Living with the original supercar for 40 years

If you want to know what all those screaming V8s, V10s and V12s – with not one turbocharger between them! – sounded like when they were all fired up together you need to go to our Facebook page.

A bit of a Lambo bash is entirely appropriate because 2016 is an important year for the little firm from Sant’Agata Bolognese. It’s the 100th anniversary of founder Ferruccio Lamborghini’s birth and the 50th anniversary of what to many is his greatest creation, the Miura – the car that first came to personify the word supercar, in its current mid-engined interpretation at least.

So what’s a Miura like in 2016? GRRC member Chris Wood is the man to talk to about that. He has owned his 1969 Arancia (that Lamborghini red/orange colour) P400S for almost 40 years. Incredibly, he is only the car’s second owner. How did he get so hooked on it?

“It was a story about driving a Miura to Britain from Italy by LJK Setright in Car magazine – I still have the issue. When I read that I promised myself I’d buy a Miura if the opportunity arose.

“Then an aunt died and left me some money. Coming from a good Midlands industrial background it was presumed I would do something sensible like put the money into stocks and shares. But then I saw this car. I bought it and it’s been the best investment I have ever made.”

Chris paid £8750 for it in 1977. Today they are million pound cars.

This Miura S has been to Goodwood before. Chris says he used to bring it to the circuit, before its restoration, for driving days “and to frighten all the Ferraris – and also me.” Really a scary handler? “It is scary in that at the limit it’s on an absolute knife-edge. When it goes, it’s gone.

“But I have had it up to 160mph and it didn’t take off. It’s really only at speed that the suspension, steering and gears all work properly together. Below 50 it’s bumpy, 50-80mph it’s only a little less bumpy, but over 80mph it starts to do what it was designed to do.”

So it is really the first and greatest supercar? “Yes, all of that. Of course there are niggles but when the V12 is snarling away behind you it is just the most visceral and exciting thing ever.

“Being in a convoy of 20 Miuras escorted by Italian police at 100mph down the autostrada for the Miura’s 50th celebrations in Italy this year was wonderful.”

The car is fresh from a three-year nut and bolt rebuild by Classic Auto of Kings Langley, Hertfordshire. Its first outing was in fact that very wet Supercar Sunday last year. Now it’s in peak condition, looked after for Chris by Mike Pullen of Carrera Sport in Haywards Heath who has known the car since 1977 when Chris bought it.

Would he ever sell it? Chris says he once promised his wife that he might sell it in the Miura’s 50th year. That’s now, so your luck might be in…