The raging bull

Lamborghini Gallardo? A fine name if the idea is to conjure up some kind of an Italian coffee speciality.

The Lamborghini Murcielago is another one of the great dream cars of our age, and apparently some owners can actually pronounce its name properly.
Yet there is another car from this Italian stable which puts all its modern successors in the shade, never mind the fact that it made its debut 40 years ago. The Lamborghina Miura was a seminal supercar and so it comes as no surprise that the company recently sought to hark back to that era with a Miura concept. It reproduced the space-age lines of the orginal and showed that this iconic car has lost none of its appeal.
In its heyday almost everyone coveted the Miura. In miniature form, it was a schoolboy favourite, sent rolling across countless living carpets and many a family man at the wheel of his humble Opel Rekord saloon longed to be at the helm of this wickedly-fast machine from Italy.
When the Miura weighed in at the Geneva car show in 1966, the name of Lamborghini was scarcely known in motoring circles. The company was founded by farmer’s son Ferrucio Lamborghini in 1964 and after making tractors and air-conditioning equipment the company’s first car, the 350GTV powered by a V12 engine and styled by Carrozzeria Touring of Milan, entered the arena.
Legend has it that the motoring world owes the very existence of Lamborghini sports cars to Enzo Ferrari, who apparently snubbed Ferrucio when he made a few critical observations about the sports cars from Maranello.
The Lamborghini proprietor was so annoyed at the arrogance of the Ferrari autocrat that he pledged to come up with a rival car. Lamborghini managed to lure away a number of top Ferrari staff, gathered a few experts along the way and established his reputation with the 350 GTV and its successor the 400 GTV.
It was the Miura, however, which stole the show and put the company in the same league as Ferrari. Like almost all subsequent Lamborghini steeds, this model owed its name to a famous Spanish breeder of fighting bulls, in this case Eduardo Miura. The fact that Ferrucio was also born under the Zodiac sign of Taurus undoubtedly played a part.
Well the Miura not only carried a bullish name, its owner literally got it in the neck, with a V12-engine located amidships right behind the driver’s head. The eye-catching body design by Bertone was only part of the success story. By implanting the powerful transverse power unit not at the front or back but in the middle of the chassis, the makers had come up with a configuration unknown outside the race track.
The Miura not only looked fast, it was the definitive sports car in every respect. The first version of the V12 in the debut P400 model turned out a respectable 350 horsepower which was enough for an official top speed of 274 kilometres an hour. At the time, the Miura was the fastest road-going sports car money could buy.
The centrally-located engine right behind the seats meant that noise levels could be deafening, while those of a practical bent complained that the luggage compartment was ridiculously small.
Despite these drawbacks, the Miura was a sales success, considering that it was only ever designed to be a limited production object of desire. A total of 474 P400s were sold, alongside 140 and 150 of the S and SV versions respectively.