Revved up to celebrate 50 years of a Lamborghini icon
Revisiting a famous opening scene from the silver screen is a fitting tribute to the gorgeous Lamborghini Miura.
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The 1969 British caper film The Italian Job opens with a soon-to-be-dead gangster driving his Lamborghini Miura through the Italian Alps. Shot from a helicopter, from the road, and from behind the wheel, we see the orange sports car snake its way along snow-lined mountain roads and blast up the dramatic Gran San Bernardo pass.
Our ill-fated driver alternates between taking cool drags from his cigarette and stirring the Miura’s gated shifter before he enters a pitch-dark tunnel. The screen goes black, and then we hear an explosion and see flames as the car slams into a bulldozer parked at the far end of the tunnel. Emerging from the tunnel with the Miura’s smouldering remains propped up over its blade, the bulldozer dumps the wreck and its occupant over a cliff and into a river below while an assembly of other gangsters watch from the side of the road.
Last year, nearly a half-century after the car’s apparent demise, that same orange P400 was parked outside the quaint Hotel Beau Sejour in the northern Italian village of Étroubles, about 16 kilometres from the Swiss border. The car didn’t have a scratch on it. A Miura can be worth a seven-figure sum today, but even in 1969 the model was sufficiently rare and coveted for the filmmakers to craftily substitute a previously totalled example as an after-crash stand-in.
The P400 was parked alongside two other Miuras, both owned by Lamborghini: a gold P400 S and a yellow P400 SV. We had driven here in a sextet of Aventadors from the auto maker’s factory in Sant’Agata Bolognese, about 385 kilometres to the south, and to kick off the Miura’s 50th-anniversary celebration, we were going to re-create all but the incendiary element of The Italian Job’s opening sequence.
ANAS (Azienda Nazionale Autonoma delle Strade), the agency that manages Italian roadways, had closed the mountain pass to other traffic to allow us wide-open runs with photographers and video crews. But more special than the planned drive was the presence beforehand (in the town of Saint-Vincent) of three of the men responsible for the Miura’s existence.
The reunion of Giampaolo Dallara, Paolo Stanzani and Marcello Gandini was an unrepeatable event, an opportunity to hear (through interpreters) their stories over dinner and at a morning press conference, and get a sense that, despite the earth-shattering impact the Miura had when it came on the scene in 1966, the car’s genesis was just another day’s work doing a different sort of Italian job.
Dallara, 80, was Lamborghini’s technical director from the company’s founding in 1963 until 1969. Stanzani (who sadly died in January aged 81) was an assistant to Dallara, and by 1967 had become the factory’s general manager. Gandini, who joined the styling house Bertone in 1965 and soon thereafter designed the Miura, is 78.
Together with factory test driver Bob Wallace, who died in 2013 at age 74, they accomplished what could never be done today because of bureaucratic regulations, focus groups and the ponderous machinations of corporate boards. They had only one man to please: Ferruccio Lamborghini, an industrialist with a thriving tractor business who was eager to establish his new automobile marque’s dominance with GT cars produced in a state-of-the-art factory he had built from scratch in 1963.
Inspired by mid-engine competition cars such as the Ford GT40, Dallara, Stanzani and Wallace proposed to their boss a road-going sports car unlike any previously conceived models. It would have a mid-engine layout for perfect balance and be powered by Lamborghini’s mighty V12, which Giotto Bizzarrini designed in 1963 for the 350 GT.
To keep the new car’s length reasonable, the long engine would be turned sideways, as the Mini Cooper’s was, with the transmission running parallel to the crankcase. Such a design represented a serious feat of engineering and metal casting, but Lamborghini accomplished it in time to present a rolling chassis called P400 (P for posteriore, referencing the position of the engine, and 400 for its 4.0-litre displacement) at the 1965 Turin Motor Show, where it attracted huge crowds.
The engine, worthy of Michelangelo, was adorned with four bright Weber carburettors and shoehorned into a chassis, lightened with Swiss-cheese holes, that awaited a body designed as brilliantly as the engine. The body would come from Nuccio Bertone’s firm. After meeting Ferruccio Lamborghini for the first time at the Turin show, he quickly struck a deal to design and build it. The styling assignment went to young Gandini, whose initial concept was a stroke of genius that underwent little compromise before the first prototype was shown at the Geneva International Motor Show in March 1966.
Lamborghini named the car Miura after a formidable type of fighting bull bred by Eduardo Miura Fernández in Seville, Spain. Gandini even created a clever logo script, adding horns to the M and a tail to the A.
To say the Miura was a sensation is an understatement. Lamborghini assumed the company might sell only 50 of these ‘halo’ cars, but it ended up building about 760 from the spring of 1966 until production ended in January 1973.
Miura taxonomy is complicated because the model underwent many changes – mechanical and cosmetic – during its production run. Broadly, the P400 evolved into the P400 S by 1969, with a power increase from 260 to 275kW and structural improvements. The P400 SV, introduced in early 1971, generated 287kW and featured an improved rear suspension, wider rear bumpers and wheels, revised pop-up headlights and, for the final 96 examples, split-sump lubrication. This design separated the engine and transmission cases, preventing gear fragments caused by missed shifts from destroying the engine bearings.
Lamborghini reportedly produced 275 examples of the P400, 338 of the P400 S and 150 of the P400 SV. Five of the SVs and one new chassis were built to SVJ specs, which incorporated styling elements from Wallace’s one-off racing test mule called the Jota.
But just as Dallara, Stanzani and Wallace were perfecting the Miura SV, Bertone debuted the LP500 Countach prototype – featuring another brilliant Gandini design – and the Miura was suddenly relegated to history. In hindsight, the Miura’s creators say there were years of life and customer orders left in the SV, but progress demanded that Lamborghini, maker of trendsetting supercars, once again define the future with an even more radical design.
The Miura is to historic sports cars what Everest is to mountains. It also represents the pinnacle of automotive beauty, not just for its era but perhaps for all time. And while such proclamations may be debated, no one can deny that driving a Miura offers a thrill that few other cars can equal.
As you approach the Miura, you realise how small, low and delicate it is. Its featherweight doors open with a tiny latch, and as you settle into the narrow bucket seat, you can imagine that this intimate interior, when new, felt as modern as a space capsule.
The Miura holds you in a close embrace and a slightly awkward position, with your arms outstretched and your legs splayed to fit in the shallow foot well. The leather-wrapped steering wheel (wood-rimmed on the early P400 models), big tach and speedo pods, close-set pedals and imposing chrome shift gate suggest that a visceral driving experience is in store. The headrest is just millimetres from a glass window that separates the cabin from the four fuel- and air-gulping carburettors and the rest of the engine.
Turn the key and the 4.0-litre, four-cam engine barks to life, with fine mechanical noises coming from valves, gears and chains. The exhaust note is stentorian and mellifluous, unlike Ferrari’s edgy wail. The engine produces peak horsepower at 7850rpm and revs freely to redline, though out of courtesy to the yellow SV’s freshly rebuilt motor, we exercised some restraint.
The road through the Gran San Bernardo is narrow but well paved. Its tight hairpins alternate with straight shots, where the Miura flexed its V12. The car’s torque band is broad; the engine is willing to pull from 1500rpm in top gear, meaning that your right foot can do most of the work. But the synchronised five-speed gearbox is pure entertainment. With the precision of a rifle bolt, the Miura’s hardened-steel shift rod glided into the slotted gate. The sound of matching revs and the exhaust’s percussion repeated off the near-vertical walls of snow on either side of the road.
The Miura is pure muscle – no fat – and driving it reminds you how different this elemental, lightweight car (1315 kilograms) is from the Aventador and its other complicated descendants. The Aventador has nearly twice the power, but like every other modern supercar, it feels large and heavy compared with the Miura. The Aventador is, of course, far more evolved. The distance between it and the Miura is about the distance between the Miura and another machine of its day, a Lamborghini tractor.
But the Miura is a timeless expression of aesthetic perfection that also affords a connection between driver and machine that does not exist with today’s automobiles. As Dallara observed at the press conference: “We were lucky enough to have a magic style that is still magic today.”
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How the Most Rare and Valuable Watches Are Traded Among Elite Collectors
Some of the world’s most interesting watches spend decades being traded privately before we learn about them.
Before social media became the lingua franca of the watch world, there were forums. And on those forums, collectors—especially collectors of vintage Rolex—often traded timepieces amongst each other.
The advent of Instagram in the early 2010s, coupled with the explosion in interest in vintage timepieces, drew attention to this corner of the watch world, and with that attention came increased competition for the finest examples. In the case of six- and seven-figure watches, high-end dealers, like James Lamdin, founder and vice president of vintage and pre-owned watches at Analog:Shift, became trusted intermediaries, negotiating sales for pieces not once or twice but often multiple times as they made the rounds of the collector community.
“There are watches out there that may not be massively rare by reference, but are by example,” Lamdin tells Robb Report. “Tropical patina, ghosted bezel, or celebrity provenance—it’s that watch. When those watches go into a collection, usually it’s with the implicit understanding that they’re valuable and people will want them from you and will make you a profit when you sell them.”
The best dealers have built relationships with collectors around the world and often have first right of refusal when those pieces come back to market. But even still, the most coveted models can still slip through their fingers.
Eric Wind, of Wind Vintage in Palm Beach, Fla., has lost and found some of the world’s most storied watches. In 2015, when he was vice president, senior specialist at Christie’s in New York, Wind came across a “super rare” 1957 Audemars Piguet Ref. 5516 perpetual calendar that had languished in rural Florida until the nephew of the original owner consigned it to Christie’s. The first perpetual calendar wristwatch to feature a leap-year indicator, the piece was one of just nine made by Audemars Piguet in the 1950s. Wind considers it “the one in the best condition.”
He showed it to one of Christie’s better-known clients, Patrick Getreid, owner of the OAK Collection, who purchased it in 2015 for $545,000. In 2023, Getreid consigned it to Christie’s in Hong Kong. That’s when Wind decided to give the piece another shot.
“I had registered to bid on it but at the last minute, I got cold feet,” Wind continues. “It was starting kind of high compared with what Getreide had paid for it. I was bidding remotely from Florida, but when no one else is bidding, you’re kind of wondering if you’re a genius or a fool. Is there something everyone else knows that I don’t? The question was about market value. The watch ended up passing and I purchased it via private sale—or private treaty, as it’s known—after the sale. I had two clients who really wanted it. I offered it to both, but one was more ready to pull the trigger and he got it. It never saw the light of day.” That Audemars Piguet perpetual calendar, Wind says, “remains one of my top five watches on the planet.”
As he reflected on the piece’s winding journey, Wind considered his own role in its comings and goings. “It was fun to be part of the lifecycle of that watch, from when it was discovered in rural Florida and consigned to Christie’s, and then sold to a great collector, who sold it again,” he says. “I imagine it will come back to me at some point. I don’t know if it will be two years from now or 40 years.”
Another grail watch that Wind helped shepherd to a client was an exceptional Paul Newman Rolex Daytona Panda reference 2623 with a full set and a tropical dial that was sold by a small Swedish auction house just under a decade ago. “Another dealer got it,” Wind explains. “I was still at Christie’s, and I fell in love with the watch. This dealer who had it for a year then sold it to an Italian dealer, who then sold it to a collector in Asia. I was tracking the watch on Instagram and saw the collector post it. By that time, I had become a dealer.
“I made an offer to the collector to purchase it on behalf of my client,” he adds. “It had been owned by a Swedish boat captain and had been given to him by the family he worked for, the equivalent of the Rockefellers in Sweden. We had to arrange shipment to the U.S. by Malca-Amit armored transport. Whenever these high-value watches move around, you have to deal with armored shipments, customs, proper transportation, and a lot of paperwork. It takes some time but it’s well worth it.”
Both the AP perpetual calendar and Daytona were original and unpolished—“the kind of watches I look for,” Wind says. “It’s funny how watches circle around. Within the high-end watch world, we’re not talking about thousands and thousands of watches. We’re talking about a relatively small amount of great watches.”
Eric Ku, a high-end vintage dealer in Northern California, certainly knows the drill.
About 15 years ago, he was offered a first-of-its-kind 1996 Rolex Cosmograph Daytona “Rainbow” reference 16599 in white gold on a leather strap.
“I’ve been hunting jeweled Rolexes for a really long time, before it was a cool thing,” Ku, cofounder of the online auction site Loupe This, says. “The watch first surfaced to me around 15 years ago. It was offered to me by a dealer in the Middle East and was coming from, allegedly, a member of a royal family. At the time, the pricing was completely different than it is today. After going back and forth, I offered $130,500 and the seller wanted $136,462. I lost the watch. I was gutted. I’d been stalking the watch. But at the time, relative to the market, it didn’t make sense for me. It was a really tough time, might have been around the financial crisis. I felt confident it would come back to me, but it didn’t.
“Then, in 2012, Rolex introduced its new rainbow Daytona,” Ku says. “I had no doubt about the authenticity of the watch I’d lost out on, but seeing the new rainbow Daytona completely validated me and erased any scintilla of a doubt that I had about the watch. Fast forward a couple years: The watch was offered to me again privately, by a different person in the Middle East at a significant multiple of the original offering—let’s say in the mid six-figures. I bought it.”
In 2017, Ku sold the watch to an important collector based overseas, “a person of very high taste and connoisseurship who appreciated the rarity of that watch,” he says. The collector, by Ku’s reckoning, also appreciated the story of its journey. “Dealers and old collectors always like trading war stories,” he says. “What’s the one thing that got away and then it came back? The collector got sold on the story.”
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Champagne Bollinger Just Released a Limited-Edition, James Bond–Inspired Bubbly
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When it comes to drinks, James Bond may be best associated with a martini—shaken, not stirred, of course. But the secret agent has been known to enjoy a glass or two of bubbly as well.
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Whether you’re a Bond fan or a Champagne connoisseur, the $5,950 Champagne Bollinger 007 Goldfinger Limited Edition package is meant to appeal to both sensibilities.
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“It’s reassuringly British when it comes to service—it’s a culture of yes,” says Linden Pride, the Australian restaurant and bar owner behind the award-winning Caffe Dante in New York and Bobbie’s, the new speakeasy opening this month below Neil Perry’s new Song Bird restaurant in Sydney’s Double Bay (page 40). Pride should know; he lived at the Maybourne for almost a year while he and his partner, Nathalie Hudson, set up Dante, the stunning new restaurant and bar on the hotel’s ninth-floor rooftop. “Looking out from the roof onto lemon and olive trees, it’s easy to forget that you’re in Southern California, not Europe.”
Opened last year, Dante has quickly become one of the hottest reservations in town, luring in celebrities from Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin to the entire Real Madrid soccer team. Like its sister outposts in New York (besides the Greenwich Village original, a West Village location opened in 2020), the focus here is on non-threatening antipasti and aperitivi in a produce-driven menu of fresh familiar stalwarts, with the addition of wood-fired dishes from a giant pizza oven at the heart of the room. Just as it does in New York, a negroni cart does the rounds, and each afternoon is welcomed with a martini happy hour.
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Hibiki 40 Year Old Resets the Bar for One of Whisky’s Most Exalted Names
The legendary blender reasserts itself in the industry’s uppermost pantheon with its oldest and rarest blended release ever.
Over the last decade, whiskies from Suntory’s famed Hibiki stable have gone from a top-shelf staple to the new byword for luxury in the increasingly rarefied world of Japanese whisky. As stocks of its famed age statement blends drew ever lower, the air of exclusivity around the distillery grew and grew – something that has stuck around even as the brand’s new flagship blend, Harmony, became more readily available once more.
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As with Hibiki’s other blends, Suntory’s Chief Blender, Shinji Fukuyo, has spent years perfecting a blend that brings some of Japan’s oldest and finest spirits into perfect harmony – achieving a smoothness and complexity that takes the brand’s hallmark qualities to a new plane. Single malts from Yamazaki, Hakushu, and Chita all feature, having been individually aged for four decades to form a true expression of the place they were made, before making their way into the final blend.
Truly a multi-generational blend, Hibiki 40 Year Old is designed not just as an expression of the skills and expertise passed down through generations of individual distillers, but that of Fukuyo’s forebears, legendary Suntory blenders Shingo and Shinjiro Torii.
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While age statement single malts in the four- and five-decade category have become increasingly the vogue in recent years, never before has a blended whisky been attempted with such old stock—a unique challenge for its maker.
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White Lotus-ing? How Hit Films and TV Shows Are Inspiring Elite Travelers to ‘Set-Jet’ Across the Globe
It’s not just The White Lotus. Prestige TV and blockbuster films set in far-flung destinations are driving bookings like never before.
“As seen on TV” may have lowbrow connotations, but the recent glut of award-winning shows and films set in alluring, far-flung locations is causing an unprecedented run on the world’s best hotels. Call it set-jetting: planning your vacation around a destination featured in a popular series or movie. And while romantic suites and beloved characters have gotten people on planes since the golden age of film, what has changed is how central beautiful venues have become to plots.
“The way that The White Lotus used the destination to tell the story was really unique,” says Misty Belles, an executive at the global travel-adviser network Virtuoso. It also made its settings—the Four Seasons resorts in Maui and Taormina, Sicily—nigh un-bookable. And it’s hardly the only example: “Paris wasn’t hurting for eyes, but Emily in Paris showed the city in a more playful way,” Belles notes. “And people weren’t exactly flocking to Richmond before Ted Lasso.”
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The trend is so strong that a property doesn’t even need to be connected to a show to benefit from its boom. Henley Vazquez, cofounder of the New York–based travel agency Fora, points to Bridgerton’s impact on English estate hotels.
“Heckfield Place [used to be] a hard sell,” she says of the five-star Georgian mansion in Hampshire. “Now, people are dying to go there. It wasn’t featured in Bridgerton, but it’s just that kind of place.”
Others insist on the real deal. Jennifer Schwartz, managing director of Authentic Explorations, works with one family to build trips based on the Game of Thrones universe.
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“They went out of their way in Portugal” to visit Monsanto, the setting for Dragonstone in House of the Dragon, she notes. “It’s definitely a criterion on which they choose where they want to vacation.”
For travelers who want more than simply to follow in their favorite character’s footsteps, London’s Black Tomato takes things several steps further. Since 2023, it has planned high-octane itineraries based on the James Bond franchise and works with the films’ producers, Eon Productions, to make you feel like an MI6 agent. (Some trips even offer lessons with Daniel Craig’s stunt double, Lee Morrison.)
The 007 success has inspired more such trips. “We’ve just recently launched itineraries inspired by Yellowstone and Ripley, focusing on Montana and Wyoming and Italy, respectively,” says cofounder Tom Marchant.
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Still, it’s important to remember that sharp camerawork—and editing—accounts for a lot of the on-screen magic. Schwartz, of Authentic Explorations, notes that “the White Lotus hotel” in Sicily is “not super accessible, but it’s filmed as if the beach is right there.” In reality, the shore club from the show’s second season is 133 miles away. “People go to the place and they’re like, ‘You have to get in a car to go to the beach? What do you mean?’ ”
So where shouldn’t you go? Netflix’s The Perfect Couple will likely send hordes to Nantucket next summer, and The White Lotus’s third season, set on the Thai island Koh Samui, has already caused a local spike—and it’s not even on the air yet.
Bookings of Virtuoso’s properties in the region are up 38 percent since the show was announced. Luckily, Belles says, the effect doesn’t linger. “We typically see a good two-year impact on a set-jetting destination.”
