Driving The Miura - Along Came A Supercar (Part 2)

Crank the V12 into life though and you soon realize that Rossan Brazzi wouldn’t have been able to hear Matt Monro even if he’d been singing to him from the passenger seat through a loud hailer as he scaled that Alpine pass. He wouldn’t have been so nonchalant about that fag hanging from his lips either. Despite the layer of glass separating you from the engine, the cabin absolutely reeks of petrol from those 12 spitting carb throats mounted inches behind your head.

The V12 began life in 1963 with 209kw and ended life in the Murcielago SV in 2010 with 494kw. Seen here in 1972 tune it's packing 287kw. The noise hurts your ears!

In keeping with its road-car aspirations, the Miura’s gears are arranged in conventional H-pattern. In contrast, contemporary Ferraris had first gear back and to the left on a dogleg – a nod to racing, where first has been and gone by the first corner, and is seldom used again. The transmission oil, shared with the engine on early cars, but separate on later versions, whose LSD axle needed its own special juice, takes time to warm, but the gear change itself isn’t terrible. It needs deliberate movements and a firm wrist, but it’s positively flyweight compared with the clutch.

That’s the first giveaway to this car’s age. These days manufacturers are very switched on when it comes to matching control weights, but the Miura’s are a mess. All three pedals require the leg strength of a 10-tonne press, yet the steering, which you’d imagine to be weighty, despite the mid-engine layout, is perfectly measured. Not fast, but ideally weighted for scything through sweeping bands and serving up the types’ tales with more feeling than a depression center’s help line.

We might all daydream of jumping into a Miura and ragging it like a Ferrari 458, teasing those fat 255-section rear Pirelli Cinturatos out of line on the fast stuff and kicking the tail right out on the medium stuff, but you’d need spuds like basketballs to try it. Maybe that explains the steering wheel angle. Like most unassisted systems, the steering feels light as you nudge either side of the straight ahead, but weights up suddenly on lock. The gears demand concentration and coordination, and it’s furnace-hot in here.

Maybe that explains the steering wheel angle.

This is a car to enjoy at six or seven tenths, and even then it’s a physically and mentally taxing experience. It’s a different kind of thrill to the one you get pasting a modern supercar to within an inch of its life, but a fascinating, rewarding thrill nonetheless because it demands so much from you. But don’t be under any illusion that the Miura isn’t capable of being hustled should you summon the courage and muscle. Acceleration in the order of 6.6sec to 100kph is nowhere in modern supercar terms, and the BMW 330d would eat it in a straight line and in the corners too, losing out only on top speed. The ability to do 282kph must have been mind-blowing 40 years ago though, when many cars struggled to manage the motorway maximum.

And it still shifts. The Giotto Bizzarrini-designed V12, which ended its days as a 494kW 6.5- liter in the 2010 Murcielago SV, started life as a 209kW 3.5 in 1963, featuring four overhead cams at Ferruccio Lamborghini’s request, in order to outpoint the two-cam V12 of cross-town rival Ferrari. By the time the first Miura arrived in 1967, the V12 had swelled to 3.9 liters and 261kW, which became 276kW on the S that followed, thanks to revised cam profiles and larger intake runners, and eventually 287kW on the SV.

The optimistic Jaeger clocks read to 200mph (320kph) and 10000rpm. Lambo tells me it’s safe to seven, but we stick to 6000rpm in deference to the old girl.

It’s a brute of an engine, a rough, rowdy grafter, but short on airs and graces. Lusty at low revs and reasonably happy to lug despite the odd cough of protestation, it comes on cam around 5000rpm, delivering a push in the back like a New York subway sadist as you explore the long, heavy travel of the throttle pedal. The optimistic Jaeger clocks read to 200mph (320kph) and 10000rpm. Lambo tells me it’s safe to seven, but we stick to 6000rpm in deference to the old girl. The cacophony behind you own way, rowing through the gears in the Miura is as much a sensory experience as engaging launch control and going sub-3.0sec to 100kph in a new Aventador.

Ideally, of course, you’d have both new and old Lamborghinis, and many Miura owners probably do. Imagine having to make that decision when your garage door rolled back on a Sunday morning! Technically, the Countach that followed, with its space frame chassis, scissor doors and back-to-front north-south engine, was the real template for the modern Lamborghini. But without the Miura, it never would have happened. Lamborghini was right to banish 2005’s Miura concept to the concept car park in the sky, but you can absolutely understand the temptation to whip out the defibrillators.

Ideally, of course, you’d have both new and old Lamborghinis, and many Miura owners probably do.