Lamborghini Miura

Lamborghini Miura at a glance

The Miura was Lamborghini's third model after the 350 GT and 400 GT, and it turned the young company into a maker of supercars. Its successor was the Lamborghini Countach; all models are listed in the Lamborghini catalogue, and the story of the company is told in our history of Lamborghini.

Development: a project done after hours

Ferruccio Lamborghini founded his car company to build refined grand touring cars, not racing cars like those of Ferrari. Three young members of his engineering staff - Giampaolo Dallara, Paolo Stanzani and the New Zealand test driver Bob Wallace - had other ideas. In 1965 they developed a prototype chassis, the P400, working on it at night in their own time. When Lamborghini saw the running chassis he gave them a free hand, seeing the car as a way to promote the brand.

The bare rolling chassis, with its V12 mounted crosswise behind the seats, was shown at the Turin Auto Show in 1965. Customers placed orders even though the car had no body yet. The body was entrusted to Bertone, where the young stylist Marcello Gandini designed it; it was completed only days before the Geneva Motor Show in March 1966.

The team had not even checked that the engine would fit under the bodywork. At Geneva the prototype carried ballast in place of the engine, and the engine cover stayed locked; sales manager Ubaldo Sgarzi kept journalists who wanted to look inside away from the car. The reaction at the show was enthusiastic, and Lamborghini decided to start production the following year.

The name comes from the Miura family of Spanish fighting-bull breeders. The bull also became part of Lamborghini's new badge, and the company has named many later models after bulls and bullfighting.

Design and construction

Gandini's design is low, wide and very short at the front. The headlamps lie almost flat and are surrounded by black "eyelashes" on the P400 and P400 S. The doors are long and open conventionally, and the rear window is covered by louvres that let heat out of the engine bay. The overall height is just 1,055 mm.

The structure is a monocoque with a steel frame and doors and aluminium front and rear body sections. Suspension is by upper and lower wishbones with coil springs and anti-roll bars at both ends, with rack-and-pinion steering and Girling disc brakes on all four wheels. The original tyres were Pirelli Cinturato 205VR15.

The key idea was packaging. Mounting the V12 across the car, directly behind the cabin, kept the wheelbase to 2,500 mm. To save more space, the engine and gearbox were cast in one unit and shared the same oil - an idea borrowed from the Morris Mini. Only the last 96 SVs had separate lubrication for the engine and gearbox, which also made it easier to fit an optional limited-slip differential.

Engine and performance

The V12 has a displacement of 3,929 cc (bore 82 mm, stroke 62 mm), two chain-driven overhead camshafts per bank and two valves per cylinder. It is fed by four triple-choke Weber carburettors. The engine was developed from the V12 of the 400 GT.

The factory claimed a top speed of 300 km/h. Road tests recorded 275 km/h for the P400 and 278 km/h for the P400 S. A P400 S tested by a magazine used about 21 litres of fuel per 100 km. In the 1960s these figures made the Miura one of the fastest cars on the road.

Versions: P400, P400 S and P400 SV

The first production version, the P400 ("Posteriore 4 litri" - rear-mounted four-litre engine), was built from 1966 to 1969; 275 were made.

The P400 S, introduced at the Turin Motor Show in November 1968, had more power from larger intake manifolds and revised camshafts. It also brought small improvements to comfort: electric windows, more chrome trim, a slightly larger luggage space, wider Pirelli tyres and optional air conditioning. 338 were built.

The P400 SV of 1971 was the last and most developed version. It had revised camshaft timing and carburettors, wider rear wings for 9-inch wheels, a wider rear track (1,540 mm instead of 1,400 mm) and new tail lights. The SV is easy to recognise because the "eyelashes" around the headlamps were removed. 150 were built.

Jota, SVJ and the Roadster

In 1970 Bob Wallace built a single test car, the Miura Jota, to explore the FIA's Appendix J racing rules. It had aluminium alloy body panels, plastic side windows, a front spoiler, fixed covered headlamps, two fuel tanks in the sills and a modified engine with a higher compression ratio, dry-sump lubrication and a freer exhaust. Its output was 312–328 kW (418–440 bhp) at 8,800 rpm, and it was about 360 kg lighter than a production Miura. The car was sold to a private owner and destroyed by fire after a crash in April 1971.

Customers then asked for cars in Jota style. The factory built six SVJs during production - one new car and five converted from SVs - and a seventh later from an unused chassis, which most experts do not count as an official SVJ. One SVJ was owned by the Shah of Iran. Other cars were converted to SVJ specification by independent workshops.

Bertone also built a one-off open Miura Roadster on a P400 chassis, shown at the Brussels Motor Show in 1968.

Film, owners and later homages

The Miura is the car in the opening scene of the 1969 film The Italian Job, in which an orange Miura is destroyed by a bulldozer. The car used for most of the driving shots survived and was restored by Lamborghini's Polo Storico department in 2019. Among the famous owners of Miuras were Frank Sinatra and Miles Davis.

Lamborghini returned to the Miura twice. The Miura Concept, presented in New York on 5 January 2006 for the car's 40th anniversary, was the first design by Walter de'Silva as Lamborghini's design chief, but the company said it would not build it. For the 50th anniversary in 2016 it presented the Aventador Miura Homage, built by Ad Personam in 50 examples (see the Lamborghini Aventador). The original P400 prototype won the Gran Turismo Trophy at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance in 2008.

Legacy

The Miura changed the idea of what a fast road car should be. Before it, the most powerful road cars had their engines at the front; after it, a mid-mounted engine behind the driver became the standard layout for supercars. It also gave Lamborghini a reputation for daring design that the Countach, which replaced it about a year after the end of Miura production, took even further.

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