Miura

The March 2007 entry in my Paul Oxman sports-car calendar is a 1971 Lamborghini Miura, one of the most beautiful sports-cars of all time.
Like the Owlface, I can't supply a scan of the calendar-picture, as the 'pyooter I do it with is in the shop. Like the Owlface, I hope to do it someday.
But I can supply a Miura picture.
The Miura has only one styling-flaw; the hideaway headlights that fold back flush with the front fenders.
It was a time when automakers were just beginning to break away from slavish adherence to the sealed-beam headlight.
Sealed beams came into use in the late '30s, a reaction to the fact the reflective medium inside the headlight-casing rusted away.
Sealed beams, like light-bulbs, cured that by sealing everything inside an airtight casing, so the reflective medium couldn't rust.
States even made sealed-beams the law, such that the Cibie headlights I had on the Dasher, then the E250, and finally the so-called soccer-mom minivan (the Astro) were illegal. (The E250 and Astro were rectangular.)
Unlike sealed-beams, the Cibie had a separate halogen bulb that fit inside a headlight-casing.
That casing was open to air and moisture, but didn't deteriorate. Headlight technology had advanced beyond the sealed-beam.
In fact, the Miura was one of the first cars to move beyond the sealed-beam.
The Corvette had hideaway headlights too, but they were sealed-beam. Cibies could replace them, but the originals were sealed-beam.
Too bad the Miura couldn't have used the headlight the Corvette uses now: individual bulbs in plastical casings.
They would have looked a lot better.
Our Faithful Hunda (an '89) was our first car with headlights specific to it; i.e. individual halogen bulbs in plastic casings specific to only that car.
The original Ford Taurus was one of the first Detroit cars to break into specific plastic headlights.
Even the first front-wheel-drive GM cars had rectangular sealed-beams. Our architect had a gorgeous red late-'80s Olds hardtop, but it had four rectangular sealed-beams.
The Miura was a fabulous car, introduced in 1966, the year I graduated Houghton. It had a transverse V12 pushing 400 horsepower. It was also mid-engine.
It was styled by Bertone, and lacks the aerodynamic trickery of later cars.
So it looks gorgeous, but I can imagine it nearly flying at elevated speeds.
Aerodynamic trickery is the ruination of elegant car-styling. A car has to be designed to slam it into the ground at speed.
As such it often looks like an overturned shovel.
Cars like the Miura looked much better the other way around.