As Lamborghini turns 50, myths
continue to surround its game-changing Miura. While the C&SC team looks
into the supercar’s enduring appeal, Gautam S. solves a design mystery
When the Turin Motor Show opened on 3
November 1965, everybody present was bowled over by a beautiful crafted chassis
featuring a V12 engine located amidships, race-car style. Its maker, an upstart
called Lamborghini, claimed that the combination would form the basis of a
street-legal ‘super sports car’. The young car-maker’s plan was clear: owner
Ferruccio Lamborghini wanted to take on the prima donna of Italy –
Ferrari.
Drawing
inspiration from Giorgetto’ original sketches, Fabrizio had a full-sized styling
model done of the car that would become the Lamborghini Miura
Yet, at first, enthusiasts and industry
experts didn’t take the project seriously. It was therefore quite a shock when,
a little over four months later, Lamborghini unveiled a complete car on the
opening day of the Geneva Salon. The Miura became not just the star of the show
but the progenitor of the term ‘supercar’.
For the best part of four decades, the
design of the Miura was always ascribed to Marcello Gandini, even though his
boss, Nuccio Bertone, claimed that he’d had more than just a proprietary eye on
it, having suggested some minor ‘improvements’. Over the past few years,
however – and particularly after Bertone’s death on 26 February 1997 – there
have been rumblings that the Miura may not have been Gandini’s work after all,
but that of his predecessor at the carrozzeria – Giorgetto Giugiaro.
Joe Sackey, author of The Lamborghini
Miura Bible, wrote that Giugiaro showed him sketches that Sackey says must
have been the ‘preliminary drawings’ for the Miura – though he later took a
different view, of which more anon. Giugiaro also showed his sketches to writer
Peter Robinson. “When I left Bertone, I didn’t have the chance to follow the
building of the car, but the originals of these drawing stayed behind,” he
said. “Gandini took my sketches and finished the car – 70% of it is mine.”
Then, in the 29 September 2008 issue of Automotive
News Europe (ANE), journalist Luca Ciferri wrote: ‘Fabrizio Giugiaro
provided his father with a unique gift for his 70th birthday.
Drawing inspiration from Giorgetto’ original sketches, Fabrizio had a
full-sized styling model done of the car that would become the Lamborghini
Miura. The car is important to Giorgetto because he was working on it before he
left Bertone to join Ghia. The mid-engined sports car was supposed to go to
Bizzarrini, but Nuccio Bertone decided to offer it to Lamborghini instead.
Giorgetto’s successor at Bertone, Marcello Gandini, completed the car…
Giorgetto’s contribution is often overlooked.’
Rear
end offers a mixture of elegance and muscle – exhaust not is fabulous
The implication is that the real designer
of the Miura must have been Giugiaro, and that Gandini had been taking credit
for a design that wasn’t really his. Gandini’s lawyers, it seems, sent a legal
notice to ANE soon after and, in a subsequent issue, Ciferri wrote that
Giugiaro ‘was happy to set the record straight’.
Giugiaro stated that: ‘Gandini designed the
Miura and I have never said anything different to this simple statement, so I
have nothing to deny.’
It looked as if matters had been settled,
until the October 2012 issue of Car, in which Giugiaro once again showed the
drawings to its journalist, implying that Gandini must have copied his design:
“Since I left some drawings there, maybe he saw them – I don’t know.”
“Before the Miura, what did Gandini
design?” he added. “You are influenced by what you see, but each person has
their own personality, you learn and create your own style. Gandini is an
excellent designer but unfortunately he didn’t go on and develop his own
profession further.”
Far
right: finned door detail includes handle and button release; complex knock-on
alloy wheels
So, what’s the truth? Is there any merit in
the assertion that the Miura owes more to Giugiaro than Gandini? In the ANE
article, Giugiaro’s drawing was dated 16 October 1964. In the more recent Car
feature, writer Guy Bird claims that the sketch that he was shown was dated 3
November ’64 – both of which tally with those seen by Peter Robinson. Giugiaro
claims that it was for a proposal for Bizzarrini, but there doesn’t seem to be
any documentation for – or reference to – this sketch, either by Nuccio Bertone
or anyone else from that period. All other designs that Giugiaro had done for
Bertone from the time he joined the coach-builder in 1960 are well documented,
and not only by the carrozerria, but also by Giugiaro’s own company
Italdesign-Giugiaro.
Taking his word for it, what seems less
tenable is the suggestion that Bertone may have misled Giugiaro into believing
that he was doing a sketch for a mid-engined Bizzarrini when, in reality, he
was getting him to do a layout for a new model that was yet to be shown. It is
unlikely that, at the time, Bertone would have known of the P400’s existence.
Lamborghini chief engineer Gian Paolo Dallara had more than a germ of an idea
by late 1964, but the project was only started in January ’65. “The drawings of
the chassis and power-train were complete by June ‘65,” he says, “and the start
of the making of the chassis by Marchesi by August.” And that bare mid-engined
chassis was ready just in time to be dramatically unveiled in Turin – a little
over a year from when Giugiaro’s sketches are dated.
By then, Giugiaro had quit Bertone, though
there seems to be some confusion about when this happened. In April 1965, Piero
Stroppa joined as an assistant to the designer. Stroppa doesn’t remember the
exact date, but he says that Giugiaro left in June or July. It was also around
this time that Marcello Gandini, who was then working on a freelance basis with
Marazzi in Milan. Gandini had approached Bertone in 1963 with some of his
sketches and ideas. Nuccio was impressed, apparently wanting to hire him under
Giugiaro, but the story goes that the latter had opposed such a move.
Stylish
interior, but note how wheel obscures the dials
By September ’65, Gandini had begun
collaborating with Bertone on a part-time basis, and was officially employed
from 1 November. These datelines are confirmed by Stroppa, and Gandini is sure
that he never shared an office with Giugiaro. Yet Italdesign-Giugiaro’s press
and PR officer, Lorenza Cappello, confirms: “After six highly intense years, in
November 1965 Mr. Giugiaro left Carrozzeria Bertone to join the management of
Ghia.”
According to historian Roeland Frère,
Bertone’s press officer Enzo Prearo heard of Giugiaro’s resignation on 5
October 1965, Prearo was at the Motor Show, and by the time be returned
Giugiaro was gone. Stroppa says that there was a period when he was alone in
the studio before Gandini joined. He also confirms that two new projects had
come to Bertone – a roadster based on the Porsche 911 and a four-seater coupé
based on the Jaguar S-style. The last project that Stroppa had helped Giugiaro
with was the Ford Mustang concept that Bertone showed at the 1965 New York Auto
show. He doesn’t remember seeing any sketches of a mid-engined sports car from
Giugiaro, and neither does he recall any mention of such a project.
The
first time that people at Bertone heard of or saw the Lamborghini chassis was
when it was unveiled in Turin
