In 1967 I was fourteen and perhaps one of the earlier exponents of the eighties’ teenage tradition of having a Lamborghini pinup on my bedroom wall. And here it is again thanks to Google Images. You’re so familiar; every detail, line and curve of your body is etched in my memory, how often I rode you off into my dreams…
The 1967 Marzal was a genuine breakthrough car at a time when there were so many. Its design brief was to create a true four passenger mid-engine sports coupe, as a follow-up on the groundbreaking Miura mid-engine super sports car.
Built on a lengthened Miura chassis, the Marzal had a 175 hp two-liter six tucked between the rear wheels, essentially the Miura’s V12 cut in half.
The Marzal’s body design was by 28 year-old Marcello Gandini, who also takes credit for the Miura. It’s brilliant, a rare and genuine breakthrough, and surprisingly practical to boot.
The Miura pioneered and popularized rear louvers, and the Marzal took them to the next level, or two. This was seriously hot stuff in 1967. Think of some American cars from 1967 for perspective.
I don’t want to rub it in for you younger ones, but living through the sixties was a treat. Just about every day something radically new appeared, whether it was music, clothes, drugs, ideas, or cars. And the era really hit its peak from about 1966 through 1970 or so. The Marzal was a serious early high point in one of the most creative eras ever. Nobody had done anything like this before.
Especially interiors and dashboards like this.
It wasn’t just that it was insanely cool, but the Marzal really grabbed me because it was a very early exponent of the “unibody” or fuselage look. By that I’m not referring to the usual use of that word, but how the sides, and especially the rear quarters form a continuous plane from bottom to top, a unified whole.
The other new car of 1966 that also espoused that design was the Toronado, with its integrated rear quarters-C Pillar. Everybody else was mostly still stuck with putting a narrower greenhouse on top of a wider body. Not these two. As handsome as the Toro is, the Marzal’s proportions have it beat by a healthy margin.
Of course, this quickly became a major design trend, especially apparent on AMC’s 1968 Javelin and even more so on the AMX.
And the 1970 Camaro owes more than a passing tip of the hat to the Marzal. As do so many others.
Well, it’s bed time for me now, and I can think of worse things than having the Marzal in my head as I drift off….now if I could only sleep as soundly as I did in 1967.
a revised and expanded version of a post from 2011
Related CC reading:
Vintage Road & Track Feature: Bertone’s Lamborghini Marzal – “Design So Fresh That Everything Else Looks Old Fashioned” by PN
Curbside Classic: 1967 Lamborghini Miura – Street Art by T87
Vintage R&T Road Test: 1968 Lamborghini Miura – “Vroooooooooom!”
Vintage ‘Car’ Review: Lamborghini Miura – The First (and only) Modern Transverse 12 Cylinder Supercar by GeelongVic
Vintage Outtake: Lamborghini Miura at UC Berkeley, 1972 by dman
Stunning, it still takes my breath away, peak sixties futurism? I miss this level of optimism and individually in automotive design. If ‘Logans Run’ was a car maybe if you ignore the dystopian element.
I was first aware of this about ten years on from ’67. I truly thought the one I had as a Matchbox model was some made-up movie car till then!
And now, I am still despondent it was never mass-made. It is simply THE best of a fantastic decade for design, whether in Europe or the US. The sidewalks would still be littered with jaws if they made it tomorrow. And all this even though I am not at all a supercar type person – I probably had a poster of a Renault 16 up. (Yes, I was an odd child. No, I haven’t improved).
There’s good-quality footage on Youtube of it being driven (at crawling speed) at some uber-lux car event. It does not disappoint.
Not owning it does, though.
I also had that little Lambo. It was one of my favourites.
Maybe I’m exhibiting the bias of a 77-year-old man, but is it just me, or do the cars of the late sixties still look better than anything being shown today? As examples, I propose the 1967 Ferrari 330 P4, the Lamborghini Miura and the Alfa Romeo Montreal. The early sixties (’61 Lincoln Continental and T-Bird and ’63 Corvette Sting Ray) weren’t too shabby, either.
It was amazing, I saw it at the car show in Auckland, I was 9.
Here’s to the Marzal! I knew what this was well before I knew what a Lamborghini, or a super car, was. That was due to the fact that I had the 1969 Matchbox model and for whatever reason it was considerably faster than most of my other Superfast Matchboxes at the time.
It still shows the battle scars from many tumbles off of the yellow gravity track where it raced my sister’s equivalent cars.
My matchbox model was a curious orangey pink colour. From only a fiver on eBay I see, though minters are much more.
Very cool you still have that matchbox of it…!!!
Never saw that before, thanks for sharing. Definitely the creation of someone very talented and still in their 20’s. For example, those vent windows!
Do wonder if a flat Four or Six up front and sending power to the rear might have been a better powertrain. Would rather see glass on the liftback and luggage space under it.
Fantastic car! Interesting that the Toronado was one of the first cars to ditch vent windows, which had been nearly universal up to that time, but the Marzal had a very original design for its vent windows.
Like others here, I knew of the Marzal at a very young age only because I had/have the red Matchbox car. Seeing pictures of the actual car is a very different experience. In real life it must be stunning! Futuristic in a way the gorpy ’50s are not. Shades of the DeLorean (I like the Marzal better).
Saw the unique “honeycomb” dashboard for the first time when someone commented my dashboard post.
My little brother had a green Corgi die cast model, IIRC it was the larger scale.
The silver color is new to me, my Matchbox model is red with yellow tinted windows
Lol! The driver in the first shot is one very pretty cosmonaughty wrapped up in her silver space suit. The Marzal is the only exotic car able to satiate my love for all things hexagon. As a lover of louvers they are my all time favorite. The influence of those hexagons is so strong that Lamborghini has designed them prominently into the interior and exterior of several models over the years including those currently in production, almost to the point of becoming a trademark.
Here is the 2020 Marzal 4×4 off-road version. Gandini surely turned over in his grave upon first sight.
Here’s the pic.
Another wonderfully written and well reasoned design essay from Paul.
I’m probably one of the few CCers to have sat in the Marzal. Bertone had just restored it when I was working there and it was wheeled out along with their other significant vehicles when VIPs visited. It’s every bit as wonderful as you would imagine! The IP is so modern in its layout and the hexagonal vents are wonderful. The front seats are tiny – the tops come about halfway up your back, but there is real legroom in the rear – the packaging with the transverse straight 6 at the rear is very space efficient – and the view out with doors closed is surreal. The exterior is wonderfully crisp and well proportioned and every detail contributes towards a cohesive whole. The surfacing is very subtle – these types of surfaces may look simple, but, to pull them off without looking flat and weak takes a lot of skill.
In my view this is where Gandini reached full maturity as a designer (he wasn’t as involved with the Miura as commonly thought) and his Marzal really is a masterpiece.