Marcello Gandini Story - Part 2: The Miura

It's possibly the most widely represented car ever, queen of all car magazines. A milestone and an icon. The first supercar to many and a revolution in the streets. So how did an interior designer end up designing this as his first ever job? There's no discussion about Marcello Gandini's genius but there might be some surprises in this story. Surprises that literature hasn't disclosed yet.

Let's start from the beginning. We all know that Ferruccio Lamborghini was very determined in his vision for a car delivering the power and the thrills of a race car without the uncomfortable downsides. He hired the very best people in the market for it, Dallara for the chassis and Bizzarrini for the engine. Bizzarrini had a hard but theoretically straightforward task. “I want to be able to drive it smoothly in Bologna at 40 km/h, but give it 350 hp, ok? No racing business.” So Bizzarrini started from one of the Ferrari units he had been working on and gave Lamborghini a dry sump engine giving 380 hp. Wrong type of engine and too much power. This is the genius of Bizzarrini for you. Lamborghini didn’t find this funny, so interrupted the collaboration and set his engineers about “taming” the beast, converting it to wet sump. Dallara’s chassis was incredible and the decision of placing the engine transversely behind the driver presented huge challenges but also allowed for the cosmetic freedom that designers coveted. Ferruccio took the chassis to Turin's motor show and the reaction was immediately incredulous.

At the time Gandini was already trying hard to start a career in car designing. A friend hired him to rebody an Osca 1500 Barchetta (of which I couldn’t find further information) and since then he was lucky enough to collaborate with small coachbuilders, quite often having to commute to Milan. In his own words “at the time the famous companies like Moretti and Viotti already produced the design internally and didn’t invest in external freelances. It was hard to have a chance to become known. (...) A few years before Bertone wanted to meet me after having seen some of my drawings but we didn’t manage to find an agreement for a job. Only after Giugiaro left I managed to get the job.” Giugiaro would move to De Tomaso-owned Ghia and design the Mangusta there before leaving to found his own Italdesign in 1967. Did Giugiaro leave because Bertone wanted to hire Gandini or was Gandini hired because Giugiaro left? I don’t have sufficient evidence to support either claim. Nuccio was all the more happy to have someone to finish off the Miura and even today it is not clear what can be attributed to whom. Nuccio in an old interview stated that Gandini was quite protective with the final result and he literally intercepted the drawings going to the workshop to add or modify details without having to argue. To the day Gandini never helped solving the mystery once and for all but said once: “the Miura was very much like a Giugiaro car in some detail, its lines were quite soft and it had similarities to cars he had done previously – the Maserati Ghibli, De Tomaso Mangusta and Iso Grifo. But what shows my stamp, I feel, is the effort to make the car into an integrated shape, not just a top and a bottom, as so many cars of the time had. The side-scoops, in particular, were intended to give the car a kind of global shape.”

In these sketches of the development it's very easy to distinguish the two hands at work. In the early ones hints of the showcar Testudo give way to ISO details, and all this will be considered but left aside in the last, final Gandini proposal. According to one of Bertone's secretaries at the time (thanks to Emanuele Vanzetti for the first hand info) the team at Bertone was very close, as you would expect from a relatively small Italian company in the mid sixties. Giugiaro's sudden departure and Gandini's subsequent arrival was not painless and Gandini’s quiet and guarded demeanour in the office certainly didn't help. Furthermore, Nuccio was known for his desire to have a hands-on involvement in developments, just as much as Gandini was known for wanting to be independent in the process. One way or another, as soon as the new buildings in Caprie became available Gandini successfully requested to have his team transferred there, possibly denying any chance for him to replace Giorgetto in the heart of Bertone's team.

The Miura approached the automotive world with all the power and blast that you would expect from the breed of bull that it took its name from. But there is also the line that gracefully lowers just before the windscreen and raises towards the canopy with godly proportions. The elegant lateral air intakes that wrap and underline the side windows cleverly disguising the door handles. The same intakes that quote the horns of a raging bull when both doors are open. Campagnolo’s iconic magnesium alloys the center-piece in the sinuous lines of the front arches while the rear end with the signature six black louvers wraps the engine and transmission tightly. Too tightly in fact, as it would transpired the night before the official presentation.

Meeting the deadline in time for the 1966 Geneva Motor show was proving a huge task for Lamborghini, as was the case for Bertone. One of Nuccio’s secretaries remembers being up way into the night hand stitching the seats. Even worse, when they finally got to the point of mounting the engine it just didn’t fit. In order to make it in time at the motor show they had to resolve in applying a ballast in place of the propulsor and bolt the bonnet to avoid the avid press trying to sneak an impudent shot. Needless to say all went well, the project called P400 (Posteriore, 4 litres) was named Miura and the Lamborghini badge that we know today appeared for the first time. 764 would be produced between 1966 and 1972.
Two stars were born. The Lamborghini Miura and Marcello Gandini.

Have you read Marcello Gandini Story - Part 1 yet? Click HERE to be redirected.

Many thanks to stratosmania.com, rollingarts.wordpress.com and autodesign.socialblog.us for some interesting interviews and articles. Thanks anso to Emanuele Vanzetti, Tom Sherriff and D.S. for the invaluable help and support.

1964 Maserati 151/3

I've been obsessed with these images for years. 

They were shot in the paddock of the 1964 Le Mans. The incredible contour line of the car, the brutal bare metal effect, the slightly underexposed picture and the "homely" feeling of the paddock wrap together all the best emotions I can get from researching the history of classic cars. 

The Maserati 151/3 has got an extra value. It represent the ultimate, loud and romantic failure. It carried on its shoulders the expectations of 10 years of close calls and isolated glories for the marque. Arguably this particular car - chassis 151.002 - will take all these hopes away with it on the 10th of April 1965, Le Mans Test day.

Lloyd Casner was pushing the car hard after a couple of warm up laps. The car must have been very close to its top speed of 198mph when approaching the "hunaudieres"'s bump, a particularly tricky bit. Cars were usually going slightly airborne at the time and with all four wheels off the ground, the only way to avoid disaster was to tap the brakes to point down the nose and partially lift off the throttle, trying to maintain the perfect speed at the rear wheels for the contact with the tarmac. Casner might have lifted off completely, according to Maurice Trintignant, but he will never be able to tell his side of the story. The car barrel rolled out of the track taking two trees with it. It was the horrible end for car and driver. Its engine would have been recovered and fitted to a mid engined prototype, the Maserati Tipo 154 (or Tipo 65) and tried again, in less than a month at 24 Heures. But Jo Siffert crashed it in the effort of keeping up with the Fords and it was the very end of Maserati at Le Mans.

The 151 project always had it an yet never stood a chance, a great design that didn't benefit from the necessary testing but still developed effortlessly. Only a handful of chassis were ever created and we owe much of this story to Johnny Simone, who ordered .002. Two more sister cars were sent to Briggs Cunningham in the USA where they would have been raced much more often than the European counterpart. Changes in regulations stopped and restarted the development of the engine that started as 4 liter V8 and would raise to 5 liter with a development up to 5.2. But it wasn't a good time for Maserati that didn't have money to invest in proper development even after having graced the world in the fifties with the 450 and the notorious Tipo 61 birdcage.

The 151 would be competing Le Mans in '62, '63, '64 and for the last fatal time at the testing in '65. They always stood a chance and quite often had the honour of leading the race. But lack of testing and factory development would curse the car. Gearbox failure, electrical failure, stuck throttle, alternator, battery and brakes showed up in one race or another, but the worse problem was possibly the useless De Dion suspension that was causing the internal rear wheel to toe in, literally eating the tires. The car would have to live with this issue until the winter of '63/'64 when one of the last upgrades turn the 151/1 into the 151/3. The car would receive extended track and wheelbase and a diet that took the weight from 975 to 940kg. The upgraded 5.0 V8 with its excess of 430 bhp and the new Drogo body would have been good enough to grasp 200mph (198 recorded). This last development is the shape in the pictures on top of this post. The amazing line gently wraps the front arches so tight that they would have to be hammered away in the pits. The extreme rear Kamm offered space only for a small vertical rear window. The scrutineers wouldn't like that during '64 test day and this would have to be enlarged with a flat, almost horizontal, roof window. These are just some examples of how little testing the car received and there's plenty more, like when one of the "American" sister cars had to be raced without doors for the extreme heat in the cabin (finishing second overall) or like the hilarious start at the 1963 Le Mans Start.

I'll report this story in the words of Marc Sonnery:

"Picture the bright and sunny scene of the 151's greatest moment: In front of the packed grandstands, André Simon is uncharacteristically hopeful and feels ready for the sprint to the cars. A pompous official drops the flag, and 49 drivers dash across the tarmac. Simon reaches the Maser, and...the door is stuck closed! Adrenaline spurting from his ears, Simon yanks again harder and the recalcitrant portal pops open and smacks him in the face as the rest of the field roars away! Nose bleeding, badly delayed, and hotter than a jalapeño, Simon finally blasts away, flooring it through Tertre Rouge and onto Mulsanne Straight."

I've been looking for the story behing those underexposed pictures for a long long time, collecting bits and pieces and sometimes being side tracked. I finally found a comprehensive and satisfactory story in an old article that Sonnery wrote many years back. Please take some time and read it HERE. It's typically very well written and maniacally researched.

The car remained as a wreck and without the engine for at least 15 years before Peter Kaus restored it and sourced a correct engine for it. Carrozzeria Allegretti also managed to savage the original body buck to recreate that amazing body. After some races the car was supposed to be resting at the Rosso Bianco museum in Aschaffenburg, Germany, so you can imagine my excitement in seeing the car at this year's Goodwood Revival driven by none less than Jochen Mass. Seeing and hearing the car at speed is a feeling I shall never forget. Find here a selection of the pictures I took and notice how low the car is in comparison with the Astons and SWB. Click to enlarge.