1967 Lamborghini Miura P400 - Jay Leno's Garage

once again we're back here in the lamborghini section of my garage now a while back we did the uh p-400s the mirror there the orange one this is a p400 this is a very very early production car i've had this car for a long time usually 25 years a guy gave it to me because it wasn't worth anything anymore it was an old broken down sports car this car was originally bought by dean martin dean martin was the first owner uh his son dino i understand drove it to school to high school well how cool is that your dad dean martin to get a lamborghini to drive to school and like most kids i understand uh he was a little hard on it and i think he went over some kind of a berm cracked the oil pan the oil leaked out the engine seized and the car was essentially junk a buddy of mine got the car with a blown engine uh could not afford to fix it at the time and uh he just had it for years and years and then eventually i had done him some favors and he gave it to me and what i did was repair the motor uh the nice thing about the car is it had never been hit never been damaged uh just the engine blew up and since uh lamborghini engines are not really numbered you can swap and match them and i mean it's all proper we just fixed the pan and fix the block and did what had to be done when fruccio lamborghini pulled this up in front of the casino at monte carlo and parked it out front i believe in 1966 people went nuts they just thought it was the wildest car they'd ever seen and they ordered them and he had no real intention of actually building the thing but then when he saw how many how much demand there was they started banging them out this is one of them as i said very very early production car i believe this is car 127. and now the first bunch of cars up to about car 100 or maybe 120 130 very thin aluminum panels and the other car has electric windows this has wind-up windows the way you open the hood is you have these on each side now as you see it's your standard mirror v12 this is does not have a split sump the sv has the separate oil for the transmission this one much like a motorcycle or like a mini which is actually where lamborghini got the idea this shares the oil with the engine not the best idea but it works okay as long as you change the oil fairly regularly this car does not have a reinforced chassis this thing flexes like this when you go down the road once you get over 120 125 miles an hour the front end kind of lifts and the steering it gets pretty light but forget that it's a lamborghini i like the fact that all four tires are basically the same size you know this is before the era of the big wide tire in the back and the fender flares and all that kind of stuff let me show you under the hood here like all mirrors um spare tire goes there modern battery those are the original fans this is a pretty straight car everything is not all nice and shiny it's a little greasy it's a little dirty because this is a working car this is a car i use not every day but certainly a couple of times a month i commute to work in it not much else i can tell you that we haven't covered in the other lamborghini piece if you watch the other piece we go into some of that stuff in a bit more detail the only thing i can say is you can really feel the difference between this car and the orange car over there the orange car is a 69 that a few years to strengthen the chassis do some upgrades a little more horsepower i think that one's 375 horsepower this one's about 350. there's no air conditioning there's no electric windows a very light car i think this thing is 2600 pounds something like that you can't build on this light anymore there's no bumper protection you can't drive this anywhere you can't park it anywhere because if you come back it'll be dented or somebody will play with it so you just kind of leave the garage you go in a big circle and then you go back home again there are certain tricks to getting a lamborghini to run correctly uh a lot of people say they overheat well they don't overheat if you know how to get around that problem here's what you do i see since you got your radiator here and this water runs down below the chassis all the way back to the engine you get air bubbles so what you do if you have a lamborghini like this you start it up you put it on a bit of a hill you get it nice and hot you open this bleed screw here you just turn it you'll hear and then water will start coming out of it as soon as the water squirts out of it open and close it a couple of times bleed the air out shut it and it won't overheat all right might get a little hot but it won't overheat at least it'll run a lot cooler than if you don't do that these early mirrors are notorious or for catching fire obviously when they were new they had insulated wire but over the years the wires rub on chassis parts so if you have any italian car from the 60s use one of these uh battery disconnect switches because you you know if you shut it off at night it won't burn down in the garage while you're sleeping and if it should catch fire while you're driving you can stop pull over and pull this out at least stop the electrical connection so always put a battery disconnect switch in your vehicle any any older vehicle i guess the only thing now is to take it for a ride you have to lock both sides of the hood and in the usual italian tradition none of the switches are labeled so you just have to keep flicking switches if you haven't driven a while to try to figure out what's what any italian car you're going to give it a good five or six minutes to warm up let's pull it outside we'll let it warm up mirrors were never quite perfected but the later cars the s to the svs were much better cars but on the other side these early cars have such a purity to them and they're so light and 350 horsepower in 1966 was a lot of horsepower set right the journalist english guy was the first guy to sort of christen it as the supercar now you see our gauges have come off the peg and we're nice and warm we can start to give a little bit of stick now nice thing about this car is it's got the original dashboard and everything in it you have to be fairly deliberate with the gearbox you can't really slam shift you can shift quickly but you don't want to slam shift it too hard and i have this lovely uh wood rim steering wheel i always love a wood wheel you can't have a wood wheel anymore because it's illegal or people get splinters or some lawyer will sue you but there's some reason you can't other people complain they don't fit in the mural i don't mind this kind of go-kart like driving position you kind of have your knees apart with the wheel right here it's a lot of fun i just like this period because design ruled everything designers beat out everything no safety issues no bumpers no extra thick thing here in case you roll over if you're all over well it's your fault you're an idiot engine and transmission uh share the same oil so if you throw yourself into a violent uh left-hander or right-hander all the oil will go to the other side and you see your oil pressure go whoa so you got to be a little careful of that back one time i was driving this car you see these carburetors right behind my head here it's kind of cool if you have a look in the rearview mirror and see the throttle linkage working well i'm going down the street and look at the rear view man i go ah it's raining i just cleaned the car and it's raining and i look out the windshield and i realize well it's not raining out the front and i look back and i realized oh one of my fuel hoses had come off and it was just going back and forth spraying the carburetors with gasoline so i pull off the side of the road i open the hood and i hear i'm just sitting there with my fire extinguisher waiting waiting for this thing to explode into flames luckily it didn't but uh always carry a fire extinguisher and if you think it's raining it's not it's your carburetors if you notice mirrors only have a rear view mirror there are no mirrors on the fenders the thinking being at the time what are the chances anyone would pass you you know if you think you have a problem you just step on the gas and you pull away and they do make a lovely sound and you don't try to take it to its limits it handles pretty nicely if you're driving like a go-kart you're probably going to get into trouble if you drive it fairly maturely you can get the a to b pretty quickly back very quickly you know it was an error when cars were really small it's amazing how big and wide even your everyday commuter cars have gotten i guess because people are now big and wide but to me this is just the perfect size for a sports car you know a lamborghini can't exist without you it leaks oil and has little electrical problems you know you're always fixing it you're always attending to its needs but when you get it right oh it's like nothing in the world anyway this is a nice original car 44 000 miles but right now i'm going to see if i go out double that mileage [Music]

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 462,192

Keywords: nbc, JLG, LamborghiniMiura, Jay Leno, Automotive, Cars, Garage, horsepower, Jay, Leno, mods, custom car, Speed, Fast, modded cars, mechanic, fastest car, Jay Leno's Garage, cars, exotic cars, interview, custom, Leno car, funny, Leno funny, car show, Rare, Motorcycles, racing, jay leno interview, auto, drive, power, fast, amazing, cool, the cars, vehicle, bill scott, lambo, lamborghini, Lamborghini, Lamborghini Miura

Id: sylxXJUmtp0

Length: 9min 35sec (575 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 25 2012