Two Museum Miuras, One Film Route, Three Legendary Engineers
Lamborghini pulled two Miuras from its own museum collection and pointed them at the Great St. Bernard Pass, retracing the exact road that opened Peter Collinson’s 1969 cult film The Italian Job. The pass, normally closed, was opened on a one-time basis specifically for this drive. Vehicles from Anas (Italy’s national road authority) and the Polizia Stradale provided the escort, treating two mid-century supercars like the national treasures they arguably are.
The drive was the centerpiece, but the real story walked on two legs. Gian Paolo Dallara, Paolo Stanzani, and Marcello Gandini gathered together for the occasion. Dallara and Stanzani engineered the Miura’s mechanical architecture; Gandini, working under Nuccio Bertone at Carrozzeria Bertone, penned the body that made the automotive world collectively forget how to breathe. Reuniting all three in 2016, on the same Alpine hairpins their creation once climbed for a movie camera, gave the anniversary a gravity that a static museum display or a press conference podium simply cannot replicate. That gravity is the thread running through every part of this story: the Miura matters because it changed what a road car could be, and Lamborghini chose to honor it not with a gala but with the sound of a V12 echoing off rock walls.
Why the Miura Still Defines What a Supercar Is
Fifty years after its debut, the Miura remains the car that drew the line between “fast grand tourer” and “supercar.” One widely cited account describes it as the first high-performance production road car to feature a rear mid-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout, a configuration now so standard in the segment that deviating from it requires an explanation. When the P400 appeared at the 1966 Geneva Motor Show, it was, by most accounts, the fastest production car in the world.
The origin story explains so much about Lamborghini’s character as a company. Ferruccio Lamborghini preferred refined grand tourers. His engineering team, led by Dallara and Stanzani, designed the Miura in their spare time, essentially building a race-derived machine behind the boss’s back. When Ferruccio saw the development mule, he approved continued work. That tension between GT refinement and barely contained racing ambition still runs through every car Sant’Agata produces.
Production ran from 1966 to 1973, yielding the P400, the revised P400S, and the ultimate P400 SV. The SV, with its wider rear fenders and revised suspension, remains among the most coveted road cars ever built. Collectors treat them accordingly. Understanding this lineage is what makes the 2016 reunion on the Great St. Bernard Pass more than a photo opportunity. Seeing the men who built the car against their employer’s wishes standing beside it half a century later, on a road chosen for its cinematic history, collapses the distance between legend and lived experience.
The Italian Job Connection
The opening sequence of The Italian Job remains one of cinema’s most beautiful automotive moments: a Miura climbing state road 27 through Alpine switchbacks, V12 exhaust note bouncing off rock walls, before meeting a rather unfortunate end in a tunnel. The scene cemented the Miura in popular culture beyond the automotive press, turning it into something even people who could not name a single engine specification recognized on sight.
Lamborghini’s decision to use that specific road was deliberate and, frankly, clever. Rather than staging a concours lawn display, the company put the cars back where they became famous. The Great St. Bernard Pass, with its tight hairpins and dramatic elevation changes, provided the kind of backdrop that flatters the Miura’s proportions in a way no showroom floor can. The flip-up clamshell hoods, the distinctive “eyelash” headlight surrounds, the impossibly low roofline: these details read best against stone and sky, not carpet and spotlights.
For enthusiasts who follow Lamborghini’s heritage events closely, this drive was part of a broader 2016 celebration that also included a 23-car Miura rally in Spain, where participants visited the Miura ranch in Zahariche. That ranch, breeding the formidable toro (bull) that gave the car its name since 1842, connects Lamborghini’s naming tradition to something tangible and alive. Taken together, the Alpine drive and the Spanish rally show a company treating the Miura’s anniversary not as a marketing exercise but as a pilgrimage to the places and people that made the car iconic.
Gandini, Dallara, Stanzani: A Reunion That Won’t Happen Again
Gathering the three men most responsible for the Miura’s existence in one place carried a significance that extends beyond ceremony. Gian Paolo Dallara went on to found Dallara Automobili, which today supplies chassis to IndyCar and builds the Stradale. Paolo Stanzani continued working at Lamborghini through the Countach era, shaping the company’s engineering direction for years after the Miura. Marcello Gandini’s portfolio includes the Countach, the Lancia Stratos, and the original Diablo, making him one of the most consequential automotive designers of the twentieth century.
All three were in their seventies or older at the time of this reunion. Opportunities to bring together the original creative team behind a car this important become rarer with each passing year. Lamborghini, to its credit, recognized the moment and staged it properly: not as a corporate event with PowerPoint slides, but as a drive on a mountain road with police escort and museum cars.
One detail from the company’s account stands out. Lamborghini describes the gathering as a “warm reunion,” which suggests these men had not been in the same room together recently. Given their divergent careers after Sant’Agata, that seems plausible. The Miura was, in many ways, a product of youthful ambition and creative friction. Seeing its creators together half a century later, standing beside the cars they built against their employer’s wishes, carries a weight that no spec sheet can convey. It also reinforces the anniversary’s central point: the Miura is not merely a car Lamborghini once produced. It is the car that proved what Lamborghini could become.
What the Miura Means for Lamborghini’s Future
Lamborghini’s relationship with the Miura is complicated in a way that makes it more interesting than a simple heritage trophy. According to Jalopnik, the company stated plainly that it will never produce a new interpretation of the Miura. While the Countach received a modern limited-edition revival, the Miura remains untouchable. The company’s position, as reported, is essentially: “We are not looking backwards.”
That stance tells you something about how Sant’Agata views the car. The Countach was futuristic enough to reinterpret. The Miura is considered so perfectly of its moment that any modern version would diminish the original. Whether you agree with that logic or not, it means the approximately 764 Miuras produced between 1966 and 1973 are all that will ever exist. For collectors and enthusiasts, that finality only increases the car’s gravitational pull.
The Miura’s DNA lives in the company’s willingness to let engineers take risks that make management uncomfortable. Lamborghini keeps invoking the Miura’s spirit not because it wants to build another one, but because the car’s origin story validates the company’s self-image as a place where audacious engineering wins arguments. The 2016 anniversary drive, with its museum cars and reunited creators on an Alpine pass, was Lamborghini’s way of acknowledging that debt. The Great St. Bernard Pass closed again after the Miuras descended. The car’s influence on everything Sant’Agata builds did not.
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