14 replies to this topic

[Nanni Dietrich]

One of the most beautiful car of the history, according to the "Cars of the century" or "All time cars" lists I've read on magazines, forums, tv: the Lamborghini Miura.

Simply a sportscar: berlinetta, 4-litre transverse 12 cylinder engine, about 400 Cv, gorgeous and aerodynamic.

But that great car didn't have an history in motorsport! I think I've never seen a Miura in a starting grid of an important race.

I remember a special Miura (named "Jota") Hubert Hahne drove in some German sportscar races at the beginning of the 70s, and an opened Miura a certain Gorre-Clichet raced at Montlhery.
I remember one or two private Miura in Italian hillclimbs (some "Riccardo" or "Johnny Karl" the unknown drivers), a strange sportscar built in Brazil with a Miura's engine and also an AMS-Lamborghini sportscar that never raced, I'm pretty sure.

Oh, and I remember a picture taken during the Tour de France Automobiles in... 1970, 1971? with a extraordinary Miura race-number 381... who knows?

[HEROS]

Copyright Sport Auto june 1971

Here is a photo about Thierry Gore's Lamborghini Miura Spyder taken in may 1971 at Montlhéry.

It was a prototype based on a road car and his driver was entered in few races in France in 1971, and as you mention it, the car made the Grand National (a little Tour Auto) with N°381 in september 1971.

Sorry for the poor quality of the photo.

[chofar]

From an article on Edmond Siclet (French Lamborghini importer) last year in a French magazine (can't remember which one at the moment), the car had been stolen with its transporter on a motorway halt and never reappeared since. The driver of the car once had a site where he was hosting some pictures and asking for news.
IIRC the car was built from a wrecked miura and had some good results ont the french national scene. Incidentally, this car authorizes the Miura owners to enter the Tour de France Historique.
The driver was Thierry (?) Gore.

[WDH74]

Lamborghinis have never been especially popular in racing, have they? The factory didn't appear to be especially interested in competition, certainly not like Ferrari, or even Alfa Romeo and Fiat... there never seemed to be an impetus to take the Miura racing.

I recall how big a splash it was when a Diablo appeared in Japanese GT racing a few years back, but that wasn't a factory outing, was it?

-William

[Raja]

A Miura was racing in Italy in rally and even in hill climb, I saw the photo but cannot show it as the photo is not mine ( copyright)

[BRG]

It is strange that Lamborghini have been so uninterested in competition. It makes the Ferrari model, where the racing supposedly fuels the prancing horse mystique which is necessary to sell their up-market products, a little less credible.

There has been some Lambo dabbling in GT racing in the last couple of years but how factory-sanctioned it has been, I don’t know.

As for the Miura, didn’t it take off at anything over 80-90mph? Hardly a very enticing car to race!

[MrAerodynamicist]

There was the Lamborghini Supertrophy they ran for a while.

[kayemod]

Originally posted by BRG
It is strange that Lamborghini have been so uninterested in competition. It makes the Ferrari model, where the racing supposedly fuels the prancing horse mystique which is necessary to sell their up-market products, a little less credible.

Not about Miuras, but fairly relevant to the topic all the same, it's true that Lamborghini were never very interested in competition, and pretty much all the impetus behind their not very successful F1 exploits with Larousse and Lotus came from Chrysler after they bought the company. Don't know how true it is, but the story at the time was that Chrysler wanted to take on Ferrari at their own game for some strange reason, hence the F1 engine programme. Larousse achieved very little, but Lotus did achieve points finishes with both Derek Warwick and Martin Donnelly. It's true that they didn't have many alternative choices, but apparently Lotus were genuinely enthusiastic about the Lamborghini engine. Perhaps with someone like Senna behind the wheel ....

[kayemod]

I'm not absolutely sure of this, but wasn't their somewhat lacklustre F1 engine programme the only factory-backed Lamborghini motor sport involvement of any kind?

[MCH]

The Lamborghini Murcielago R-GT effort (first race FIA-GT Monza 2003) from Reiter Engineering has had some factory input but I'm not sure how long that lasted.

[BRG]

Originally posted by kayemod
Perhaps with someone like Senna behind the wheel ....

Didn't that happen eventually at McLaren? Their Lambo engined mule famously went very fast indeed but Ron still opted for Cosworths - probably for reasons other than pure performance.

[kayemod]

Originally posted by BRG
Didn't that happen eventually at McLaren? Their Lambo engined mule famously went very fast indeed but Ron still opted for Cosworths - probably for reasons other than pure performance.

That's true, there seems to be very little in print about the tests, but Senna was reported to like the Lamborghini engine in the test mule. I'd guess that Ron eventually opted for Cosworths for commercial reasons.

[Haddock]

If I recall, it was Peugeots that Ron opted for, for commercial reasons (i.e. they were free). The test took place towards the end of 1993 at Estoril, and Ron was running Cosworths that year.

I think the Lamborghini motor that Senna tested was originally to have been rebadged as a Chrysler. In his autobiography, Jo Ramirez said "in back to back tests, the Lamborghini proved almost 2 seconds faster than the Ford". and remarked that "Senna pushed us really hard to take that engine to the last two races, which was ludicrous as there wasn't enough time to prepare everything even for one car."

[petefenelon]

It's often seemed like the only people who've ever had a grasp of engineering at Lamborghini pre-Audi were Dallara and Bob Wallace. Forghieri's V12 eventually became quite powerful and was intermittently pretty good (anything that got the '89 Lola that far up the grid was reasonable!)

In '93 or thereabouts it didn't seem to really matter how good your engine was, it was all down to your ECU software and I suspect that TAG-McLaren could've built some absolutely kick-a** stuff on top of the flexibility of the Lambo 12, but I suspect that Senna liked it because it was, pure and simple, more powerful than the Cossie and that he could drive round the software ;)

Don't forget the 1991 GLAS/Lambo/Modena project ;)

[MCS]

What about the new "retro" version...?

http://cars.msn.co.u...detroit06miura/