Exclusive news from Joe Sackey, Miura expert and author of "The Lamborghini Miura Bible" to be published in November 2008 by Veloce Publishing Ltd.

Purely as a design exercise, aimed at keeping demand for Lamborghini’s Miura on the crest of a wave, Nuccio Bertone assigned Marcello Gandini a styling project to create a Spyder version of the Miura, commencing in the second half of 1967.

The ‘Lamborghini Bertone Miura Roadster,’ as it was officially christened, was finished in a light metallic blue with an off-white leather interior with red carpeting. The dashboard and steering remained black, and the steering wheel itself was the original avant-garde unit that was also used on the Marzal. This Miura carried chassis number 3498 (which, in accordance with its one-off prototype status, is not even listed in the factory’s original production chassis number register), and P400 engine number 1642 was fitted.

For the January 1968 Salon de L’Automobile Bruxelles, Bertone pulled off another masterstroke when he unveiled this Miura Spyder to a gob-smacked Ferruccio Lamborghini, who, we are told, only saw the show car for the first time at the preview the day before. However, Bertone told Lamborghini to put any ideas of production right out of his mind: “We couldn’t make this car for production because there were untold problems with stress-tolerance issues involving the chassis and the windscreen. It’s purpose was simply that of a showcar,” Bertone confided to a GM stylist years later.

With its Bertone publicity duties completed, the Spyder was sent to Sant’Agata (where it was famously photographed by both Zagari and Coltrin, and it was fettled by the service department with the idea of making it roadworthy to sell as an expensive one-off.

In 1968, International Lead and Zinc Research Organisation (ILZRO) CEO, the late Shrade Radtke, was looking for something radical to showcase the zinc alloys, coating and plating systems the company promoted for the major manufacturers in the Detroit area. It was decided to purchase a standard production Lamborghini Miura Berlinetta and have it specially built using zinc-based components and trim wherever possible.

Onwards then to Sant’Agata, and a meeting with Paolo Stanzani. However, Stanzani was against the idea of modifying a production Miura, and came up with the convenient solution of offering the one-off Miura Roadster, at the time at Sant’Agata for fettling. The offer was accepted on the spot.

In May of 1969, the "ZN75" was completed, now adorned with much extra brightwork and painted metalic green, and Bertone arranged for a private showing at a villa in Turin, attended by the hierachy of the Italian automotive industry. It was a special day, and Bertone, was proudly pictured with the car on that occasion.

There followed a globe-trotting schedule of International Motor Shows -
August 1969 – Shown in Detroit, Michigan
October 1969 – Shown in Montreal, Canada
November 1969 – Shown in Anaheim, California
January 1970 – Shown in Detroit, Michigan
January 1970 – Shown in Montreal, Canada
February 1970 – Shown in London, England and featured on BBC TV
April 1970 – Shown in Palmerton, Pennsylvania
July 1970 – Shown in Tokyo, Japan
August 1970 – Shown in Sydney, Australia
November 1970 – Shown in Paris, France

After a final showing at the 1978 Detroit Motor Show, in February of 1981, Radtke donated the car to the Boston Museum of Transportation for an estimated $200,000 tax deduction. In the mid-1980s, it was refurbished and its interior upholstery replaced.

In 1989, it was purchased by the Portman group, and has spent its life since then shuttling from auction house to temporary owner, likely because its full history and significance is unknown by most. Auctioned off soon thereafter, it spent a number of years in Japanese collection. In 2002 it returned to the USA for a brief sojourn, before finding another home with a Ferrari collector in France.

In December 2006, the priceless Miura Roadster was finally purchased by a New York property developer who, at huge cost, has had the car returned to its original 1968 Salon de L’Automobile Bruxelles specification. The conversion, by the Bobileff Motorcar Company, was completed in late August 2008.

Born to Italian grape farmers in 1916, Ferruccio Lamborghini had a lifelong passion for engines from a very young age and, after returning home after World War II, was inspired to start a farm tractor company that soon became the centerpiece of an industrial empire. In the early 1960s Lamborghini formulated a plan to produce his own engine for use in a personal car and perhaps a racer or two. He hired ex-Ferrari engineer Giotto Bizzarrini to design it using Lamborghini’s own design parameters: a 60 degree V-12, four overhead cams, short stroke/big bore architecture, dry sump oiling and as low a profile as possible to allow for use in both road and racing cars.

The completed engine surprised the group by easily churning out 360 HP, but when Lamborghini ordered Bizzarrini to detune the V-12 for reliable road service, the engineer rejected the instruction, leaving 24-year-old Giampaolo Dallara, a brilliant graduate of the aeronautical engineering program at the Polytechnical Institute of Milan, to continue development. Paolo Stanzini, a graduate engineer from the University of Bologna, and New Zealander Bob Wallace, a former Ferrari and Maserati test driver, joined him to complete the engine work and design a new car around it; both were just 25 years old.

Their first chassis design, the GTV prototype, shown at the 1963 Turin show, failed to impress the cognoscenti, but the new V-12 engine displayed next to it attracted enough attention that Lamborghini had the GTV chassis cloaked in Carrozzeria Touring coachwork, and orders poured in for the gorgeous and refined front-engined 2-seat 350 GT coupe shown at Geneva in 1964.

As 350 GT production commenced, Dallara, Stanzini and Wallace presented Lamborghini with a layout for a mid-engined sports car designed around the V-12 that would be the first mid-engined road going sports car. Lamborghini gave his enthusiastic approval, and the resulting Miura P400 redefined the very concept of the Grand Touring car.

Cloaked in bodywork designed by Marcello Gandini of Bertone, the first completed Miura stunned the crowds at the 1966 Geneva show with its otherworldly beauty. The car attracted a huge throng at the 1966 Monaca Grand Prix that grew even larger when Lamborghini lit the V-12, its bellowing exhaust note reverberating off the stone walls of Casino Square.

Named after the renowned fighting bulls bred from the lineage of the Miura Cattle Ranch in the Spanish province of Seville, the Miura was not only the most beautiful new car on the road in 1966; it was also the fastest, with a top speed of over 170 MPH – in 5th gear, at 7,000 RPM.

Autotelaio n. 3315 is a very early production matching-numbers 1968 Miura P400 that has been largely preserved throughout its ownership by the same family since 1985, when they purchased it from Ferrari of Los Gatos in California. The car appears to have been driven only 45,590 kilometers or 28,328 miles since new, which is supported by the voluminous maintenance records that accompany the vehicle. In 1997 the engine was rebuilt by Al Burtoni’s renowned Milano Imports in Gilroy, California, who carried out regular service work through the 1990s to 2006, with Dino Motors of San Mateo carrying out more recent maintenance through 2014.

This magnificent early Miura coupe’s condition well reflects its documented history of professional care and maintenance. Described as very gratifying to drive and operating exceptionally well, the car presents as generally unrestored with a repaint and characterful patina throughout. It is structurally solid and sound, with recent detailing to the chassis, engine bay and storage compartment, and is accompanied with the factory tool roll and extensive documentation that includes the November 3, 1985 purchase order from Ferrari Los Gatos and a binder of service receipts.

Paolo Stanzani was one of the legends behind the original mid-engined supercar

Paolo Stanzani, a pivotal force in Lamborghini and a “father of the Miura”, has died at the age of 80.

It was Stanzani, along with designer Marcello Gandini, test driver Bob Wallace and chassis engineer Gian Paulo Dallara, who forever changed the fortunes of the small Italian car company in the 1960s when they created the epoch-shifting Miura.

At the time, Ferruccio Lamborghini was happy to build front-engined grand tourers to compete with Ferrari, but the young and hungry junior employees wanted something revolutionary.

And they got their wish – the Miura turned the world of supercars on its head, singlehandedly spawning the mid-engined revolution and cementing Lamborghini’s place in the pantheon of all-time supercar greats.

We’re pretty much in love with the Miura, and were lucky enough to recreate the its famous first film appearance in
The Italian Job. But it’s for more than the Miura that we remember Stanzani.

Under his guidance, the years that followed saw Lamborghini create the Espada, Jarama, Miura SV, Urraco and Countach. Stanzani is also considered the “father of the Countach”, and that’s quite an epitaph.

Vale, Paolo, and thank you.