Cars
1968 Lamborghini Miura P400 Chassis #3586
Ferruccio Lamborghini's frustration with Ferrari led him to create Lamborghini Automobili. The groundbreaking Miura became an icon, gaining further fame in "The Italian Job." Chassis #3586 now holds a special place in automotive history.
Lamborghini’s long and successful adventure in the world of cars began in the early 1960s when Ferruccio Lamborghini, an Emilian entrepreneur who had made a fortune building tractors and boilers, noticed that his Ferrari 250 GT kept running into frequent technical malfunctions with its clutch, which resulted in exorbitant repair expenses. He complained in person to Enzo Ferrari and when the Drake reportedly replied that “The clutch is not the problem. The problem is you don’t know how to drive a Ferrari and you break the clutch.”, Ferruccio saw an opportunity and decided right there and then to make his own cars, so he could be sure work the way he wanted them to.
Lamborghini Automobili was officially founded in 1963 and immediately hired some extraordinary talent: Giotto Bizzarrini was entrusted with the creation of a 3,500cc V12 engine and Giampaolo Dallara with the development of the chassis. The first car produced was the 350 GTV, a prototype designed by Franco Scaglione and presented in 1963, followed by the 350 GT and 400 GT production versions with Touring bodywork over the next few years.
Then, in a market dominated by front-engine models that focused mainly on engine power, Giampaolo Dallara designed a revolutionary road sports car, the Miura presented in 1966, for Ferruccio Lamborghini: a boxed steel plate chassis, V-12 engine mounted transversely in the rear, a gearbox housing cast in the engine block itself, perfect weight distribution that kept everything inboard, and an impressive power output of 350hp that was particularly high for 1966. In addition to these technical details, the truly unique design by the hand of Marcello Gandini, Bertone's chief designer.
