We Put a Lamborghini Miura in a Wind Tunnel to See How Far Supercar Aero Has Come

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lamborghini miura
We Put a Miura in a Wind Tunnel. How Bad Was It?Mattia Balsamini - Hearst Owned
lamborghini miura
How far have supercar aerodynamics progressed in the past half-century? There’s only one way to find out.Mattia Balsamini


The Winds of Change Blew Through Sant’agata Bolognese in 1965

Lamborghini was in its formative years. Gorgeous 350 GTs—conceived and realized to spite Enzo Ferrari in the Old Man’s favored front-engine V-12 configuration—were birthed in the chaotic factory, the sounds of hammering and the fizz and crackle of welding torches often subsumed by completed GTs being coaxed into life. The rich noise was already echoing far and wide. But soon this tiny operation and its naive and fearless young engineering team would shock the world and inspire a new breed of high-performance mid-engine road cars. They called their radical wonder Miura. The people would come to bestow upon it a different title: supercar.

This story originally appeared in Volume 21 of Road & Track.

wind tunnel panel
Nothing looks more legitimately sciencey than a panel packed with dials, buttons, and colored lights.Mattia Balsamini

The as-yet-unnamed Miura’s rolling chassis, developed by Giampaolo Dallara and cradling a transverse Giotto Bizzarrini–designed V-12, debuted at Salone dell’Automobile di Torino in November 1965. Dallara was on the cusp of his 29th birthday. Bizzarrini, who’d developed the Ferrari 250 GTO, was the veteran of the group but still just 39. That chassis was compact, ingenious, and deeply exotic, as it sat on Borrani wire wheels covered in Pirelli Cinturato HS rubber and had ceramic-coated exhausts jutting out of four exits. In ’66, clothed in stunningly beautiful lines penned by 27-year-old Marcello Gandini for Bertone, the Miura arrived at the Geneva Auto Salon. Hysteria ensued.

lamborghini miura
Does anyone still drive a Miura fast enough for its aero­dynamic shortcomings to reveal themselves?Mattia Balsamini

Nearly 60 years later, Gandini’s masterpiece still has the power to remove the intellect of grown adults and reduce them to hunched figures making odd groans. There’s a language barrier between myself and the staff at Pininfarina S.p.A.’s wind tunnel, but our mutual appreciation for the finest work ever to emerge from their greatest rival design house is crystal clear. It is truly spectacular to behold.

However, today isn’t about appreciation but rather myth and legend—perhaps reinforcing them, maybe exploding them with data. It’s about revealing the secrets of the Miura’s shape in a purely scientific sense. As far as Lamborghini knows, the world’s first supercar has never been in a wind tunnel. Ever. It was born when aerodynamics were determined by trial and error, beauty took priority, and pen strokes were translated into clay and metal without a computer in sight. The contrast between this evocative but sometimes calamitous approach could hardly be more stark with today’s practices. Even front-wheel-drive hot hatches now burst onto the scene with peak-downforce figures. Supercars? They are sculpted on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) programs from day one. Nothing is left to chance.