The first Lamborghini Miura remained hidden for decades

Without a minor accident, Dr. Georg Gebhard had no idea how special his 1967 Miura really was.

“I just wanted an early one because they only weighed 930 kilos [2050 pounds]” he explained when he introduced the car at the Concorso d’Eleganza Varignana 1705 in Italy this fall. “The next one was 1100 [2425 pounds] and the last one is half a ton [1102 pounds] heavier. It also has a very brutal sound.”

The German scientist and car collector noted that his Miura, chassis number 3045, had been delivered new to Italian textile tycoon Felice Riva and had several owners in France before Gebhard bought it in 2004. What he knew, it turned out, was only a fraction of the story.

“We had a small repair and the painter called us and said there was more paint underneath,” remembers Gebhard. “We looked at it and my wife wanted to scrape everything back to the way it is now, but I didn’t want to and said let’s do it in the original color.” [Rosso].”

“Then three years ago we had another small repair on the front and saw all the colors again. We decided we’d do it – scrape it back and see what we find. I did it with the painter and spent two weeks scraping the paint off by hand – I would call it “reverse painting.” Of course, the problem with back painting is that if you scrape off too much, you can’t get it back.”

As he began to reveal several different colors – more than 20 layers in total – Gebhard realized he was creating a piece of automotive art. He references works by Russian abstract painter Wassily Kandisky and others as inspiration.

The result is undoubtedly the most unusual Miura. Even more fascinating is how its vibrant colors reveal a long-hidden history.

After more than two years of research, Gebhard came across an extraordinary story. It was widely believed that the original Miura ‘Sperimentale’ prototype had been destroyed after a collision with a truck, but the colors on Gebhard’s car painted a different picture.

The Miura, which Lamborghini introduced at the 1966 Geneva Motor Show, had chassis number 0502 and wore Rosso (later known as Arancio) livery. A Miura in Bianco appeared in Turin. Other show cars were Argentino Indianapolis and Giallo Sole. At the 1967 Geneva Motor Show a Miura appeared again in Argentino Indianapolis and later that year in Giallo Verde. It was precisely this sequence of colors that was revealed as Gebhard painstakingly removed layer by layer. Everything was under the Rosso color in which the car was sold to its first owner, Riva.

“So that means it’s been done before,” he adds. Gebhard then spoke to former Bertone employees, who confirmed that only one Miura was repeatedly painted over – Lamborghini wanted to test the public reaction to the different colors.

Gebhard’s detective work provides convincing evidence that this is the very first show car, even if the chassis number is not the same. “It was so easy to swap it out and put any number you wanted on it [the car]“, he says.

Gebhard estimates that all those extra layers of paint added 50 kg (110 pounds) to the Miura’s weight, so it’s not exactly the lightweight he originally wanted – it’s even more special.

“Now we have a prototype, a found object, an art car, and everything is original.”