Not the only racing Miura

THE ONLY RACING MIURA? [Cover feature page 70, Octane 153.] Not quite! I raced mine in three Sports Car Club of America races in 1967/68: one at the Savannah, Georgia, road course; another at Montgomery, Alabama, on streets closed for the occasion; and finally at Huntsville Airport in Alabama, where the Howmet gas turbine also ran in the A Sports Racing Class.

I retired, thankfully, from the Montgomery race when on the third lap my brake pedal went to the floor; those unvented discs weren’t up to the job. The other two races were more like high-speed tours, as I’d learnt my lesson brake-wise! One other thing: the disappearing oil pressure mentioned in your feature, which showed up in my car on the double-apex 180° turns one and two at Savannah, and also in our Stratos at the Daytona 24 Hour a decade later, was the result of centrifugal force acting on the needle!

I even overheard comments about this at Sebring in around 1970, when one of the 2.0-litre Alfa Romeo sports prototype drivers was complaining about the same circumstance occurring. We’d baffled the Stratos sump with so much foam that it lost a quart or more of capacity, but the gauge still dropped in what was called the International Horseshoe. But while the needle might’ve been on the peg, the low-pressure light never came on…

I paid $12,300 for the Miura in the summer of ’67, having ordered somewhere around car no 8 and getting one from the second dozen of production. If the boat bringing it hadn’t been late, I was all set to take it to Bonneville, where the record for production sports cars up to 4.2 litres (they were being nice to the Jags) was about 146mph. Sig Dallara told me that even at the elevation of about 2000m the car would beat that by a large margin. On a ten-mile stretch of Tennessee Interstate highway I saw 7200rpm and still climbing, which was something near 180mph; I li1ed when a crosswind gust through a gap in the trees moved the nose over a couple of feet. I didn’t want to re-enact the Rosemeyer autobahn accident, especially with no-one watching.

I eventually sold the car for $11,500 in 1972, a1er 40,000-plus miles and a nice letter from Lamborghini telling me that for $5000 they would convert my car into an S. That SAE50 oil in the sump/gearbox made it hard to start in the winter, until I drained the coolant every night in the garage and refilled the rad with hot water from a convenient water heater. The alternator’s internal drive gear was repaired with a part from a Yazoo lawnmower and, when the U-joints got sloppy at 12,000 miles, Ford F100 truck parts slipped right in.

I took the seat tracks out and let the seatbelts hold both me and the lightweight seat in place, to give me a bit more headroom. The car was more than tolerable for cross-country trips, as it had decent luggage space, and when I used it as a daily driver, it was the only time in my life I ever developed six-pack abs! Those one-legged sit-ups getting in and out did the trick. TOLY ARUTUNOFF OKLAHOMA, USA

The Letter of the Month wins a beautiful Toccata watch by Raymond Weil,