Before the Supercar Existed, The Genesis of the Lamborghini Miura
- Luigi Marmiroli
- 3 days ago
- 10 min read
On the eve of its 60th anniversary, Lamborghini engineer Luigi Marmiroli retraces the technical, human and cultural forces that gave birth to the Miura and forever changed the meaning of performance cars. Words Luigi Marmiroli Photography Jeroen Vink for SpeedHolics, Lamborghini Archive, holders untraced Illustrations Luigi Marmiroli Archive
The Lamborghini Miura represents one of the most beautiful and decisive chapters in the history of sports motoring. As its 60th anniversary approaches in 2026, I feel compelled, as an engineer who lived through that era, to pay tribute to a car that did not merely mark a milestone but changed the very nature of the automobile. I will do so in an unusual way, by placing the birth of the Miura within the “primordial broth” of the early 1960s, a period shaped above all by the Modenese sports-car industry. It was an environment populated by manufacturers, designers and technicians in constant motion, generating what I like to call, half jokingly, a true “ballet of engineers”. Many of these figures moved from one company to another, carrying with them experience, intuition and technical knowledge, creating a shared network of ideas that proved fundamental to the birth of the modern supercar.
The first conclusion that clearly emerges from this analysis is that 1963 was the pivotal year. It was the moment when all the conditions for the supercar converged.
Ferrari was enjoying an extremely positive phase, continuing the legendary 250 family, one of the most admired and successful sports-car series of all time. On the racing side, Ferrari dominated both sports prototypes and Formula One. Henry Ford II, convinced that motorsport was the most powerful advertising tool, watched his American cars repeatedly defeated on international circuits by what he regarded as a small manufacturer from Maranello. When he failed to beat Ferrari on track, he decided to buy the company outright and turn it into Ford’s racing division. He was encouraged by his right-hand man, the Italian-American Lee Iacocca, who would later acquire Lamborghini Automobili for Chrysler some twenty-five years later.
The plan collapsed when Enzo Ferrari realised that the deal would strip him of sporting autonomy. He rejected the generous offer without hesitation. That decision soon led to new shareholders and, just as importantly, to the departure of eight technicians and managers who could no longer tolerate internal interference. Thus began the “ballet of engineers”. Among those leaving Ferrari were Giotto Bizzarrini and Carlo Chiti, who founded ATS with the explicit aim of making Enzo Ferrari regret their departure by challenging him first in Formula One and later in the supercar arena. Bizzarrini would soon reappear as an external consultant, designing Lamborghini’s first and famous V12 engine. Replacing him at Ferrari was a young Gianpaolo Dallara, destined to become Lamborghini’s technical director.
In the same period, Ferruccio Lamborghini also clashed with Enzo Ferrari and would soon demonstrate his capabilities with the 350 GTV and, above all, with the Miura. A curious footnote links ATS to Lamborghini even further, as the ATS road car was styled by Franco Scaglione, who had been responsible for the design of Lamborghini’s very first prototype.
Around them, the Modenese scene was extraordinarily fertile. Iso Rivolta marketed a luxurious coupé designed by Giugiaro, with a chassis by Giulio Alfieri and American Chevrolet power, unveiling the Iso Grifo in Turin in 1963 under the technical guidance of Bizzarrini.
Maserati presented the first Quattroporte, a high-performance luxury saloon that inaugurated a lineage still alive today. Alejandro de Tomaso, newly arrived in Modena, presented his first road car at the 1963 Turin Motor Show, the Vallelunga, a pioneering central-engined design with a structural engine, aluminium backbone chassis and fibreglass body, closely aligned with contemporary racing practice. Stanguellini continued its Formula Junior production, a category created to introduce young drivers to competition, and in 1963 these cars returned to the “all-rear” layout, with rear engine and rear-wheel drive, confirming how rapidly technical paradigms were shifting.
Against this backdrop appear the fathers of the Miura, beginning with Ferruccio Lamborghini, who entered the scene forcefully in 1963. Of rural origin, with limited formal education but exceptional mechanical instinct, he had refined his skills during the war while stationed in Rhodes as head of a military repair workshop. After the conflict, he travelled across Italy recovering abandoned military vehicles and transforming them into agricultural machines. He then built a successful industrial empire in tractors, hydraulics and burners, contributing directly to the economic boom of Emilia-Romagna. A lover of fine living and beautiful cars, after owning a Morgan and a Jaguar he purchased a Ferrari 250. According to his biographers, he complained to Enzo Ferrari about the car’s problems and was dismissed with the suggestion that he should stick to tractors. That slight fuelled his determination to build cars more beautiful and more capable than those of the “Lord of Maranello”, as he liked to call him. In May 1963, against the advice of his managers, Ferruccio founded Automobili Lamborghini. In the fields of Sant’Agata Bolognese he built a factory in record time and developed the refined 350 GTV. Most importantly, he hired two engineers who would prove decisive for the Miura: Gianpaolo Dallara and, shortly afterwards, Paolo Stanzani. Ironically, Ferruccio would remain owner of his car company for little more than a decade. A financial crisis in his tractor business forced him to sell Automobili Lamborghini to Swiss investors, after which he retired to a farm near Lake Trasimeno.
Giotto Bizzarrini, after experiences at Alfa Romeo and Ferrari where he authored all major engines until 1961, founded a consultancy in Livorno. Ferruccio Lamborghini commissioned him to design a V12 under a strict agreement: if the engine failed to meet specifications, he would not be paid. The result was a magnificent 3.9-litre twelve-cylinder engine, first installed in the 350 GTV and later mounted transversely at the rear of the Miura.
Gianpaolo Dallara, a central figure in our story, he held a degree in aeronautical engineering and was a passionate devotee of motor racing. In 1959 he was hired by Enzo Ferrari with the promise that he would be assigned to trackside racing activities. Instead, he was placed in the Technical Office, working alongside a group of some fifteen technicians responsible for the design of all Ferrari cars, from racing machines to road models. Among them were the legendary Rocchi and Salvarani. At this point, I ask the reader’s indulgence for a brief personal aside: like Dallara, though some ten years later, I too was personally hired by Ferrari to work at the circuit, only to be redirected in the same way to the Engineering Studies department. There, I also found Rocchi and Salvarani still in place, who, despite not being engineers, continued to serve as exceptional tutors in the specialised art of sports-car design. I am certain that Dallara, too, came to appreciate their extraordinary competence. His frustration peaked when he was sent to the Monaco Grand Prix not as a track engineer but as a spectator. He then moved to Maserati under Giulio Alfieri and, in 1963, joined Lamborghini as head of the newly created technical department, designing the chassis of the Miura before leaving six years later to pursue Formula One and Formula Two projects with Frank Williams.
Paolo Stanzani, a Bologna engineering graduate with a reserved character, met Ferruccio Lamborghini almost by chance and was hired on the spot. Initially responsible for testing, homologation and development, he worked closely with Dallara on the Miura. In 1968 he became general manager and later designed the Countach. Deeply affected by Ferruccio’s departure and the company’s financial difficulties, he left Lamborghini in 1975 to work in civil engineering.
Marcello Gandini stands as the central figure in the creation of the Miura myth. A designer with extraordinary mechanical culture, he entered Bertone as a freelancer in 1965 and became a full-time employee in 1965 when Giugiaro left, remaining for fourteen years. Frustrated by Lamborghini’s absence from racing, Dallara effectively conceived a near-competition car at a time when all road sports cars still used front engines and rear-wheel drive, despite Ferrari’s famous warning against “putting the cart before the horse”.
Racing practice had already demonstrated the superiority of the rear-engine layout, and Lamborghini placed its V12 transversely behind the cockpit, with the gearbox beneath the engine and clutch and differential integrated in a single casting.
The aeronautically inspired boxed-steel chassis featured lightening holes, independent suspension and disc brakes all round, while front-mounted horizontal radiators unfortunately expelled hot air towards the windscreen. It was immediately clear that this project overturned Lamborghini’s own philosophy. Although the engineers feared Ferruccio’s reaction, he accepted it on the condition of limited production. The naked rolling chassis was displayed at the Turin Motor Show in November 1965, eclipsing even the nearby De Tomaso Vallelunga and convincing Nuccio Bertone that he was the man to “make the shoe to Lamborghini’s foot”. Gandini was entrusted with styling and construction only months before the Geneva Motor Show of 1966.
In an extraordinary three-month effort, Gandini’s team delivered the Miura P400. Unveiled in brilliant orange, it instantly made all other sports cars appear outdated. The Miura projected the industry into a new era and earned the title of supercar through its low, flowing form, mechanical expressiveness and rejection of decorative excess. It established a Lamborghini philosophy based on visual impact, innovation and perpetual reinvention, later embodied by the Countach and Diablo.
Technical problems inevitably followed, yet even Enzo Ferrari reportedly remarked, after seeing it in action, “fortunately this car is built by Lamborghini”, a sentence that revealed admiration for the concept while underestimating its execution. One is left to wonder whether, in that moment, he recalled having provoked Ferruccio Lamborghini into creating the very car that would redefine the modern sports car.
It soon became clear that the Miura overturned Lamborghini’s established design philosophy entirely. When the engineers presented their drawings to Ferruccio Lamborghini, they did so with a degree of apprehension, and were genuinely surprised when he approved the project, albeit with visible reservations.
Lamborghini agreed on one essential condition: production would be limited to a small number of cars intended for the most daring clients, and the model would primarily serve as a technological and image-building flagship for the company’s more conventional production. Working relentlessly, day and night, the team succeeded in presenting a naked rolling chassis, devoid of bodywork, at the Turin Motor Show in November 1965, a bold and unconventional move that immediately set the project apart.
It mattered little that a nearby stand displayed the spider that would later evolve into the De Tomaso Vallelunga, itself featuring a rear-engine layout. The attention of visitors and rival engineers alike was irresistibly drawn to this mysterious, radical machine. Many doubted that a true road car could ever be derived from such an audacious technical concept, yet Nuccio Bertone, present at the show, instantly recognised its potential. Deeply impressed, he approached Ferruccio Lamborghini with a memorable offer: “I am the one who can make the shoe to fit your foot.”
Just two months later, shortly before Christmas, Lamborghini entrusted Bertone with both the styling and construction of the bodywork. At that decisive moment, Marcello Gandini entered the story. He was given a seemingly impossible task: just three months to define the design, hand-craft the body panels and assemble them onto the chassis. Working with extraordinary intensity, Gandini and his team achieved what can only be described as a miracle. In the spring of 1966, they unveiled a fully running prototype at the Geneva Motor Show. Gandini would later explain that he had worked in total creative freedom, constrained only by international regulations which, at that time, were still relatively permissive. The lack of time allowed no second thoughts: the design flowed instinctively, pure and uncompromised.
From the very beginning, the Miura anticipated the philosophy that would define Lamborghini styling for decades. It was conceived to provoke love at first sight, to celebrate mechanical beauty, and to communicate power and speed directly, even when standing still, with an impact capable of leaving observers speechless. There would be no family resemblance between models. Each Lamborghini was meant to be radically different from its predecessor, a principle that would later be honoured by both the Countach and the Diablo. The Miura’s low, flowing single-volume form, its clean and decisive lines, and its deliberate rejection of purely decorative elements such as chrome trim, two-tone paintwork or mouldings conveyed aggression, exclusivity and a clear break from the conventions of competing sports cars. When the Miura P400 was unveiled at the 1966 Geneva Motor Show, finished in a brilliant shade of orange, its success was immediate and unprecedented.
Overnight, every other sports car seemed to belong to a previous era. The Miura projected the automotive world into a new dimension of performance and design, earning for itself the defining title of supercar. As Gandini had intended, the car left audiences breathless. Yet, with the modesty typical of truly great figures, he later claimed that the enthusiastic reception far exceeded its actual merits.
In this tribute to the Miura, I do not wish to dwell on the countless technical challenges that would later be addressed and resolved, except to recall one revealing episode. During road testing, Miura test drivers often engaged in impromptu acceleration contests with their Ferrari counterparts, frequently emerging victorious. I know with certainty the remark Enzo Ferrari made to his collaborators at the time: “fortunately this car is built by Lamborghini.” The comment was not intended as praise for build quality, but it unmistakably acknowledged the brilliance of the concept. One cannot help but wonder whether, in that moment, Ferrari recalled that it was he himself who had provoked Ferruccio Lamborghini into becoming his most audacious rival.
Luigi Marmiroli was born in Fiorano Modenese in 1945. After graduating in mechanical engineering at the University of Padua, in 1970 he was hired by Ferrari to introduce electronic computing to Maranello for the first time. In 1976 he founded Fly Studio with Giacomo Caliri, designing and managing competition cars on international circuits. Their main works were for Fittipaldi Copersucar, Autodelta, ATS and Minardi, with whom they joined forces. The developments in the partnership with Autodelta led Marmiroli to manage the technical unit of the Euroracing team in 1983. Two years later he was hired by Lamborghini to design the heir of the Countach. Other projects came after the 17 versions of the Diablo, though due to the continuing changes of ownership of the Sant’Agata based company, they were never put into production. Marmiroli relaunched Fly Studio in 1997, providing consulting services. One of the projects of the last few years is the development of microcars, quadbikes and commercial vehicles, including electric versions.
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