Lamborghini Miura

The Lamborghini Miura: At the end of 1965, Nuccio Bertone conceived the most extraordinary car that had ever been built up until that time: it was the Lamborghini Miura, a supercar with a V12, centrally monuted transverse engine. At the 1965 Turin Motor Show, Lamborghini exhibited a box-sheet chassis named TP400 (from the position of the engine and its displacement). It had been fitted with the engine and suspension that already equipped the 400 GT, with few modifications. The project was an initiative of engineers Gian Paolo Dallara and Paolo Stanzani, who, while aware of Lamborghini’s aversion to racing, had used the mid-engine layout of some of the competition cars of the time, such as the Ford GT40 or the Ferrari 250 LM. On these two cars, however, the engine was in a longitudinal position, while Lamborghini’s was mounted transversely between the passenger compartment and the rear axle, a solution that made it possible to reduce the footprint considerably. At that time most Gran Turismo sports cars adopted the front-engine, rear-wheel-drive configuration. Nuccio Bertone, who was present at the review, was fascinated to the point of declaring to Lamborghini, “I am the one who can make the shoe fit your foot.” The latter, even in the face of the considerable enthusiasm aroused in potential customers, allowed himself to be persuaded to approve the project despite his skepticism: “It will be good advertising,” he declared to his technicians, “but we won’t sell more than 50.” The choice of Bertone as coachbuilder was also determined by the fact that the Grugliasco firm had no working relationship with Ferrari and Maserati, Lamborghini’s main competitors, but above all by the bankruptcy in late 1966 of Touring, which had designed the earlier 350 and 400 GTs. The new car was designed in just four months by young stylist Marcello Gandini, who had recently become Bertone’s chief designer to replace Giorgetto Giugiaro, who had left for Ghia. Ferruccio Lamborghini, who was born under the sign of the bull, wanted to christen the completed car with the name Miura in honor of the fighting bull breeder Don Eduardo Miura Fernandez. The Miura was the first in a long tradition of cars built by Lamborghini and christened with names inspired by bullfighting. In addition, the chassis abbreviation lost the T despite the fact that the mechanicals had not undergone significant changes. Introduced at the 1966 Geneva Motor Show, the Miura P400 was an unprecedented success. The car left all visitors breathless by suddenly aging all supercars of the time and ushering in a new era in the sports car industry.