On days like these, I wonder what became of you…

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The coolest guy in the summer of ’69 was Rossano Brazzi. The actor played a diminutive role with no dialogue in The Italian Job. Other than all those frantic mobsters and gangsters in the hit movie, Brazzi was serenity itself. He drove his bright orange Lamborghini Miura over the Alps as you and I would want to do it. Cigarette on the lips, shades on and a grand Matt Monro through the speakers. Could it be the most memorable opening scene in cinema history? It could well be.

But it ends in horror. The car disappears into a tunnel, crashes and is pushed into a gorge by a bulldozer. Umpteen expeditions to the actual scene have followed, but never a trace was found of the car. Was it real? Not completely, say the people who studied the subject. They say the car driven by Brazzi remained unharmed, while the one pushed into the ravine was only a body, made up to look like a supercar, or one that had crashed previously. Both were supposedly supplied by Lamborghini itself. What happened to the car from the driving scenes remained shrouded in mystery.

Until now. The Lamborghini was supposedly found in a pristine condition in Paris and bought by life-long Miura-devotee and salesman Iain Tyrrell and his friend Keith Ashworth. Tyrrell told The Daily Mail that he received a tip-off at Christmas about the car. “I was initially sceptical because no one had seen it for 46 years”, he said.  “But my source was a credible one so I started to pursue it. It was all very James Bond-ish – I had to go to Paris to inspect the car in a secret underground car park.” He is now adamant that the car is the Miura from The Italian Job while none of the previous owners knew of its role in the movie.

Now, there were some more cars used in the film. From Astons to E-types and from a Daimler to a Dino. Not to mention those Minis and Alfas. And the majority of these cars appears to be missing to this day, just like that Lamborghini. Oh, on days like these…

(Words Jeroen Booij, picture courtesy Paramount Pictures)

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