Now, here at the Inlux we don’t like to follow the crowd. And the crowd in terms of global car culture has been going collectively ape of late over the media launch of Lamborghini’s latest stellar creation, the Aventador.

But sometimes you have to acknowledge that Lamborghini really have produced an all-time conquering hero in this car. In fact, it seems to defy such a banal characterisation — and I’m not going to even true to come up with some superlative neologism (there’s an interesting phrase) about this seven hundred horsepower, fluid-seamed piece of design wonder.

The two videos below (despite the over-the-top soundtrack) really capture the dynamic design. It’s as if the deconstructed lines of the car meld into the road and the landscape through which it passes — in much the same way as that classic opening scene in the Italian Job, where the Miura is threaded through the Alps, thereby defining a particular era of aspirational motor-lust.

Click here to view the embedded video.

These viral videos — part of the hugely expensive and expansive campaign that has promoted the launch of the Aventador– really highlight how powerful digitally disseminated, HD moving image is in capturing something so fundamentally out of the reach of the average punter as to be laughable.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hardly any of is will ever get to drive an Aventador — let alone own one. But the way it has been put out in to the marketplace at leasts makes us feel that we understand it.

You can’t help but feel an affinity with a thing of such power and beauty presented with such care.

And that’s the genius of Lamborghini’s relatively new-found inner workings.

Copyright: Joe Sackey Classics

Now, it may seem a little facile to include the all-conquering Miura as a Friday car crush.

It has to be included in anyone’s list of most beautiful cars ever produced. But, since it’s the royal wedding day, our concession to regality is that we include the king and queen of cars — and, crucially, a set of pictures by Joe Sackey that are equally regal.

Designer Marcello Gandini certainly got a few things right. And it looks the best we’ve ever seen it in double Nero.

God save the King!

It’s been a while since we posted pics of an interesting concept from the past. But Alfa’s Scighera is a fine example of a piece of imagineering from the 1990a that is up there with some of the most outragous concepts from the mid seventies.

It might be no coincidence that this beauty springs from the mind of Fabrizio Giugiaro (yes, the son of the great Giorgetto himself).

It’s difficult to see what this design study from Italdesign was aiming at, but you can see the influence the design has hoovered up. There are elements from Bertone designed classics like the Alfa Carabo, the Lamborghini Miura and even the Stratos zero.

There are pure bred Italdesign flourishes too, though, like the low slung, vented front that recalls early concepts that lead to the BMW M1. And last, and you can’t forget of course, Mr G senior’s ugly Aztec.

The prototype had a mid-engined, twin-turbo 3 litre V6 which apparently produced 400bhp and its 4WD handling must be a doozy.

Apparently the car can be seen in the permanent collection on display in the Italdesign atelier.

The Lamborghini Miura is the most beautiful car of the sixties. There. I’ve said it. You can’t be objective when you’re talking about automotive beauty. There’s this idea that journalists are meant to be objective, platonic, even handed; set back from the debate. But whichever sort of scales you could possibly employ to define ultimate beauty in a car, the Miura comes out on top. For me, at least.

Sure, Marcello Gandini’s design for Bertone might not be necessarily be possessed of the sublime curvature of Ferrari’s 250 GTO. It might not have the natural racer pulchritude of the Alfa 33 Stradale – nor the long limbed sleekness of Jaguar’s E Type.

But what the Miura had over these titans of sixtes automotive loveliness was its purity. The Miura had a completely uncompromised Latinate machismo encoded in the sort of futurism that defined perfectly the end of the decade that changed everything.

Illustrations by Matt Taylor, commissioned exclusively for Influx

The mid-rear engine layout that had been used to so much success in GT racing; particularly in the form of the Porsche 917 and Ford GT40; was for the first time served up in a road going car of instant appeal. It changed Lamborghini from an also-ran in the world of sports — a tractor maker who upgraded to producing vaguely bourgois GTs for me of a certain age — to a company that would add a dash of hooligan chic to the rarified poise cornered by blokes who drove Ferraris.

Every subsequent ‘supercar’ can thus trace its lineage back to the birth of the Miura in 1966. Even the latest crop of low volume mid engined hypercars from manufacturers like Koenigsegg and Noble owe their basic format to the Miura. And the thing is, this was a more pretty car than anything produced these last 44 years.

If there is a Miura fan in your life, or you can’t get enough of details and beautiful pictures on Gandini’s beautiful brainchild, then you should check out The Lamborghini Miura Bible, Joe Sackey’s definitive tome on the legend. Published By Veloce, the book isn’t cheap, but contains more brilliant pictures than the WWW could ever muster. It reads well too and would make a killer Christmas present for a car nut.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Lamborghini have produced some of the most hardcore cars ever to grace the streets. The overt machismo of the designs aren’t to everyone’s taste. But you can’t help but admire the definition of automotive exotic. Here are a few of our fave Lambos, from concepts to classics.

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The rarified world of academic car design throws up some interesting concepts every now and then. Many are worthy responses to real-life briefs from within the car industry and offer constructive solutions. Others take future scenarios and offer outlandish strategies for practical or aesthetic problems that haven’t arisen yet. Other just look evil. Firmly in the latter category is designer Slavche Tanevsky’s ‘Ankonian’ concept for Lamborghini from 2009. This concept was, apparently, named after a breed of bull famous for its black bristly hair – and basically pushed the real-life Reventon design signatures to their ultimate conclusion. The designer had a healthy amount of practical help from the inhouse team at Lamborghini/Audi, so as you can see, the model he produced looks good enough to develop. Give the man a job.

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This is the car that raised new Lamborghini to new levels. Incorporating the sort of technology, like e-gears, cutting edge aerodynamics and lightweight construction crossed with stratospheric power, the Murcielago defined the obsession with extremes in super car aspiration in the noughties. And for all its various manifestations, the original LP 640 in fighter-plane grey and black alloys is the Lamborghini for which we would most willingly sell a kidney.

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Having become a legend with the Miura and Miura S models since their production began in 1966, in the spring of 1971 Ferruccio Lamborghini surprised the world with the new Countach LP 400. Because the demand for the Miura was still high and preparations were still underway for the mass production of the Countach LP 400, the company decided to present the evolution of the Miura, the SV model, with its wider mud guard and greatly revamped 385 HP engine with separate lubricating systems for engine and gearbox. The last Miura SV was delivered on 15th January 1973 to the son of the car manufacturer Ferdinando Innocenti.

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Espada became Lamborghini’s best seller from 1968 to 1978. The 4-seater was designed and built by Carrozzeria Bertone. Depending on the version, the 4-litre 12-cylinder engine developed between 325 and 350 HP. With 1,227 models produced – and from 1974 also available with a Chrysler automatic 3-gear gearbox – the Espada was the backbone of the company in financial terms, for eleven years.

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The Diablo was the ultimate transitional Lambo. It’s chunky, brutal design wasn’t for everyone, but the aesthetic was moving toward the new look of the Murcielago and the Gallardo that were heralded by Audi’s involvement in the brand. In September 1999 Lamborghini presented Diablo GT at the frankfurt show as the world’s fastest production cars. To reach the promised 338 km/h the GT had a 6-litre V12 engine, plus a completely revamped body and chassis. Only 83 were ever built. Brutal beauty.

The much-acclaimed Lamborghini Miura Bible by Joe Sackey was first published by specialist motoring press Veloce in November 2008. However the entire first print run was sold out in less than four months, leaving a lot of people disappointed. Now reprinted, the book is widely available again.

Named after a Spanish ranch famed for its ferocious bulls, the Lamborghini Miura’s flamboyance and engineering wowed the public when the car was unveiled in the mid-sixties. Yet despite its devoted following, there has been no authoritative publication on the car for over a quarter of a century…until now.

This definitive volume is the result of 20 years of diligent research, and Joe is deservedly now credited as being the world’s leading authority on the Miura. He makes the case that the Miura is nothing short of “The most beautiful sports car of the postwar era.” Having himself owned, maintained and restored five Miuras, he knows what he’s talking about.

The book features a specially commissioned studio shoot capturing the historic homologation prototype USA Miura SV, to production statistics, specification information, paint charts, and much more.

Look at your car. Ignore the kerbed alloy and the parking dent and the fact that you didn’t get around to cleaning it last weekend. Look beyond all that. Look at its forms, its details, its edges and curves. How does it make you feel when you really look at it? If it leaves you cold, it’s a crime. There’s no excuse for lazy, passionless car design; you have been cheated. If — even when it’s parked — the looks suggest speed and freedom and all the other things you love about driving your car, the designer has done his job. The very best-looking cars are simply beautiful; if you own a DS or a Miura or an Alfa 8C, just looking at it might be enough.

But is it art? You might get the same instinctive, irrational, love it-loathe it reaction to a car as you do to a painting or a sculpture, but can it qualify as a work of art? I’m going to argue that it doesn’t, but it does get very close. Perhaps a car magazine shouldn’t be attempting to answer such big questions — but one definition of art is that it exists purely for its own sake. The shape of your car does not; the designer has had to package an engine in a given position and a given number of seats and doors, and wrap it all in a shape that slips efficiently through the air and won’t try to take off over 100mph.

This is design, not art, but the car industry has produced some of the most emotive design of the last century. The French philosopher Roland Barthes wrote when the Citroen DS was launched in 1955 that the car was now the “exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.”

The comparison between architecture and car design is a good one. Buildings and cars each have a function beyond their physical appearance; we ought to care how they look, and too often are let down. The comparison of cars with cathedrals is even better. One is a place of worship, the other an object of worship. It’s hard to separate how they look from what they represent. Believers look at a great church and see divinity in its beauty and the fact that it was built at all. Our reaction to great cars is maybe a little more prosaic, but the same thing happens; we look at a Ferrari 250 and can’t dissociate its looks from the knowledge that it is fast and rare and expensive and sensationally exciting to drive.

So, some examples of the greatest car design/art. We’ve wanted our cars to look good since Edwardian times; as soon as we’d cracked getting them to drive at more than a few miles per hour and for more than a few miles without breaking down, we’ve wanted them to look more than purely functional. Those ungainly, upright things with bicycle mudguards and their guts on public display soon gave way to styled, streamlined sheet metal.

Despite a much shorter history, great car design, like great art, forms movements, grouped around a certain place or time. Europe in the mid-thirties gave us the first real rush of beauty with the 1935 Alfa Romeo 8C and the 1937 Bugatti Atlantic.  Fifties America was another locus; the cars weren’t always beautiful but, like pop art, they were an incredibly self-confident reflection of an incredibly self-confident society which the car itself had helped create. Back to Italy for the sixties, where designers with names like Old Masters created first bewitching, almost unobtainable coupes and roadsters for Ferrari and others, before producing the Miura: the first supercar, and arguably the most beautiful car ever drawn, though we won’t get bogged down in that row here.

And just like art, attribution is everything; despite being designed 43 years ago, a pedantic but amusing row still simmers between Gandini and Giugiaro — now old men — over who really created the Miura.

But how many truly beautiful cars have there been since then? Car designers have always had to work around the constraints imposed on them by the engineers and aerodynamicists. There’s an argument that the constraints are now too tight for designers to create anything beautiful. Add the legal requirements of all the countries where the car sells and, according to Jaguar design chief Ian Callum, skinning a car becomes a ‘join the dots exercise’. Callum knows good design; one critic wrote that his Aston Martin DB7 has ‘the sort of beauty the car world is lucky to see once in a generation”. His seductive XK coupe and XF saloon have re-established Jaguar’s reputation as a maker of the world’s best-looking cars, anchored by the ’49 XK120, the ’61 E-type and the ’68 XJ, but he isn’t sure he could do something as unfettered as the DB7 again.

It isn’t Callum’s work, but the Bugatti Veyron exemplifies his thinking. At €1.2m, handbuilt in tiny numbers and with no purpose other than to delight its owners it ought to be a visual masterpiece, as ‘30s Bugattis were. But the Veyron’s styling is its least-discussed attribute; the demands of packaging its monstrous mechanicals, cooling its 1001 horsepower engine and preventing it from taking flight at 253mph mean that when you first encounter it you’re surprised by its unthreatening, unremarkable egg-shape.

But we are still making great looking cars, if not cars that border on art. Look at the new Alfa 8C, or even the Fiat 500, cars whose visual appeal is so strong that discerning car people are prepared to ignore the fact that they’re not that great to drive. Patrick le Quement, about to retire after 43 years as a car designer and 22 as the head of Renault design is more sanguine than Callum. “Yes, we’re all suffering a little bit, and the European pedestrian protection rules mean the noses of our cars look a little bit like Le Mans-ready Porsche 911s, but ingenious engineers will find us a little more flexibility. I think we could be entering a new golden era.”

By Ben Oliver

You have to hand it to Bertone. The company seems to be more adept at drawing together a collective of designers who are prepared to push the boat out than anyone else.
And when you look at the Bonkers Autobianchi Runabout of that mental year of 1969, the boat was almost literally pushed out. Taking inspiration from the nautical world, the Runabout was commissioned by the Italian car maker to explore what might be possible with a Fiat platform and a near limitless design parameter.

Marcello Gandini, protagonist with our her Giugiaro, of the infamous controversy surrounding penmanship of the pivotal Lamborghini Miura design, was responsible for this outrageous concept.

Having only recently leaped in Giugiaro’s seat after leaving Bertone, Gandini obviously had a point to prove. It was 1969 and the world was being turned around and around and upside down in almost every cultural form. The runabout typified the sort of thinking that sent folk to the moon.

But Ironically. for such a old set of design elements, it bears a strikingly obvious relationship to the Fiat X19, the car that eventuially emerged from in 1972. Just shows you that the greatest dream with their eyes wide open.

Everyone loves a gangster movie. And there can’t have been many gangster flicks that didn’t feature a healthy garage full of bad-boy motors. Right from the beginning of the movie industry cars have been icons loaded with meaning. When representing archetypes like villains, filmmakers from Ealing Studios to the Parisian Left Bank (not to mention Hollywood) have hooked up our most infamous characters with cars that have represented everything from existential ennui to oedipal mother love. Here are some of our favourites.

Think of the classic Brit flick of 1969 The Italian Job and what immediately comes to mind is the trio of Mini Coopers blasting through the backstreets of Rome. But the preternaturally beautiful opening sequence of the film, in which a Lamborghini Miura dances through a succession of alpine bends is absolute poetry in motion.

In 1971’s Get Carter, perhaps the best known and darkest British gangster movie of all time, there the classic getaway vehicle is featured, the MK 2 Jag. The Mk 2 represents a very British, very working class brand of hard-won sophistication and brutal potency which is embodied in the flesh by the hard-as-nails Jack Carter, played by Michael Caine.

A lesser known, and certainly less successful Brit gangster flick was Villain, which also opened in cinemas in 1971 (which is probably why it flopped). A vodka-saturated Richard Burton plays Vic Dakin, the brutal, misogynistic central character in a vaguely absurd, cartoon cockney manner. Dakin and his crew plan a classic five vehicle heist (Jag Mk2, two Zephyr Zodiacs, and a couple of Triumphs). It all, predictably, goes horribly wrong. There’s a hilarious payoff at the end when Burton’s character ends up collecting a bundle of cash from the mattress where his beloved muvva lays and drinks endless cups of tea brought to her by her devoted but pyschopathic prodigy.

On the other side of the pond, meanwhile, French filmmakers of a more overtly philosophical bent had been referencing Hollywood gangster movies of old, whilst setting the action in a European setting with quintessentially European characters. In one of the better known films of this era, Francois Truffaut’s A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) dinky little Renaults perform the walk-on parts whilst the starring roles are reserved for Thunderbirds and Chevrolets. Stripped down monochromatic fun.

In Jean-Pierre Melville’s beautiful and highly influential Le Samourai, however, the lone assassin (played by French movie heart throb Alain Delon) scores a set of skeleton keys which can open any DS ever built. The main protagonist goes on to use a succession of the iconic Citroens to ferry him about from hit-to-hit. The plot device in which the car becomes a universal conduit of murderous intent has been copied by directors as diverse as Hong Kong director John Woo (The Killer) and Jim Jarmusch (Ghostdog).

In complete contrast to Melville’s sparse symbolism, Martin Scorcese uses the cacophony of a full fleet of exploding Cadillacs to signify the inevitable fall-from-grace of a big time crook .

For gangsters in the movies, flash motors and nefarious intent are fatally intertwined. Feel free to send us suggestions for your favourite automotive dispatches from the cinematic underworld.