This Lamborghini is being preserved in the world’s biggest library

Do not adjust your device, this Lamborghini Countach LP 400 S - chassis number 1121112 - really is being preserved for future generations in a library.

Puzzled? Don’t be. A 3.9-litre V12 isn’t really designed for, er, that kind of environment, so instead a 3D scan of the car is to be housed in the United States Library of Congress along with all its info, history and official documentation.

You see, this is no ordinary Countach. This is the very car that featured in the 1981 hit film The Cannonball Run, starring the likes of Burt Reynolds, Roger Moore, Farrah Fawcett, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Junior and Jackie Chan.

The movie is based on an illegal road race from the 1970s that spawned the ‘Cannonball Run Challenge’, with competitors starting in downtown Manhattan and racing all the way across the States to Redondo Beach in California.

It was a huge commercial success with worldwide box office takings of $160 million. Obviously more films should open with three minutes of a Lambo being pursued by a police car.

40 years on the Countach has been deemed iconic enough to be included on the Library of Congress’s National Historic Vehicle Register, a shortlist of cars that are considered of ‘national importance’ to the US. So far only 30 vehicles have been added.

The Countach itself is being put on display in a glass box in Washington DC for a week before it’s returned to its current owner, an attorney in Florida who bought it in 2004.

If we had a ‘national importance’ car list in the UK, what would be on it? Suggestions below please…