Lamborghini Miura – Geneva Motor Show – 1966

This is the first glimpse the world caught of the Lamborghini Miura, the car was unveiled at the Geneva Motorshow in 1966 to rapturous applause and has stood as a testament to the phenomenal automotive engineering talent of Lamborghini’s three top engineers, Bob Wallace, Gian Paolo Dallara and Paolo Stanzani.

Interestingly the three men initially worked on the Miura secretively in the late evenings after everyone else had gone home. They feared that the bean counters would reject the project outright over cost concerns, once the design was almost completed they took it to the senior management and won hard fought approval to build a single prototype.

Then with the build almost completed and the Geneva Motor Show deadline fast approaching, the three Muira designers were horrified to learn that their preferred engine wouldn’t fit into the engine bay, with no time left for modifications they filled the engine bay with ballast and bolted the engine cover down.

That car is the one you see above, on it’s first day on the showroom floor in Geneva. The reception the car received was so unprecedented that Lamborghini agreed to produce a production version with Wallace, Dallara and Stanzani taking the helm for the cars development and subsequent release.

 

 


Published by Ben Branch -