The stunning orange Italian exotic car races through the Italian Alps, the wailing V-12 never failing to disappoint Michael Cane, a cigarette loosely dangling from his mouth. It disappears into a tunnel, and a ball of flames ensues. The wreckage of the car is dragged out by heavy machinery by the Italian Mafia. It’s then pushed into a ravine, and a wreath for the driver follows. It’s one of the most stunning and heartbreaking introduction scenes in cinema for gearheads.
There must have been millions of viewers of The Italian Job (the 1969 original version) who assumed that the creamsicle orange Lamborghini Miura was a write-off. They are ALL wrong! I must say that I was never one of them! I had long suspected that Lamborghini would never permit a brand-new Miura to be wrecked in that fashion. I was right. That car disappeared into the tunnel, the cameras stopped, the car came out, and in went the wreckage of an already-wrecked Miura. Bam smash boom. The mangled orange wreckage comes out, gets shoved down the ravine. Done.
The orange Miura powering through the Alps is in pristine condition, and worth well over 1 million Euros.
It’s been described as “the Holy Grail of supercars,” and two British businessmen tracked it down and bought it. Good boys.
The car’s new co-owner, Iain Tyrrell, was tipped off around Christmas that the car still existed. As many are, he was skeptical, yet he decided to check it out. He said in an interview with The Daily Mail, “I was initially sceptical because no one had seen it for 46 years. But my source was a credible one so I started to pursue it.”
The car’s owner invited him to see it, but he had to act like James Bond. No, there were no crazy bad guys with military-grade toys trying to kill him. However, he was only given a mere three hours to verify the car as the real thing. “It was all very James Bond-ish – I had to go to Paris to inspect the car in a secret underground car park,” he said.
Tyrrell explained the confusion surrounding the car: “The Italian Job Lamborghini is the holy grail of supercars precisely because no one knew what happened to it after the film. I have a life-long passion for these cars but I just assumed this particular vehicle was out of reach.” Well, not any more. Lucky man.
The car is essentially brand-new. It’s been well-maintained by all of it’s previous owners, and very little to nothing on the car was changed, as far as Tyrrell knows.
“There are certain quirks within the interior of the car, such as the trim and the stitching. They are like a fingerprint or a birth mark. They can’t be replaced.”
Tyrrell found out that the filmmaker, Paramount Pictures, bought the car from Lamborghini for the filming of the scene, and then sold it to a car dealer.
The dealer then sold the car to an unidentified buyer, who owned it until 2005, when it changed hands several times before ending up with Norbetto Ferretti, a luxury yacht manufacturer. What is so interesting about Ferretti is that he is the son of the dealer who originally bought the car from Paramount. What blows my mind is that every single previous owner of the car had no clue that the car was in such a legendary movie.
Tyrrell and his friend/co-owner, Keith Ashworth, plan to show the car around the world. However, selling it is still a possibility. The value of this car will only rise exponentially.
The mystery of the other car is still unsolved. The smashed-up Miura pushed over the hillside vanished without a trace after it tumbled down the mountainside.
Tyrrell said, “When the production team went back to salvage the remains of the crashed car the next day it had gone. The whole car had disappeared and had obviously been stolen.” Who knows what happened to the wreckage of it?
The Unmuffled Auto News 