The Lamborghini Miura

A little over a year ago, we brought a new collie puppy into our home.  We had to make the big decision on what to name her.  Since we are huge car fans, we wanted her name to reflect our love of cars.  But it had to be something special.  After a lot of thought, we named our new collie puppy, Miura.  She is named after the first Lamborghini ever built, the Lamborghini Miura.

The Lamborghini Miura was built in Italy between the years of 1966 and 1973.  The car received its name from the Spanish ranch of legendary bull breeder Don Antonio Miura, whose bulls had a strong attack instinct. 

The Lamborghini Miura is considered by some to be the trend setter in high performance, two-seater, mid-engine sports cars.   There was only 763 cars built.  One very interesting fact about the Miura is the overall size of the car.  The length of the car is 171.6 inches with a width of 69.3 inches, but the height is only 41.5 inches, which is as tall as my 5 year son.

There are a couple of different models of the Miura.  The early ones as known as P400 & there were 275 produced between 1966 and 1969.  They had a V12 engine mounted transversely and produced 350 HP.  This car was a huge success for Lamborghini despite its at the time steep $20,000 USD price tag.

The next model known as P400s or the Miura S was introduced at the Turin Motorshow in 1968.  Engine changes were good for an additional 20HP.  There were 338 produced between December 1968 and 1971.

The last and most well known Miura was the P400SV or the Miura SV.  The engine changes gave an additional 15HP to up it to 385HP.  The SV model is easily identified from the previous models because of its lack of “eyebrows” over the headlights & the wider fenders.  There were 150 Miura SVs produced.

On January 5, 2006 a Miura Concept was presented at the American Museum of Television and Radio.  The Concept made its official debut at the North American International Auto Show two weeks later.  It’s the first design by the new Lamborghini chief, Walter de’Silva and commemorates the 1966 introduction of the original Miura.  Lamborghini though has denied that the concept will return the Miura to production.  Personally, I would love to see the Concept be produced but I do understand that they considered the concept a celebration of their history.  But how awesome would that car be?!

I have never seen a Lamborghini Miura in person and though I would love to, highly doubt that I ever will.  It has been a dream car for me the more I read and look at this car.  It is amazing to me what this car can do.  It was the first SuperCar.  So thank you Lamborghini Miura for starting the world of SuperCars.  What a wonderful world that is!

Dawn