O
n a different planet – no, not even that,
merely in a different era – it should be the
keys to a Ferrari that Jean Todt is receiving
from Stefano Domenicali. After all, each of
these colossi from the world of Formula 1
made their names at Maranello’s best-known brand.
Monsieur Todt was General Manager of Scuderia Ferrari
for 13 years (from 1994 to 2007), while from 2004 to
2009 he was elevated to become Ferrari’s CEO. It was
Todt who hand-picked the man to succeed him as head
of the Scuderia in January 2008: Stefano Domenicali,
someone who had been with Ferrari almost as long as
Todt (since 1995, in fact).
So both of these men have the red blood of
Maranello in their veins. But times change, things
move on. These men have moved on, too. Todt is now
in his third successive term as president of the FIA.
And having lasted six years as Ferrari F1 team
principal, Domenicali eventually accepted an offer
to work for Audi, assuming the job of CEO at
Automobili Lamborghini in 2014, in which position
he currently remains.
With both of these men, then, the prancing horse
has morphed into the raging bull. For Domenicali,
Lamborghini is his new home. As for Todt, he’s become
a Lamborghini owner: the seduction and charms of the
Miura were simply too strong to resist. And who can
blame him? The Miura’s place in history is absolutely
assured as the world’s first ever supercar, and it
remains as achingly beautiful today as it was when a
27-year old Marcello Gandini designed it in 1966.
So it was that, in February 2019, at the Paris
Rétromobile show, Domenicali handed over the keys of
a very special restored Miura SV – the one you see on
these pages – to its owner, Jean Todt. It has just
undergone a complete restoration by Polo Storico,
Lamborghini’s restoration division.
It looks absolutely fabulous, but then this is no
ordinary Miura. It’s not the first time it’s been back to
the factory for a rebuild. The last time it was at
Sant’Agata was 1972, when it was ‘rebuilt’ – or perhaps
more accurately, ‘built’. You see, this car is chassis
number #3673, which was originally a 1968 Miura
P400S, the 242nd of the Miuras produced. It first
emerged from the factory painted yellow with a
mustard-coloured cabin. So how come chassis #3673 is
now, officially, a 1972 Miura SV?
The answer is that the 1968 original was destroyed
in an accident in South Africa. Lamborghini simply took
the old chassis number and applied it to a completely
fresh Miura in 1972, building it to then-current SV spec.
This was quite normal practice at the time, since the
factory kept spare chassis at its Assistenza Clienti
Reparto department, whose job it was to do
restorations crash repairs on cars from all over the
world. Using previously allocated chassis numbers was
perfectly regular. This is how Lamborghini itself
expresses what happened: “There were fiscal motives,
to protect the customer from the extremely high
import taxes on new vehicles... as well as practical
reasons, given that the car kept the previous
registration and related documents.”
It seems that the destroyed Miura was shipped
back to the factory, where a new car was
constructed using the old chassis number but using a
new chassis (originally allocated as number 5098). It