From Italy With Love (Part 1)
In the 1960s, with the advent of the
Miura, Lamborghini invented the supercar. In the ’70s they invented it all over
again with the Countach. Will anything ever diminish their charms?
Lamborghini didn’t invent fast and sexy for
cars any more than the original blonde bombshell, Jean Harlow, did for women.
There were quick cars long before the Miura, cars like Duesenberg’s SSJ before
the war; Aston’s DB4 GT and Iso’s Grifo, after it. There were outrageously styled
cars too, no one could cast an eye over Figoni Falaschi’s stunning Talbot
Lagos, or Mercedes’ incredible 300SL Gullwing, and deny that. As for the
mid-engined thing, Porsche, ATS and De Tomaso had all made mid-engined road
cars before Lamborghini created what is now widely recognised as the first
modern supercar.
There
were quick cars long before the Miura, cars like Duesenberg’s SSJ before the
war; Aston’s DB4 GT and Iso’s Grifo, after it.
But somehow, with the Miura, the stars
aligned as neatly as brass plaques on the Hollywood walk offame. Everything
came together to create something even more than the sum of its spectacular
parts. Not just a fast car, or a pretty one, but the grounding for an entire
species of cars. The Miura changed Lamborghini forever, neatly sidestepping its
lack of a racing pedigree, instantly giving the fledgling car maker real
currency, and it changed the car, too.
The key thing about the Miura, is that
while it looked like going racing with it. This was an unashamed road car. About
the most outrageous road car you could buy in the late 1960s, and certainly one
of the most beautiful. But the Miura was making waves even before Ferruccio had
contracted anyone to clothe the bare chassis he revealed at the 1965 Turin
Motor show.
The guts were reason enough to get excited.
Featuring a transversely sited V12 sitting behind the two seats, and on top of
its gearbox, even sharing the same oil in early versions, just like a Mini, the
Miura was like no other road car on the planet. Lamborghini took 10 orders
based on that naked showing at Turin, and when the finished car sporting
Marcello Gandini’s steel and aluminium handiwork made its debut at Geneva the
following March, the phone wouldn’t stop ringing.
When now, almost 50 years after the fact,
the Miura still ranks as one of the most beautiful automotive shapes, it’s hard
to imagine what it must have been like seeing it for the first time, taking in
that delicate shark-shaped nose, and the elegant curve of the door frame, which
Gandini would use again on the Lancia Stratos most of a decade later. Jaguar’s
E-type, just six years earlier, the pre-Athena poster hero for schoolboys
everywhere, suddenly seemed decidedly square.
Jaguar’s
E-type, just six years earlier, the pre-Athena poster hero for schoolboys
everywhere, suddenly seemed decidedly square.
Apart from the sheer beauty of the thing,
your first impression is how small it is. The Miura is tiny, like some
three-quarter-scale model built for wind-tunnel testing, which owners
experiencing chronic front-end lift while exploring the i75mph top end, soon
discovered it could have benefitted from.
At 1050mm, it’s 86mm lower than an
Aventador, and almost 195mm closer to the ground than its contemporary Ferrari
275 camshafts per cylinder bank, instead of the Ferrari’s one, and a claimed
35obhp, 70 more than its cross-town contemporary.
At
1050mm, it’s 86mm lower than an Aventador, and almost 195mm closer to the
ground than its contemporary Ferrari 275 camshafts per cylinder bank, instead
of the Ferrari’s one, and a claimed 35obhp, 70 more than its cross-town
contemporary.
Those power figures are as optimistic as
thoughts of using the Miura as a daily driver, but there’s no doubt that this
was serious performance by late ’60s standards. For the P400S that arrived in
1968, enlarged ports and modified combustion chambers pumped that to 37obhp,
but it’s the SV that’s the ultimate Miura.
