Lamborghini Miura: Widely Credited as the World's First Supercar

Before this car, nothing quite like the modern supercar concept existed. Afterward, an entire category of low, mid-engined exotics followed the template it established.

Illustration for editorial purposes

Creating a Category That Didn't Exist Yet

Plenty of cars get called groundbreaking loosely. This one earns the description literally — its mid-engined, low-slung layout established a template that virtually every supercar since has followed in some form.

The Layout That Made "Supercar" a Necessary Word

Introduced in 1966, the Miura placed its V12 engine transversely behind the driver — a genuinely radical layout for a road car at the time, one that prioritised weight distribution and handling balance over convention and eventually became the standard configuration for virtually every supercar since. Ferruccio Lamborghini, a tractor manufacturer turned sports car maker only a few years earlier, used it to establish his young company as a genuine force capable of directly challenging Ferrari. Styled by a 25-year-old Marcello Gandini at Bertone, its dramatically low, curvaceous body looked unlike anything else on the road, and it's widely credited as the car that made the word "supercar" necessary in the first place.

Generations at a Glance

The Nose-Lift Flaw Nobody Talks About Enough

For all its beauty, the original Miura had a real, well-documented handling problem: its fuel tank sat in the nose, and as the thirsty V12 burned through it, the front end grew progressively lighter. Combined with the shape of the nose itself, this generated significant aerodynamic lift above roughly 100mph — a car that felt planted with a full tank could feel alarmingly vague at the front by the time that tank ran low, at exactly the speeds where the difference mattered most. Lamborghini's own test driver and engineer Giampaolo Dallara later admitted the early car was, in his words, "hopelessly underbraked" as well. The 1971 SV addressed much of this with revised rear suspension and a slightly lower nose, but the fundamental lift characteristic was never fully eliminated on any Miura — a genuine piece of the car's history that specialists recommend every prospective owner understand rather than romanticise.

P400, S or SV? What Actually Changed

The original P400 introduced the formula at 350bhp, with awkwardly placed manual window winders, no air conditioning, and an engine bay accessible only by pulling open both doors and yanking a T-handle behind each seat. The 1969 S sharpened detailing and interior quality without addressing the core handling issues, but it's the final SV, built from 1971, that most specialists consider the car to actually buy: wider rear tyres on flared arches, up to 385bhp from rejetted carburettors and revised cam timing, and a split sump that finally made a proper limited-slip differential a viable factory option rather than an owner-fitted workaround.

How Much Does a Lamborghini Miura Cost Today?

Values sit near the top of the classic Italian supercar market, and for good reason — this is the car the entire category is named after. An immaculate SV, the most desirable version for the reasons above, can fetch anywhere from roughly $2.5 million to $4 million or more depending on condition and documented history, and ordinary P400s and S models still command seven-figure sums for well-preserved, numbers-matching examples. Buyers today generally understand and accept the nose-lift quirk as part of the car's story rather than a reason to avoid it, with most serious owners fitting modern fuel lines and committing to meticulous maintenance rather than trying to engineer the character out of the car entirely.

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Sources: Lamborghini Heritage archives, RM Sotheby's auction archives, Wikipedia.