MIURA GETS BACK ON SET 50 years on, The Italian Job Lamborghini returns to the roads that made it famous
That car, on that road: The Italian Job relived with the very Lamborghini Miura that starred in the opening sequence of the famous film
This can’t be happening. We’ve just covered the 305m of the Dardanelli Viaduct in a flash of orange rage and are already negotiating the first hairpin bends of the Colle de Gran San Bernardo in a Rosso Miura Lamborghini. This can’t be happening… Can it? After all, that car met its end impaled on the front of a Caterpillar D7171A bulldozer, right? Wrong. Of course wrong, because as we all now know, the Lambo that met an ignominious fate just minutes into the 1969 crime caper The Italian Job was an engineless shell.
Until earlier this year, however, the true fate of the car driven by heist planner Roger Beckerman (Rossano Brazzi) was a source of speculation. No more: the Miura P400 we’re in today has been certified by Lamborghini’s Polo Storico wing as the film-star car, and this is thought to be the first time it has returned to the Great St Bernard Pass since production of the film. The same goes for its driver, Enzo Moruzzi, Lamborghini’s man on the scene and pilot of the Miura in all but the in-car images of Brazzi wearing those famous Renauld Mustang sunglasses and lighting the obligatory cigarette – shot via a camera mounted on the door.
“The last time I drove this car was 29 June 1968,” the septuagenarian smiles. “I was 26 then. I had left on Thursday, on Friday we prepared the car with the cameras, we filmed all day Saturday, then on Sunday morning I drove back to Sant’agata.” Wearing a Lamborghini-branded red v-neck sweater beneath a long black leather coat, Moruzzi is as dapper as he is animated: a ball of nervous energy, eyes twinkling and hands full of gestures in the Italian tradition. Ah yes, the hands. The way they manipulate the wheel is uncannily familiar: deliberate, respectful, caressing the leather rim and never crossing despite the acute corners we’re tackling.
And then it dawns: they’re the hands we see in the close-up driving shots in the film. “The cameraman was in the passenger seat and shouting at me to sit as far back as possible,” Moruzzi explains. “When the movie came out in 1969
I was engaged and I took my fiancée to see the film. She didn’t know I was in it, but when she saw the opening sequence she turned to me and exclaimed, ‘Those are your hands!’”
The Miura’s role lasted barely four minutes – much of that overlaid with the titles – before its abrupt end at the base of a gorge, commemorated by a wreath from Mafia boss Altabani (Raf Vallone). Yet it was quite a cameo. Even now, I defy anyone to drive an Alpine pass and not to picture themselves in a Miura, or to hum the first few bars of Matt Monro’s haunting On Days Like These. The combination of that dreamy song, written for the sequence by soundtrack maestro Quincy Jones, and the fantasy imagery is what make its ultimate demise so shocking, with director Peter Collinson setting out the movie’s stall as a cut above the heist-flick norm.
The story of the car itself is almost as familiar as that of the film, but it’s worth reiterating just to reinforce what an incredible achievement the Lamborghini was. Inspired by Ferruccio, the eponymous tractor magnate who decided to go out and build better than Ferrari, engineered by Gianpaolo Dallara and engined by Giotto Bizzarrini. But it was the hook-up with Bertone, and particularly young stylist Marcello Gandini, that led to its breathtaking shape and sired a dynasty of dramatic supercars.
Shown as a chassis at Turin in 1965, a year later it was at Geneva wearing its jaw-dropping new clothes and by early 1967 cars were rolling out of the factory at Sant’agata Bolognese. Such was the reaction to this 170mph (claimed – 163 is probably more realistic) roadgoing rocketship, the projected 20 cars per year turned into 108 in the first 12 months, yet to spot one on the road remained a rare treat for most enthusiasts.
The same is true today, even if its fleeting but fundamental performance on the silver screen has helped to build the legend. The majority of Fiat Pandas we pass as we follow the road up from Saint Rhémy, where the bulk of the shooting took place, are locals – many of whom have never even heard of the film. But one keen driver in a British-registered Jaguar XJ40 makes a comedy double-take as the Miura roars past.