Lamborghini Miura: The Car That Invented the Supercar
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There are cars, and then there is the Lamborghini Miura. When it was unveiled at the 1966 Geneva Motor Show, the automotive world collectively lost its breath. Here was a mid-engined, V12-powered road car unlike anything seen before, with a body so beautiful it seemed impossible that it had actually made it into production. The Miura did not just raise the bar for what a sports car could be. It invented an entirely new category.
Origins and History
Ferruccio Lamborghini built tractors. He was good at it, successful enough to buy a Ferrari, and famously annoyed enough by its clutch to march over to Maranello and tell Enzo Ferrari how to build a better car. Enzo, predictably, told him to stick to tractors. Ferruccio went home and started building sports cars instead.
The Miura was the work of three young Lamborghini engineers, Gian Paolo Dallara, Paolo Stanzani, and Bob Wallace, who designed it largely in their spare time. They presented the bare chassis at Turin in 1965 and the reaction was electric. Carrozzeria Bertone's Marcello Gandini then clothed it in bodywork that remains one of the most celebrated designs in automotive history. The complete car arrived at Geneva the following year, and orders flooded in before anyone had even driven it.
Production ran from 1966 to 1973, with three main variants, the P400, P400 S and P400 SV, each improving on the last. Just 764 were built in total, which makes any surviving example genuinely precious.
The Design
Gandini was only 27 years old when he styled the Miura, and what he produced was extraordinary. The long, low silhouette sits just 1,050mm tall. The nose is blunt and purposeful, the tail rounded and muscular. Every surface flows into the next with a confidence that makes more recent supercars look overwrought by comparison.
The details reward close attention. The eyelash louvres over the headlamps are a period flourish that somehow avoids kitsch. The side air intakes behind the doors feed the mid-mounted engine with cool air. The roof arcs gracefully, almost imperceptibly, from windscreen to tail. It looks fast standing still, which is the oldest trick in the design book and the hardest to pull off.
The interior is more spartan than modern tastes might prefer, but the tight cockpit, the wood-rimmed steering wheel and the row of Veglia instruments feel exactly right. You are there to drive, not to lounge.
Performance and Driving
The engine is a 3.9-litre quad-cam V12, mounted transversely behind the two seats with the gearbox sharing the same sump, a packaging solution that was radical for a road car in 1966. In standard P400 form it produced 350bhp. The SV variant pushed that to 385bhp, which was enough to propel the car to 60mph in around 6.5 seconds and on to a claimed top speed of 170mph, figures that were genuinely staggering for the time.
Driving one is an experience that demands respect and rewards commitment. The steering is heavy at low speeds and lightens beautifully as pace builds. The gearchange is mechanical and direct. At high speed the earliest cars gained a reputation for becoming light over the front axle, a quirk that Lamborghini addressed progressively through the model's life. The SV, with its wider rear tyres and revised suspension, is the most satisfying to drive quickly, though any Miura is an event.
The sound is something else entirely. That V12 builds from a burble at idle to a hard-edged wail at the top of the rev range, filling the cabin with noise and sensation in a way that no modern car with active exhaust management can quite replicate.
Cultural Impact
The Miura's cultural footprint extends well beyond the car world. It appeared in the opening sequence of The Italian Job in 1969, destroyed in a tunnel before the titles even roll, a cameo brief enough to have been cut but unforgettable enough that it wasn't. It graced magazine covers across Europe and America, making the name Lamborghini synonymous with excess, glamour and speed in a way that no marketing campaign could have achieved.
It also established a template that every supercar maker has followed since. Mid-engined layout, dramatic bodywork, V12 power, strictly two seats: the formula the Miura pioneered in 1966 is the one Ferrari, McLaren and everyone else still use today. You can draw a direct line from the Miura to the F40, the Carrera GT and the LaFerrari. It is the founding document of the supercar genre.
Buying a Lamborghini Miura Today
Values have risen sharply over the past decade and show no sign of retreating. A good P400 S commands somewhere in the region of £1.5 to £2 million, while a correctly restored SV can exceed £3 million at auction. The very best concours-quality examples have gone higher still.
Provenance and matching numbers matter enormously. The engine and gearbox share an oil supply, which made early cars prone to lubrication issues, so a full service history and evidence of professional maintenance are essential. Bodywork is notoriously complex to restore correctly, and poor previous repairs are common. There is a small but dedicated community of Miura specialists, and any serious purchase should involve one of them before contracts are signed.
Restoration projects still surface occasionally at lower price points, but the costs involved in returning a neglected Miura to correct specification are substantial. Budget carefully, buy the best you can afford, and drive it. These cars were built to be used.
Shop Lamborghini Miura Art at KK Automotive Art
KK Automotive Art does not yet have a Lamborghini Miura design in our collection. We are working on bringing this iconic car to our range, so watch this space. In the meantime, explore our classic car phone cases, classic car mugs and limited edition prints.
Explore more Italian classics in our classic cars blog.