A Star Is Reborn

THAT CAR, ON THAT ROAD: IN THE ALPS WITH THE VERY LAMBORGHINI MIURA – AND ITS FACTORY DRIVER – THAT STARRED IN THE ITALIAN JOB

- Alastair Clements

THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING. We’ve just covered the 305 meters of the Dardanelli Viaduct, in the Italian alps, in a flash of orange rage and are already negotiating the first hairpin bends of the Colle de Gran San Bernardo in an iconic Lamborghini Miura. Supposedly, this car met its end impaled on the front of a Caterpillar D7171A bulldozer, right? Wrong. Of course, wrong, because as we all now know, the Lambo that met an ignominious fate just minutes into the 1969 crime caper The Italian Job was an engineless shell.

Until earlier this year, however, the true fate of the car driven by heist planner Roger Beckerman (played by Italian actor Rossano Brazzi) was a source of speculation. No more: the Miura P400 we’re in today has been certified by Lamborghini’s Polo Storico wing as the film-star car, and this is thought to be the first time it has returned to the Great St Bernard Pass since the production of the film. The same goes for its driver, Enzo Moruzzi, Lamborghini’s man on the scene and pilot of the Miura in all but the in-car images of Brazzi – wearing those famous Renauld Mustang sunglasses and lighting the obligatory cigarette – shot via a camera mounted on the door.

“The last time I drove this car was June 29, 1968,” the septuagenarian smiles. “I was 26 then. I had left on Thursday, on Friday we prepared the car with the cameras, we filmed all day Saturday, then on Sunday morning I drove back to Sant’Agata.”

Wearing a Lamborghini-branded red v-neck sweater beneath a long black leather coat, Moruzzi is as dapper as he is animated, a ball of nervous energy, eyes twinkling and hands full of gestures in the Italian tradition. Ah yes, the hands. The way they manipulate the wheel is uncannily familiar: deliberate, respectful, caressing the leather rim and never crossing despite the acute corners we’re tackling.