Bertone Lamborghini Miura History

When Lamborghini engineers showed Bertone a bare rolling chassis at the 1965 Turin Motor Show — transverse V12 amidships, not yet bodied — Nuccio Bertone commissioned 27-year-old Marcello Gandini to clothe it. The resulting Miura, unveiled in finished form at the 1966 Geneva Motor Show, was immediately recognized as something unprecedented: a road car that looked and performed like a racing machine.

With its low-slung, sensuous body and a 3.9-liter V12 producing 350 hp in its ultimate SV form, the Miura was the world's fastest production car at launch and established the rear-mid-engine layout as the template for supercars that followed. Lamborghini produced 763 examples across three variants — P400, P400S, and P400SV — between 1966 and 1973.

The Miura's legacy extended far beyond its production run: it defined what a supercar could look like, and it made Bertone and Gandini internationally famous. No single car before or after did more to establish the reputation of a coachbuilder.