The Miura holds a special place in the history of both Lamborghini and the supercar as a whole. Far more than the front-engined GTs that came before, the Miura put Lamborghini on the map, and paved the way for a future filled with mid-engined exotics. That makes it a highly sought-after item among collectors... but this one is in another league altogether.
On display by the Lamborghini Polo Storico division at this year's Retromobile show in Paris is an incredibly rare Miura SVJ. Of the 764 Miuras made, 150 were SV versions - and only a handful were SVJs.
Like today's Aventador SVJ, the Miura SVJ was the most extreme and hardcore version of Lamborghini's prototypical mid-engined supercar. It stemmed from a passion project undertaken by the factory's legendary test driver Bob Wallace to adapt the Miura for competition under the FIA's Appendix J regulations.
The racing project was ultimately abandoned, but the manufacturer took some of the lessons it learned in the process and applied it to a small number of road cars for its most favored clients - only four, according to Lamborghini, and no more than eight by the broadest estimates.
This one was made for Hubert Hahne - a racing driver who became Lamborghini's official importer in Germany after retirement. It was originally painted black with a white and black leather interior. Hahne later had the factory repaint it in his home country's racing color, and it's stayed silver ever since - remaining in Germany until the early 2000s when it disappeared into a private collection in Japan. Having recently completed its restoration, Polo Storico displayed it for the first time in decades at Retromobile, alongside another Miura P400 S said to have been built entirely from spare parts.
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