Happy 50th Birthday to the Lamborghini Miura

Our pals at The Drive didn’t get invited to the gala 50th birthday celebration Lamborghini is throwing in honor of the Lamborghini Miura. Neither did I. I guess you need a Miura to get invited, because the “party” entails driving from the Lamborghini headquarters in Sant’Agata Bolognese to Florence.

But thanks to The Drive and our buddy A.J. Baime, we have an article celebrating the Miura along with some striking images of perhaps the most beautiful car ever made. A.J. imagines giving a toast to the car, including pointing out some salient facts about its genesis.

Baime writes: “When the Miura first appeared at the 1966 Geneva Auto Show, it shocked the auto world. It was the world’s fastest production car, built by an Italian company most had never heard of. Top speed was over 170 mph.”

“Ferruccio himself never believed the car would sell more than 50 examples,” Baime adds. “He was wrong. The Miura became not just a supercar or a fighting bull, but the Trojan horse that put Lambo on the map as an international builder of smoking hot cars. Celebrity Miura owners included Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis, the Shah of Iran, among others.”

Baime collects other great trivia and includes the opening scene from the original “The Italian Job,” featuring a Miura cruising in the mountains until it gets destroyed in a tunnel and pushed over a cliff. Check out the article for more great birthday trivia about the fifty-years-young Miura.