ON A DAY LIKE THIS…
Enzo Moruzzi is the perfect size for the Miura. I am not – nor is anyone the wrong side of 6ft tall – but it’s well worth the effort of getting in and the discomfort once you are there, with knees around your ears and head brushing the cant rail.
The lengthy whirr of the starter is followed by a reluctant catch – not too much throttle, the bank of four triple-choke downdraught Webers behind your ears have a reputation for spontaneous combustion – before the 3929cc 60º V12 grumbles into life. From cold it’s recalcitrant, grumpy, emulating the bull for which it was named, the first low-speed forays a blend of transmission whine, cam-chain chatter and exhaust waffle. The controls are heavy, the gearlever, clutch and even the throttle requiring decisive movements, but it’s a car you soon settle into, flowing with this sinuous, scenic route – albeit always painfully aware of its value.
But to not open it up would be an unrepeatable opportunity missed, and once that quad-cam V12 passes 3000rpm its howl becomes all consuming: not the highly-strung song of a contemporary Ferrari, but something more feral, matching the animal character of this underdog that became the pioneer of a new genre. There’s no redline for the 10,000rpm rev counter but we’re keeping to a conservative 6000 today, 1000rpm short of its 350bhp power peak, and, with a sheer drop to one side, a rock face to the other, we won’t be troubling the upper reaches of the 320kph speedo either.
Begin to push it a little into the corners and the limitations of this earliest of supercars reveal themselves. The Girling disc brakes feel weak, while the combination of the flexible chassis (stiffened with thicker metal on later cars), the narrow rear track and the engine mounted high over the transmission means that you’re always conscious of the car’s mass shifting over the relatively slender 215/70 VR15 Pirelli Cinturatos that wrap those gorgeous Campagnolo magnesium alloys.
But the double-wishbone suspension is supple and the steering is a joy. The flat, three-spoke wheel with its distinctive drilled spokes moves fluidly in your hands, the rack responding faithfully to your inputs and smoothly returning to the straight-ahead as the corner opens and you can wind out that flexible engine to drown out Matt Munro’s incessant earworm just one more time.
‘The howl of the quad-cam V12 is all-consuming: not the highly-strung song of a contemporary Ferrari, but something more feral’