www.QV500.com - Lamborghini QVX Part 1: QVX

Joliffe initially planned to compete with one of the newly introduced Countach Quattrovalvole's in the Group B category, but as a minimum of 200 identical cars had to be built in advance for homologation to be approved, a Group C sports prototype for the World Manufacturers Championship was decided upon. It would contest the top C1 category where Porsche 956 and 962's were the car of choice. However, there was also stong competition in 1986 from Lancia LC2's, the Sauber C8 Mercedes and Jaguar's XJR-6. A chassis (SL8501), was ordered from Spice Engineering at Silverstone and re-titled LC1, the highly tuned engines coming direct from Lamborghini in Sant' Agata. These were couple to five-speed Hewland transmissions and the car was run by CC Racing Developments in Yorkshire. The monocoque was of fully stressed aluminium and honeycomb construction, this having been closely derived from the Tiga design that had dominated the 1985 C2 championship. The rear section was redesigned to accommodate the Lamborghini V12, suspension coming via vertical coil spring/damper units operated by pull rods at the front and canted dampers with rocker arms at the rear. Outboard brakes were 13-inch diameter all round, 16-inch cross-spoke wheels having come courtesy of BBS. They were shod with boltless Denloc sports prototype tyres from Dunlop.

The special version of Lamborghini's normally aspirated four cam V12 as found in the Countach was developed in-house by Ing. Luis Marmiroli under the direction of Giulio Alfieri. Capacity was enlarged for racing from 5.2 to 5.7-litres and despite quickly attaining 650bhp, there was talk of more than 700bhp being realised by mid season. Lamborghini were already familiar with producing large displacement versions of their V12 engines for offshore powerboat racing (sometimes up to 8-litres) and many of the lessons learnt were applied for the QVX. Mounted on a semi-stressed subframe, the Lamborghini V12 was not only lighter and more powerful, but also much smaller than Jaguar's similar unit. The engine was coupled to a traditional Hewland VG-C five-speed manual transmission. All new bodywork was created from a 70/30 Kevlar-carbon weave in conjunction with chopped strand glassfibre, the end result standing just 1003mm high. Having been announced in September 1985, the QVX made its debut at a party held in Monte Carlo during January 1986, this hosted by title-sponsor, Unipart, then the UK's biggest automotive parts and accessory supplier.

A number of promising test sessions subsequently followed but the million pound budget Joliffe envisaged never materialised. The QVX had been pencilled in to race at Mugello in April '86 and then undertake another six races including Le Mans, however, a secondary sponsor couldn't be found and the QVX ended up missing the entire ‘86 championship. Eventually the car did make it onto the grid for the invitational Southern Suns 500km, a non-championship race held at Kyalami in November. This came thanks to the appearance money handed out by the increasingly isolated South African apartheid regime. In qualifying for the two 43 lap heats, Tiff Needell ran strongly against the high calibre entry that consisted mainly of Porsche's. The Englishman took seventh on the grid and finished seventh in race one, race two seeing him climb two places to cross the line fifth. Despite having clearly illustrated great potential with its good turn of speed and out-of-the-box reliability, the QVX programme fizzled out due to a lack of finance. Chassis LC1 remained a one-off and never again turned a wheel in anger.