The aim of today’s trip is to get to the heart of what makes a supercar

The world’s first supercar looks breathtakingly, spine-tinglingly gorgeous from any angle. Any. But the best angle, the perfect height from which to catch its curves, is from the seat of another Lamborghini. And, perhaps surprisingly, the best place to hear the world’s newest supercar, a car with possibly the best exhaust note ever, is not from the driver’s seat but from another car, with the window down. So as the Gulf-coloured convoy heads into a tunnel in a scene spookily reminiscent of the opening frames of The Italian Job, life for both drivers is pretty tremendous.

Check the Murciélago’s hugely elongated black door-mirror and shuffle out to the right-hand lane. Then pause, holding station at 80kph, drinking in the view ahead down the offside flank of the Miura, honeycomb grille tucked under the tail, long bonnet leading the way, tyres and wheels perfectly filling the swollen arches. There has never been a better-looking, sexier car. Pull the carbon paddle twice with your left index finger, listening to the click click electrically firing the ’box down two gears to second, and then open the throttle wide. A thump of acceleration appears to land square in my sternum, making me recoil into the seat, momentarily stunned before the revs climb past 4800rpm, the floodgates open and the darkness of the tunnel is filled with an utterly wild yowl. As the bright orange cacophony goes catapulting past the older car, heading for the light, I hope the Miura’s windows are down. On days like these…

‘An essential ingredient is a many-cylindered mid-mounted engine…’

With these two cars we have the yellow and violet of the supercar spectrum, the origin of the species and the latest of the breed, and the aim of today’s trip into the Brecon Beacons (Wales's mountainous national park) is to try to get to the heart of what makes a supercar. The term had been applied to a few monster vehicles in the 1920s, and evidence can still be seen in old advertisements, but it’s legendary motoring scribe LJK Setright who is credited with using the term as we now understand it, bringing it back into circulation when he labelled the Miura a supercar in the late ’60s.

It’s all very well saying it of course, but what do we actually understand by the word? What are the qualities that made Setright single out and elevate the Miura above other cars of its generation? evo UK's Editorial Director, Harry Metcalfe, who is quite old, recalls seeing a Miura for the first time: ‘It was pulled over in a lay-by, a lime green car if my elderly memory serves me. It was so wide and low – there might as well have been a UFO hovering there. It really was that extraordinary.’

Marcello Gandini (at the time working for Bertone) had created something beyond exotic, and there I think we have the first common thread visible in both these Lamborghinis: they look out of this world. This last of the Murciélagos might be an almost familiar shape by now and its scissor doors can trace their roots back 25 years to the birth of the Countach. But drive past or park up and swing a door skywards and it still stops onlookers dead in their tracks.

‘A supercar is monstrous yet precious, and will make you nervous just thinking about driving it’

The honeycomb-shaped rear grille, and what looks like a water feature running down over the engine bay, both pay obvious homage to the Miura, as does the Arancia paint. The Miura was famous for being available in colours that would have had most manufacturers spluttering but the Azzuro Cielo of this car is very subtle. It’s an original colour and possibly my favourite of all, as it looks so bright, clean and different, yet doesn’t dominate the shape.

What the designers of the Miura wouldn’t recognise is the plethora of carbonfibre on the Murci. Even the struts supporting the huge carbon rear wing are made of the black weave – whether it’s overkill or not will depend on personal taste, but like the gold leaf in the McLaren F1’s engine bay there’s something perfectly excessive about it.

The second essential supercar ingredient that the Miura has is a glorious, many-cylindered, mid-mounted engine. But it nearly didn’t. When three men in their early twenties, Giampaolo Dallara, Paolo Stanzani (both poached from Ferrari, no doubt to Ferruccio Lamborghini’s delight) and Bob Wallace (legendary New Zealand test driver), started creating the Miura outside of office hours they envisaged a small, lightweight car inspired by their love of motor racing. But Ferruccio did not love motor racing (he thought Ferrari was too obsessed with it) and so when the idea for the P400 was tentatively presented he insisted that they use the now legendary V12.

To tell the story of that engine is really to tell the story of Lamborghini. When Ferruccio turned away from tractors (Lamborghini Tractori) and air conditioning units (Lamborghini Bruciatori) to concentrate on building cars that could outstrip Enzo’s machines he knew he wanted to utilise the engineering talent of Giotto Bizzarrini. Having already worked on Alfa’s V12 and the iconic Ferrari 250 GTO, Bizzarrini was recognised as a huge talent. He had also designed a 1.5-litre V12 Formula 1 engine, which at Lamborghini’s request he set about enlarging and refining into a road car engine. There is a theory that the engine was actually created by Honda, but as it’s an argument that emanated from that man Setright (an absolute Honda devotee) and is almost entirely based on the position of the inlet ports, it seems unlikely. Anyway, the engine that was eventually placed into the first Lamborghini, the 350 GT, was a 3.5-litre V12 with four overhead camshafts. The block was aluminium with steel liners and an internal angle of 60 degrees was thought to give perfect balance and keep vibrations to a minimum. The engine was enlarged to 3929cc by Dallara and was producing 350bhp by the time it was dropped transversely into the middle of the Miura’s box-section chassis. Incredibly, the same basic architecture of that original Bizzarrini design has been a constant thread from Miura, through Countach, Diablo and all the way to this 6496cc, 661bhp incarnation of the V12 in today’s Murciélago SV.

‘To tell the story of this V12 engine is really to tell the story of Lamborghini’

The third and final stipulation for inclusion in the supercar club is price. A supercar should definitely, sadly, be in the unobtainable, lottery winner, shop-at-Spinney's category. In its day the Miura went on sale at just under $ 20,000, which was over four times the price of a Jaguar E-type and more than a Ferrari Daytona. At $ 443,000, the Murciélago SV looks almost good value in 2009.

So, extreme engine, exorbitant price and extraordinary looks. They are, I think, the essential tangible supercar ingredients, because, from these, all other elements such as performance and sensationalism extend. But there’s also something else, something more subjective. It has to do with driving them, but it’s not the actual driving, more the anticipation.

Think back to the first time you saw a supercar. You probably had the same sense of excitement, awe and wonder that I felt when the wide low orange wedge was being backed off the transporter first thing this morning. Clearly I’ve been jammy enough to drive quite a few supercars, but the excitement is still always tempered by a slightly uncomfortable sense that you are about to get into an unwieldy, perhaps uncontrollable machine. A supercar is monstrous yet precious and will make you nervous just thinking about driving it. And if you are one of those rare people who have supreme confidence and don’t know what I’m talking about, then try driving a Lambo between two rows of parked cars in a cramped town centre, with no rear vision but a good grasp of the fact that the entire population is standing or leaning out of windows to see if you’ll make it through without a scratch…

Once we emerge from narrow in-town areas (thankfully with all layers of paint intact) we head towards the wider roads of the Beacons. Wider but not smoother, and they reveal a depth to the LP670 that I hadn’t expected. Despite the much firmer control of the SV’s suspension compared with the standard car, the horribly churned tarmac is simply soaked up. Relatively dinky 18in rims probably help, but it still seems spooky the way this hardcore car is gliding across the troubled asphalt. The SV is demonstrably, demonically different to the standard car in other ways too, the steering heavier and meatier, the grip more insistent but edgier and the engine so nuts that, as evo UK Motoring Editor John Barker says, ‘beyond 6000rpm it seems to have broken free of its shackles and about to rev itself to oblivion’.

After a while we stop so that Matt Howell can get a few photos onto his memory cards. Then half an hour later he signals that it’s time to roll out again and the owner of the Miura asks if I’d like to drive his car. Gulp.

‘My legs are bunched up and splayed akimbo around the wheel’

After a restoration that redefines the word meticulous, his car actually looks like it rolled out of the Sant’Agata gates more recently than the Murciélago. In fact this SV was originally owned by Tony Iommi, bassist in Black Sabbath. Mr Iommi ordered chassis number 4814 in 1971 in the most desirable spec available, with air conditioning and a split sump. Since then it’s belonged to, amongst others, a Scottish potato farmer (records are unclear as to whether he thought he was buying a tractor) and several collectors. A while ago, we even voted it one of the world’s sexiest car.

The driving position is a sort of one-size-fits-all, with the emphasis on the driver instead of the car making the adjustments. Fixed seat, fixed steering column, fixed pedal box. My arms seem to be stretched out, while my legs are bunched up and splayed akimbo round the wheel, with my knees definitely nearer my ears than is natural. It’s not unlike the position you’d adopt if, after one too many sherbets, you thought it would be fun to try to get into and then operate a child’s pedal car. The simple key is down on the transmission tunnel and the switches for various illuminations, fans and heaters are up in the roof near the rear view mirror, so starting the Miura feels a bit like running through pre-flight checks. The fact that the throttle (which I’ll come back to in a second) needs pumping vigorously while you turn the key and wait and wait for the engine to catch only adds to the similarities with getting a light aircraft going. The handbrake is iffy, the gearbox won’t go into first and we’re on an upslope, but with my heart ticking over considerably faster than the engine we miraculously get away first time.

There is no rushing the gearbox and it needs a calm but firm hand, feeling delicate because of the wand-like gearstick but chunky because of the mechanicals below. You slide it out of one heavy, oiled cog, sense the lightness through neutral and then push with smooth pressure to slot into the next gear. The accelerator pedal is beyond sticky. As John says, ‘opening 12 throttle butterflies with a cable that loops and twists from the throttle pedal to somewhere over your shoulder isn’t going to give precision control’, but even so it’s hard to recalibrate a mind used to featherlight electronic or even recent cable-operated throttle pedals. If you stomped on the Murciélago’s accelerator with the force that is required in the Miura then you would probably snap your own neck.

‘A firework of small explosions crackles from the exhaust as I back off’

John’s up ahead in the Murci and indicating right. Bit of traffic coming so he rolls to a halt. Brake. Oh dear Lord where’s the brake pedal? I mean literally where is it? My contorted foot has hit fresh air where it anticipated a middle pedal and now my generous braking distance is shrinking as quickly as my panic is rising. Come on, come on. Don’t miscue and go back to throttle. Where is it? There it is! And the brakes are actually alright too, thank God. Unthinkable million pound disaster averted, we wind our way out across more open countryside and gradually I start to relax again. Third and fourth are all you need out here and there’s plenty of torque. The ride gives you confidence, the Miura feeling settled over the bumps and cambers, the 275/55 R15 Avons (they don’t make the original Pirelli Cinturatos any more) tracking smoothly underneath you. Although there’s nothing really over the front end, it’s still a surprise that the steering is relatively light given the relative weight of the other controls. It’s communicative too, the unasssisted rim weighting and unweighting in your hands as you guide the nose accurately into a corner before metering out the throttle travel in jerky chunks as you use the power to drive through and down the next straight. A firework of small explosions crackles from the exhaust as I back off to give a wandering sheep a wide berth. A glance in the rear-view mirror (no wing mirrors) is like looking at the Welsh landscape through a Venetian blind. Sheep have become zebras.

A couple more kilometres. We pull over and I start breathing again (whilst blipping the throttle to keep the engine going). It is an absolute privilege and a thrill to be allowed to drive a Miura SV, particularly one as immaculate as this. But it is also a huge responsibility, and in the same way that you want to meet your heroes long enough to say ‘hello’, you don’t want to go much further for fear that one of you will say something so disappointing or embarrassing that it spoils the moment forever. In all honesty the Miura has more in common with a car built 40 years before it than it does with a car built 40 years later, so I’d rather just look at it for the rest of the day. I know I won’t be disappointed doing that.

Look at the Miura and drive the LP670. In truth, although some might reminisce through rose-tinted glasses and claim that cars were better when it was all purely mechanical, 21st century supercars are capable of delivering driving highs that the older generation simply can’t match. Many of the old generation of supercars claimed extraordinary numbers and may even potentially have had the performance to live up to their looks. But the chances of actually getting near the limits and the numbers that smacked your jaw (and made you desire the car so much) were miniscule unless you had plums the size of cantaloupes and the skill of Ricardo Patrese. Now, thanks to tyre and suspension technology, aerodynamic modelling, carbonfibre and, probably most of all, the microprocessor (40 years ago just one megabyte cost approximately $ 1million; today it costs a fraction of a dollar) supercars are more exciting and driveable than ever.

Would I want to drive an early Diablo up the side of this Welsh mountain? Yes. Of course I would. But would I, could I, hustle one relentlessly, corner after corner, pushing grip limits in the way that I’ve just done in the brilliant LP670? No. Don’t think that driving the Murciélago is as simple as driving a Mondeo because it’s not. You feel your concentration spike every time you drop down into the seat (which actually needs a bit more lateral support) and turn the key. The forces that it exerts on you under acceleration, or when you hit the huge carbon brakes (they still need more progression, but they’re much better than in the Gallardo) or when you lean on the Pirelli P Zero Corsas are massive and intimidating. To keep your foot pinned on a valley road, accelerating unremittingly as you flick each gear at the limiter and watch the strip of tarmac in the windscreen narrow relentlessly around the car as the speed builds, is to be immersed in an unforgettable supercar experience. But I like the fact that it still feels planted at 270kph, not flighty and lethal. It makes me want to go back to 270kph and experience it again, push further.

And in the corners it is even more noticeable. On entry you can brake so late you’re weightless in the seat belt. Turn in and you can adjust the balance through the corner. Because it corners flatter and there’s more edge to the grip, the nose of the LP670 actually pushes more obviously than the LP640. As a result you need to play sensitively with the throttle and steering through a long corner, leaning into the invisible lateral G but feeling the fluctuations in load as you adjust your inputs. Bumps are soaked up and telegraphed by the SV’s suspension in a way you can compensate for. You don’t jump on the throttle early in the corner because the big rear tyres will push the nose wider still, so you wait until you’re past the apex, then you begin straightening the wheel and feeding in the power, using the traction of the rear-biased four-wheel drive to ride the furiously ignited torque. You can’t turn the ESP to Corsa mode and take ham-fisted liberties – there’s still a huge V12 slung behind you. But even on the road you can dig right into the Murci’s handling repertoire and enjoy it – not just nibble nervously at the edges.

The Welsh mountains echo to the sound of two V12s for the rest of the day. People stop and stare. Three men in a Ford van held together with faith and copies of a low-market newspaper stop and chuckle that they wouldn’t get much in scrap for the Murciélago’s carbonfibre. Eventually we drag Matt Howell away from the Miura and, as darkness falls, we bid farewell to the owner of the Miura, taking one last long look at the powder blue shape slinking away before heading East and home, stopping only to fuel up the LP670-4 ready for its big day tomorrow.

The test track's long straight is slightly damp when we arrive and, although dry patches emerge, the conditions are far from ideal. And yet the SV is stunning. It is one of the most fun cars I’ve ever figured, partly because it feels mechanically happy repeating full-bore standing starts time after time and partly because of the dramatic way it gets off the line. To launch it you need to have Corsa mode engaged and TCS (Traction Control System) turned completely off. Then you simply engage first gear and stamp on the throttle. At this point the car twigs what’s going on, selects appropriate revs and dumps the clutch. All four wheels spin up, the car snaps sideways off the line, you apply half a turn of lock, ease the revs whilst keeping the wheels spinning all the way through first gear then time the flick of the right-hand paddle just before snagging the limiter at 8000rpm (no automatic upchange) and from then on it’s easy, just watch the rev- counter, keep changing up and bingo you’ve got your figures!

‘You feel your concentration spike every time you drop into the seat’

The Miura recorded 6.0sec to 100kph in the early 1970s. After a couple of runs at 3.4sec in the Murciélago, we nail a couple more at 3.2sec. That, as I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, is McLaren F1 fast. Indeed the Lambo’s only a second behind the McLaren at 160kph, yet it’s carrying 500kg more. Phenomenal. (Alright, so the big VW is even more phenomenal, see page 72, but it didn’t oversteer on the way there, or sound like an ’80s F1 car). Around the Bedford Autodrome the SV was like the standard Murciélago, only more. There was understeer, which needed quelling with a little lift on turn-in, but the rear was absolutely hooked up except out of the slowest corner on the track. The man with the fastest name ever, Max Venturi (Lambo’s test driver) wasn’t surprised that the SV was almost 4sec quicker than the standard car but the 1.21.3 lap is even more impressive when you consider the only cars ahead of it are the Gumpert Apollo (effectively a race car) and the super-lightweights.

John Barker and I agree that the standard Murci is enough really (and actually looks better), but also that that’s not really the point. Thoughts of sufficiency aren’t really applicable to a supercar and the LP670-4 takes everything gloriously to extremes.

It also marks the Bizzarrini engine’s swansong and you have to wonder how many manufacturers will be willing or able to make such a gloriously politically incorrect engine in the future. Ferrari claims to be going lightweight, and Lamborghini is talking about green issues (and not lime green issues either). Which only makes the latest SV even more special. As John says, ‘it’s the fastest, hardest, maddest, baddest Murciélago, a car that deserves the SV badge as much as any car that has gone before’. And when the back catalogue of initialled cars includes a car as iconic as the Miura, that’s some accolade.

	Miura SV	LP670-4 SV
Engine	60deg V12	60deg V12
Location	Mid, transverse	Mid, longitudinal
Displacement	3929cc	6496cc
Max power	380bhp @ 7700rpm	661bhp @ 8000rpm
Max torque	286lb ft @ 5500rpm	487lb ft @ 6500rpm
Transmission	Five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive, limited-slip differential	Six-speed e-gear paddle-shift, four-wheel drive, front and rear limited slip differentials
Weight (kerb)	1306kg	1565kg
Power-to-weight	295bhp/ton	429bhp/ton
0-100kph	6.0sec	3.2sec
Top speed	270kph	341kph (claimed)
Basic price	c$ 19,000 (1972)	$ 443,000