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.
Mid-mounted V12
had two camshafts per cylinder bank – double that of Ferrari
But somehow, with the Miura, the stars aligned as neatly as
brass plaques on the Hollywood walk of fame. 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.
Lamborghini Miura
Engine
The key thing about the Miura, is that while it looked like
a refugee from a mid 1960s Le Mans grid, it had no motorsport provenance, and
Ferrucio Lamborghini had no intention of 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.
From Italy to
Brands Hatch, via your childhood bedroom wall
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.
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 175mph 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 rival. And just to
rub salt in the wound, the Bizzarini-designed V12 the Miura inherited from
Lamborghini’s 400Gt had two camshafts per cylinder bank, instead of the
Ferrari’s one, and a claimed 350bhp, 70 more than its cross-town contemporary.
