Lamborghini Miura Turns 50, Follows “The Italian Job” Route

Designed by the Lamborghini’s engineering team in their spare time, against the wishes of Ferruccio Lamborghini, the Miura P400 was introduced, as a prototype, at the 1966 Geneva Motor Show.

Fifty years later, the brand’s former flagship hasn’t been forgotten and to celebrate its anniversary, three cars from the Lamborghini Museum were sent down the route used in the 1969 film “The Italian Job”, in the opening sequence.

The cars were escorted by Polizia Stradale (Highway Patrol) and by Anas (government-owned Italian company that builds and maintains roads), up the hairpin curves of state road 27, around the Great St. Bernard mountain, in the Italian Alps, opened on a one-time basis, for this event only.

During the ceremony, Marcello Gandini, who came up with the timeless design for Carrozzeria Bertone, and engineers Gian Paolo Dallara and Paolo Stanzani, who were in charge of the technical side, “met in a warm reunion”, as Lamborghini explains.

Between ’66 and ’73, the Raging Bull put together 764 units of the flagship two-door coupe sports car, with a transverse mid-engine and rear-wheel drive layout, taking power from a 3.9-liter V12 engine, rated at 350 HP in the P400. The car had an original price of $20,000, equal to approximately $150,000 today, and was replaced, in 1974, by the Countach.