“We Will Never Do A New Miura,” Says Lamborghini Design Boss

Lamborghini caused a bit of a stir a few years ago when it launched the Countach LPI 800-4. A modern-day hybrid-powered reimagining of the spectacular Marcello Gandini-penned original, it wasn’t necessarily met with across-the-board approval, not least from the late Gandini himself.

It was nevertheless a shrewd move for Lambo, which had no issue moving all 112 examples at around £2 million a pop. Nostalgia, after all, is arguably the most powerful tool a lot of older car manufacturers have in their belt, which is why retro designs are so prevalent across the board, from the Renault 5 E-Tech to the aforementioned new Countach.

So it would make sense to expect more retro goodness from Lambo, right? Well, regardless, it’s not a seam the company wishes to tap any further. At the Goodwood Festival of Speed, Car Throttle sat down with Lamborghini’s Centro Stile design director, Mitja Borkert – in other words, the company’s design big cheese.

Asked if there’s another classic Lambo he’d like the chance to reimagine, Borkert’s response is unequivocal: “We have a clear rule: we are looking towards the future, and I fully agree with that. That’s a clear aim of [CEO] Stephan Winkelmann. One sentence that I really like is ‘the mirrors are small, but the windshield is big.”

That statement has nothing to do with actual Lamborghini design (although it could be), but all to do with its design vision. “The [new] Countach was a special moment,” he continues, “because we wanted to celebrate the starting point of our design DNA, but at Lamborghini, we are not doing reinterpretations of the past. That’s why, for example, we will never do a new Miura… We have to create something that is a Lamborghini, but we are never a brand looking backwards.”

That said, there’s a reason Borkert calls the original Countach the beginning of modern Lambo design. Its brutalist wedge shape has informed pretty much every car from the brand since. Its predecessor, the swoopy Miura, was undoubtedly gorgeous, but “not the starting point of our design DNA,” says Borkert as he casually sketches its stunning silhouette.

Lambo said something similar some 18 years ago when it unveiled 2006’s Miura Concept, which reinterpreted the car that arguably defined what a supercar was, 40 years on from its debut. Back then, as now, the company was clear that this was a one-off, and that its past was not its future.

Any discussion around that future inevitably leads to electrification. By the end of 2024, Lamborghini will have a fully plug-in hybrid range, and its first full EV, the Lanzador, is set to go into production in 2028. Does Borkert see the push towards electrification having an impact on the hallmarks of Lamborghini styling?

Having previously worked for Porsche when it was creating the Mission E – the concept that became the Taycan – he’s already been through the debate of whether an EV’s design should emphasise its radically different powertrain.

“For me, this discussion has now ended, because today, we want to create, first, a Lamborghini.” That’s what’ll guide any future Lambos Borkert oversees, regardless of what powers them. He refers back to the Terzo Millennio, 2017’s electric hypercar concept that was the first big project he worked on at Lambo.

“It was provocative, it was a rebel… and it was already showcasing opportunities [with electrification]. There was no muffler, instead, there were aerodynamic channels and so on.” Despite playing with these traditional supercar touchpoints, though, and its wildly exaggerated concept car profile, it left very few in doubt as to the brand behind it.

At any rate, Lambo is still understandably cautious around going down the full electric route for its bread-and-butter supercars, so there are likely plenty more petrol-powered showstoppers to come to keep Borkert occupied. Anyone eagerly awaiting a new Jalpa is probably out of luck, though.