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Lamborghini Miura

Overview

Ferruccio Lamborghini did not ask for the Miura. He wanted front-engined grand tourers that worked better than Ferrari's, and he had three of them selling. The Miura exists because Gian Paolo Dallara, Paolo Stanzani and Bob Wallace worked up a mid-engined chassis on their own initiative and then talked him into showing it. The bare frame went to the Turin Salon in 1965 with the 3,929 cc V12 lying sideways behind where the seats would eventually go, and visitors placed orders for a car that had no body yet. Bertone had one on it by Geneva in March 1966, and Marcello Gandini's shape made the rest of the hall look a decade old.

The engineering is the part that gets skipped over. Turning the V12 sideways meant the engine and the five-speed gearbox shared a casting, and on early cars a single supply of oil. No road car had been built that way. Lamborghini made 763 across seven years in three distinct specifications, and the last of those, the P400 SV, is a materially different car from the first.

Distinctions

The defining attributes and collector status that make this car garage-worthy.

Legend

A car that transcended the hobby, known far beyond the people who drive them.

Poster Car

The car on the bedroom wall, the one people dreamed about before they could drive.

Octane Files Select

Renowned for its history, engineering, or cultural weight.

Collectibility scorecard

Rated 1 to 10 on the traits that matter for owning, driving, and holding on to a car like this.

Desirability

10/10

Rarity

9/10

Driving thrill

8/10

Investment trajectory

8/10

Usability

3/10

Ease of restoration

2/10

Cultural impact

9/10

Electronic dependence

Fully analogHeavily electronic

Nothing on a Miura is electronically controlled. Four triple-choke Weber carburettors feed the V12, ignition is contact breaker points and a distributor, and the throttle is a cable pulling twelve slides open. There is no engine management, no injection, no anti-lock braking, no traction control and no power assistance for the steering. The electrical system exists to run the lights, wipers, fan and, on the S and SV, the windows. If a Miura will not start, the cause is fuel, spark or a bad earth, and all three are findable with a spanner and a test lamp.

Market data

Demand tier, price trend, and typical values by condition. Our own assessment, not a quoted valuation.

Demand tier

EntrySolidHighBlue-chip

The proven elite. Values are established, liquid, and defended at every auction.

Value trajectory

AppreciatingStableCooling

Values are climbing. The market wants more of these than exist.

Price by condition

Driver

$1.3M

Excellent

$1.9M

Concours

$2.8M

Blue chip and still moving. hyper.luxe puts a P400 or P400 S between 1.5 and 2.5 million dollars in 2026, with exceptional cars to 2.8 million, and a restored 1969 P400 S made 1.98 million at Mecum Monterey in 2025. The band describes those two specifications, which account for 613 of the 763 cars built. SVs are a separate market at 3.5 to 4.7 million, and Broad Arrow carried one at Amelia on a 3.5 to 4 million estimate. Factory certification of an unconverted car is worth real money in its own right.

Values as of August 2026.

Buyer's guide

What anyone seriously considering this car should know first.

Why it's worth it

The road car that put a V12 sideways behind the driver

Callout

Orders were taken at Turin in 1965 for a chassis that had no body yet

What to watch for

Everything expensive about a Miura is underneath the aluminium. The body panels sit on a steel platform that rusts the way Italian sheet steel of the period always rusts, and documented restorations routinely involve cutting floors out. Front and rear clamshells hinge away to expose almost everything, which is a gift during inspection and no help at all with the structure hidden between them. Know exactly which car you are looking at. Only the last 96 SV engines got the split sump that separates gearbox lubrication from engine oil, so most Miuras, including most SVs, run a shared supply with everything that implies about where metal ends up. Plenty of P400 and S cars have been converted toward SV appearance over fifty years, sometimes well and sometimes not, so chassis and engine numbers matter more here than on almost any other car of the era. Lamborghini's Polo Storico department certifies cars, and at these values the paperwork pays for itself. The nose is where the aerodynamics live. The fuel tank sits behind the front axle, so the front gets lighter as the tank empties.

The Story

Driving character

The V12 sits transversely about a foot behind your shoulders with very little between you and it, which settles most questions about noise and heat before you have moved. Four Webers draw air right there. The intake roar arrives before the exhaust note does, and at 7,000 rpm the two together are why people forgive the car everything else. The gearchange runs through an open gate into a box that shares its housing with the engine, and it wants a deliberate hand rather than a quick one, especially cold. Steering is unassisted and heavy at parking speed, then loads up honestly once you are moving. The thing to understand is the nose. The fuel tank sits behind the front axle, so the car gets lighter at the front as the miles pass, and the shape generates lift rather than downforce. At real speed a Miura feels light where you would like it to feel planted, which is exactly what Bob Wallace's chin spoiler on the Jota was trying to fix. Below that threshold it is one of the great things to drive.

Design

Gandini was in his twenties and had been at Bertone barely a year. What he drew is a two-box shape with almost no overhang, cut off sharply at both ends, with front and rear clamshells that hinge in opposite directions and leave the car looking like a machine caught mid-yawn when both are open. The details are what people remember. Slatted vents surround the headlamps on the P400 and S, universally called eyelashes, and their deletion is the fastest way to spot an SV. The engine cover is a set of louvres you can see the V12 through. There is no rear window in any meaningful sense, just slats and mirrors. The proportions are the real trick. Because the engine lies across the car rather than along it, the cabin sits further back and lower than the packaging of the era normally allowed, and the roofline is barely above waist height. The name is a bull, specifically Don Eduardo Miura's fighting stock, which set the convention Lamborghini has followed ever since.

Motorsport pedigree

There is none, and the reason is worth more than a race record would be. Giotto Bizzarrini designed the Lamborghini V12 as a competition engine, running 370 bhp at 9,000 rpm on the bench in 1963 with Ferruccio paying him a bonus for every horsepower over Ferrari's. Ferruccio then handed it to Gian Paolo Dallara to be detuned for the road, because he had no intention of going racing and never changed his mind. The Miura is where that policy chafed hardest. Bob Wallace, the factory's New Zealander test driver, built the Jota in 1970 on his own initiative: aluminium alloy substituted throughout to save around 360 kg, 418 to 440 bhp, twin fuel tanks moved into the sills, a chin spoiler on the nose. The factory never entered it in anything. It was sold to a customer, then crashed and burned in April 1971. Six SV/J cars followed as customer versions of the idea. That is the entire competition history of the most obviously racing-shaped road car of the 1960s.

In culture

One sequence carries most of it. The Italian Job opens in 1969 with an orange Miura P400 running an Alpine pass, and the car has been traced: chassis 3586, bought by the British specialist Iain Tyrrell in 2014 showing 19,000 km, publicly rediscovered in 2019 and certified by Lamborghini's Polo Storico. What happened to the car that goes over the edge is less settled. One account has the production using two identical orange P400s and genuinely wrecking one. The longer-standing version is that the wreck was an already crash-damaged shell. This page does not pick between them. Beyond that, the Miura's cultural work is done by the shape. It fixed what a Lamborghini looks like, and became the template Italian mid-engined design followed for the next twenty years. When a magazine wants shorthand for the moment the supercar arrived, this is the picture they run, even though the René Bonnet Djet had put the engine behind the driver in a production road car four years earlier.

Rivals

Cars from other manufacturers that competed for the same buyers when new.

Owning One

Why collectors want it

There is a hierarchy inside the Miura and the market has priced it precisely. At the top sits the P400 SV, 150 cars built between 1971 and 1973, with a widened rear track, reworked rear suspension, nine inch rear wheels and the headlight trim deleted. Below it the P400 S, 338 cars. Below that the original P400, 275 cars, purest of the three to look at and the most compromised to drive. The spread between an honest P400 and a documented SV is measured in millions, not percentages.

What holds all three up is that the Miura is the car people picture when they picture a Lamborghini, and there are only 763 of them. Values have climbed steadily for two decades and the 2020s have been kind: hyper.luxe puts a P400 or S between 1.5 and 2.5 million dollars in 2026, with SVs from 3.5 million. Provenance does unusual work here. Cars upgraded toward SV specification over the years are common enough that factory certification is worth real money on its own.

Which one to look for

Three specifications, and they are not interchangeable. The P400 came first, 275 cars from 1966 to 1969, 350 PS, chrome around the headlights and the slatted vents beside them that everyone calls eyelashes. The P400 S followed, 338 cars built between December 1968 and March 1971, with 370 PS, power windows and brighter external trim. The P400 SV is the one to want, and only 150 were made from 1971 to 1973. Rear track went from 1,400 to 1,540 mm, the rear suspension was reworked, the fenders widened for nine inch wheels, the eyelashes deleted, and output rose to 385 PS. The last 96 SV engines added a split sump so the gearbox no longer drank the engine's oil, which means most SVs do not have it. Above all of it sits the Jota, one car, built by Bob Wallace in 1970 as a private exercise in what a competition Miura might be. It was sold, then crashed and burned on the Brescia ring road in April 1971. Six SV/J cars were built by the factory for customers who wanted the idea, plus one assembled later.

P400 · 1966–1969

The original. 3,929 cc transverse V12 rated at 350 PS, chrome surrounds and the slatted 'eyelash' vents beside the headlamps. Purest to look at and the least sorted to drive, with the narrowest track of the three.

P400 Jota · 1970

Bob Wallace's private test car, built to explore what a competition Miura might be. Aluminium alloy substituted throughout for roughly 360 kg saved, 418 to 440 bhp, twin fuel tanks moved into the sills, a chin spoiler added. Never entered in a race.

P400 S · 1968–1971

Enlarged intake manifolds and revised camshafts lift output to 370 PS. Power windows, brighter external window and headlamp trim, optional air conditioning. The eyelashes stay.

P400 SV · 1971–1973

The definitive Miura and a materially different car. Rear track widened from 1,400 to 1,540 mm, reworked rear suspension, widened fenders for nine inch rear wheels, headlamp eyelashes deleted, 385 PS. The last 96 engines added a split sump separating gearbox lubrication from engine oil.

SV/J · 1971–1973

Factory-built customer cars carrying Jota-inspired bodywork and detail changes on the SV platform. The rarest road Miuras and the most valuable.

What owning one is like

A Miura is an early hand-built car from a company that was five years old, and it behaves like one. Rust is the main event: the steel platform under the aluminium body corrodes, and restorations regularly involve cutting and replacing floors. Panel fit was never uniform car to car, so a door that shuts differently on each side is not automatically evidence of damage. Heat is the running theme of ownership. The V12 sits immediately behind the cabin with the gearbox in the same casting, and on all but the last 96 SVs it shares its oil with that gearbox, which is why oil analysis and short change intervals are standard practice among owners rather than fussiness. The rest is the ordinary business of a 1960s Italian exotic. Weber carburettors drift out of balance, wiring hardens, the ventilation was never going to be enough. None of it is mysterious and none of it deters anyone, which is why the survival rate is high and the cars get used more than their values suggest they should.

Upkeep & parts

Mechanically the Miura is better supported than its rarity suggests. The V12 is a known quantity to a handful of specialists in Italy, Britain and the United States, and Lamborghini's own Polo Storico department restores cars, certifies them and reproduces parts, which is unusual for a marque of this size and a genuine advantage over some contemporaries.

Where the money goes is bodywork, structure and trim. The aluminium panels are hand-formed, so accident repair means a coachbuilder rather than a panel shop, and interior trim is the hardest category to source. Anything requiring the engine and gearbox to come out is a large job, because they come out as one unit.

Two registries do the documentation work: the International Lamborghini Registry, and the Miura Register, which has spent nearly three decades tracking individual chassis. Use them before you buy. Chassis history is what separates a 1.5 million dollar car from a 3 million dollar one, and the difference is often paperwork rather than metal.