Miura Green

The green of the first supercar

In 1966 the Bertone coachbuilder sent a bare chassis to Geneva, and a year later a finished car stood on the stand that changed the idea of what a fast car should look like. The Lamborghini Miura had a twelve-cylinder engine of almost four liters mounted transversely behind the seats, an aluminum body to a design by Marcello Gandini and a name after a Spanish breeder of fighting bulls. Over seven years roughly seven hundred and fifty examples were built in the P400, S and SV versions.

A saturated green is among the tones the car was supplied in, and on a model it behaves differently from on a real body. The Miura has softly arched fenders without sharp edges, so the color runs over them smoothly and reveals every ripple in the filler around the panel gaps.

Working with a saturated green

Dark green tones like to run under masking edges and in a heavy coat they flood fine panel lines. So work from misting toward full coverage, let the surface rest between coats and rather go over the lines again with a scribing point before you start on the top varnish. The shine is drawn out only by the clear coat, while the shade itself stays medium saturated.

The same tone suits sports coupes and prototypes of the 1960s in general, where green was used as a national as well as a works color.

Among automotive finishes it is moreover rarer than red or white, so a model in it stands out from a shelf at once. At small scales it pays to lighten it very slightly, because dark tones visually flatten a shape on small areas and take volume away from a body.