The Miura’s signature eyelashes around its headlights draw many comparisons. But what exactly is their function?
The slatted lashes are just one more trick up the Miura’s bottomless sleeve of deception, beginning with the optical illusion created by the transversely mounted V12 in the middle, which gives the car the proportions of a front-engined berlinetta. The eyelashes make the car rather cute from a distance only to then transform into menacing alien claws up close.
But perhaps they are neither claws nor eyelashes, but the blades of an electric hair trimmer. While this might indicate that the Miura is but a hairdresser’s car, nothing could be further from the truth. Beneath its High Sixties curvaceous skin of steel, it is a blood and thunder V12 supercar, barely half a step removed from the racetrack.
The eyelashes would be gone for the Miura SV, the last edition of the car before it was phased out for the Countach. Surprisingly, their function is not clear—and I’ve just realized that never during my trysts with various Miuras have I peeked in to see what’s underneath.
I’ve always suspected cooling ducts for the brakes, but the only Miura I’ve seen with its front open had a screwed-down panel on the opposite side of the headlight assembly where a cooling duct might appear:
Perhaps the panel can be removed for actual road use, as a fake air scoop on a 60s Italian supercar would be just plain wrong. The slats on the door, for instance, send cool air into the engine bay:
Hat tip to Sertészsír.