1969 Lamborghini Miura S - Jay Leno's Garage

a lot of people think this is the most beautiful uh supercar ever built the lamborghini miura this one's a 1969 miura s the one over there is a 1967 mirror that's a very very early car but we'll deal with that one on another show uh this one is uh pretty well sorted uh they're four liter about 370 375 horse uh fascinating car this is the car that really uh coined the term supercar this chassis was unveiled at the auto show i think was geneva and then it was uh bodied by um raton and uh marcelo gandini the federation lamborghini drove this to monte carlo and parked in front of the casino and when he came out he fired it up and took off and who was a huge deal i've been collecting these magazines since i was a kid there it is in 1966 on the cover of a car i remember reading this one in uh in math class first photos lamborghini p400 you know we're sitting in andover massachusetts and your dad's got a four-door galaxy this is like another planet there i am with marcelo gandini he was here at the garage he decided to design the car there's valentino uh bamboni he's the legendary lamborghini test driver he drove my car so that was kind of fun to have them here you know it's nice to meet movie stars and stuff but it's actually cooler to meet these guys but let's take a look at it show you what you got here uh beautiful design you can't really build cars like this anymore battery spare tire pretty straightforward you know these cars get a bad reputation but if you use them on a regular basis and just kind of put them back to the way they came from the factory they run fine a lot of people accuse them of overheating and said they will overheat unless you here's a little lamborghini trick right here this is a bleed screw what you have on this car is you have your radiator here and then your tubes to flow back to the engine are lower than the radiator so you get air pockets so occasionally you fire the car up you open this bleed screw as soon as water comes through you shut it off and chill runs nice and cool let me open up the motor it's a transverse four liter v12 four cam this car was actually modeled after the mini uh izagonis who designed the mini had kind of a front-wheel version of a four-cylinder you know up front driving the front wheels and lamborghini thought hey let's put this uh engine transverse transmission oil and engine are all running one not the best idea but hey it works the carburetor is right here behind your head can't do that anymore to me this is the most beautiful lamborghini as much as i like the countach the countach is a more masculine car this car has a lot of feminine touches to it it's got a lot of curves very sexy car these are sort of classic 60s colors they came in this orange the yellow there was a lime green that was really outrageous it's almost hard to describe the visual impact this car had at the time it came out don't forget most cars in 1966. there were still a lot of cars from the 40s and 50s around so they were huge big wide cars look how low this thing is it barely comes up to my belt buckle it's only about two inches higher than the ford gt 1966 was the last year you could before federalization after that cars had to have a certain headlight height you had to have a certain kind of bumper this is the last sort of bastion of totally free design this car has no bumpers on it no bumper protection you can't park it anywhere it's like a beautiful woman if you leave it alone you come back just eight guys sitting on it talking to it get away from there get away from me so you you can't really park in anywhere you drive it if you do park you kind of stand around doing this all the time that's kind of how it works but that's okay it's well worth the effort isn't she beautiful classic 60s italian interior five speed notice none of the switches are labeled the idea being hey if your car if you can't figure out the switches that's your problem and it's kind of fun when people can go what does this do don't touch that you can't make a car there's light anymore and with 370 horsepower very very quick i mean it's not as fast as a z06 corvette but viscerally there's just a lot more going on different sounds different noises uh it's not the most aerodynamic car it's certainly a beautiful car but not very aerodynamic in fact once you get over 125 130 the front end starts to lift and you can actually kind of do this with the steering wheel when you go uh-oh yeah that's kind of a safety feature to slow down when the front wheels get off the ground hey i'd better back off melambo mura was the first car to use those slats over the over the rear window keep the heat out and they actually work you can actually see what's behind you unlike a lot of other mid-engine cars just a classic italian dashboard couple of big gauges speedometer attack center console's got all your gauges people say these are really cramped but you know i'm just about six feet tall and i've got plenty of room besides when the car is just sexy you don't mind being uncomfortable hey if you ever want to agree read a great book while you're sitting in traffic amazing engineer all the magazines are great pictures of the miura you see how beautiful it looks but really you get a chance of how beautiful it sounds you always smile when they drive a mirror i really do use this mirror as an everyday car the real trick to most of these cars you set them up right and you use them regularly they run pretty good today's a pretty hot day in california we're running six seven grand look at that water temperature oil temperature dead normal actually running pretty cool the only modification i've made to this car is a couple of uh more modern heavy-duty cooling electric fans but other than that she's all stock i always remember david e davis when he had car and driver saying everybody should drive a v12 at least once in their life i say you drive one at least once a day thanks for coming for a ride i'll see you next week we'll take something else out

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 936,280

Keywords: 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, 1969 Lamborghini Miura S, first supercar

Id: nSPnL7m0kII

Length: 7min 29sec (449 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 21 2013