulthood. But I’ve been searching for it for years. Years I tell you. And when you search online for ’80s Lamborghini poster’ there are a huge number of pictures fitting that description of course. I didn’t know anything else about it, like where it came from etc, so I couldn’t really refine the search at all. I thought it was maybe from Athena, but I wasn’t sure. For my 40th birthday party last year I had an 80s party and wanted to have lots of 80s posters on the wall so I searched for it again. I scrolled through pages and pages of search results. And then eventually I actually came across it! Someone had taken a photograph of it and posted it online somewhere. I managed to save the image and it wasn’t exactly hi-res but it was still high enough resolution for me to print it out at A3 without it looking too blurry after I did a bit of Photoshop magic to it. That in itself was pretty satisfying, and just looking at the low res picture on the computer brought the memories flooding back. It felt good. Here is that image.

Countach

About six months later though I thought about redecorating my retro mancave and moving things around so that I had more wall space. On a whim I thought I would search on eBay again for the poster. One of those late night eBay searches where you just hit and hope. And I couldn’t believe it when I found it up for sale. It was being sold by a guy in Los Angeles would you believe, and I’m not going to tell you how much I paid for it, but it certainly wasn’t the £5 it probably cost back in the day. But the amount of memories this thing brings back to me is insane. A lot of things happened in my bedroom in my youth and this poster witnessed it all.

Ironically when I finally did get my hands on the poster I was able to confirm, in the bottom corner, that the poster was indeed sold by Athena and printed in the UK.

Lamborghini text

The fact that I had to end up buying it from a guy in Los Angeles shows just how rare it is. I seriously never thought I would get my hands on it ever again. It’s now pride of place in my retrocave that I’m redecorating. I’m probably going to buy a proper frame for it too, but actually it seems to be slightly smaller than normal poster size so I think I might need to get a frame specially made which is a bit annoying. But it’s just great to be able to look up and see this awesome image back up on my wall.

Poster wall

Lamborghini Countach

Now, if only I can find that whale poster…