(This is one of my favorite car photos ever. It’s very much professional caliber. PN)
See that young woman joyfully dancing down the steps outside the International House in Berkeley, California in 1972? She has a good reason to be happy: That’s her Miura sitting at the curb, and she’s about to take it for a brisk spin and hear the sound of its wailing V12 inches behind her back. Wouldn’t you have been overjoyed if your dad gave you a Miura to use at college?
I took this picture when I was a car-crazy fifteen year-old kid. I was blown away to see this Miura and peeled off a shot, which I later developed at home. Little did I know then that the woman in the photo was the owner and that this shot would become a little piece of history, if not quite as much as this Miura. Unfortunately, the story did not end well for her or the Miura, thanks to a nasty crash. But after being stored some 45 years at a body shop, it was rebuilt and recently sold for a cool two million.
Here’s the whole story, one that I could never have imagined back in 1972.
In 2018, I posted this photo here at CC which I had taken as a 15 year old kid, of a Lamborghini Miura parked curbside. About six months later, a commenter wrote that he had recently purchased a Miura in the Bay Area, that had been garaged for decades. Purportedly, the car had been owned when new by an Iranian woman student at UC Berkeley. The commenter then stumbled on my photo at CC. Based on some unique details of the Miura in my photo, specifically the wheels and mirror, as well as the fact that the owner in 1972 had been a Berkeley student, he realized that it was in fact the same car. Paul Niedermeyer put him in touch with me, and here’s an update on what transpired.
From Automobile Magazine, 2020, by Karissa Hosek
Not much happened for over a year, and then I was contacted by a writer from Automobile magazine, who was writing a story on the car, and wanted to use my photo which I had scanned from a nearly 50 year-old grainy print made in my home darkroom. Above is the heading and lead image for that article as it appears online today. My own photo is further in the article. The owner, Jeff Meier, had bought the Miura in 2019 and had restored it, as described in the article.
Apparently the car was originally purchased by a wealthy Iranian and shipped to the US for sale. Instead, it was “borrowed” by the Iranian’s daughter to use as a daily driver while she attended UC Berkeley. I checked with a couple of Berkeley friends whom I only met after I took the photo, and they all remembered seeing this car in town. Here’s how the Automobile Magazine article by Eleanora Segura describes what happened next:
Within two years of acquiring it, the woman had a series of misfortunes, including a crash during a road trip to Los Angeles that left the Miura undrivable.
The car was taken to a Burbank towing yard and abandoned for a year and a half. A body-shop owner who was already familiar with the Miura from previous repairs had it flat-bedded back to his establishment in the Bay Area. But he had trouble sourcing necessary parts and did not have someone talented enough to execute the repairs. The woman’s parents, meanwhile, decided to avoid the headache, bought their daughter a new car, and sold the Lamborghini to the body-shop owner. He apparently hoped to eventually restore the Miura to its original state, but in the meantime stashed it away in one of his shops, where it remained untouched for 40-plus years.
From Automobile Magazine, 2020, by Karissa Hosek
Meier had the car refurbished, cosmetically and mechanically, and that’s when it was featured in the Automobile article. Two former colleagues of mine who know the current owner saw the Automobile magazine article, and noticed my name by the photo and reached out to me. The owner wanted to trailer the car up from LA and re-create the photo in the same location in Berkeley. Oh, and give me a ride. The pandemic, and life in general, got in the way and unfortunately that never happened.
From RM Sotheby’s, 2021, by Karissa Hosek
But the story doesn’t end there. In July of 2021, one of my former colleagues who follows these things told me that the car was up for sale again, on auction as part of the nearby Monterey Historics events (concours, auctions, Lemons car shows and vintage racing at Laguna Seca). My photo was used as a backdrop for the auction.
From RM Sotheby’s, 2021, by Karissa Hosek
As sold, the car had been stripped down to bare aluminum, as seen here. The final sale price? $2.095 million US.
Oh, and there was speculation in the comments from my original post if the owner was one of the people descending the stairs in my photo. Yep, it’s the woman on the right, as confirmed by some Iranian sources. She looks pretty happy, perhaps because she’s looking forward to get out of town and exercise her V12 on the wonderful canyon roads behind the campus … or maybe just because she doesn’t see a parking ticket on the windshield.
For the full Automobile Magazine article you can read it here.
More on the Miura at Curbside Classic:
Curbside Classic: 1967 Lamborghini Miura Street Art
Vintage R&T Road Test: 1968 Lamborghini Miura – “Vroooooooooom!”
An incredible photo and marvelous story, I recall the first time you posted the photo, the (eventual) backstory makes it even more compelling to view again. I really am unsure if my eyes were first drawn to the car or the exuberant owner on the stairs, either way the combination of both is what makes it so excellent to me with either element by itself still interesting but not nearly as impactful.
Wow-wow-wow…..a one-of-a-kind story (and a really first-class 1972 photo, which could hardly be better if posed with models, props, and pro lighting). I remember when those cars were one of the true “exotics” of the day, something I’d never see, much less drive or own.
Thanks for sharing this all with us!
What a great story! The chances of being able to fill in the missing pieces on a picture like this are virtually nil, so this is wonderful to read. And it’s incredible that the car still survives.
International House was an interesting place back then – there were fewer foreign students at universities and there was a lot of camaraderie between international students, regardless of where they were originally from. My father worked at an International House in the 1990s – a bit after the concept’s prime years, but still it was an interesting environment.
I do recall reading that the Shah of Iran himself owned a Miura. Unlike other of the Shah’s luxury cars after the revolution, the new regime didn’t feel like they had use for the Miura, so they sold it, and I believe that one still survives as well.
I am certainly no photographer, but the composition of your old photo is lovely! And I love a good backstory too.
Amazing story, what an awesome car.. You pic looks like it could have been used for a print ad for the car… So cool…!!!
Truly one of those stranger than life stories. I remember reading the story in Automobile magazine (at one time, I subscribed to all four of the major U.S. auto journals; sadly, they are but a shadow of what they once were), so to see the connection with Curbside Classic here is almost beyond belief – the CC effect is real!
I’ve already said it, but this is a truly superb (and serendipitous) shot. It couldn’t have been staged better. Did you actually notice her on the stairs when you were framing it? My guess is not.
Have you considered making prints? I’d buy one in a heartbeat.
You say you didn’t know that the woman owned the car, so I assume you didn’t see her get into it. How did you find out that it was hers?
She certainly fit the stereotype of the wealthy Iranian student in the U.S. pre-Islamic Republic. Does anyone know what became of her? I hope for her sake that she’s had a good life since.
My car in college was a ’68 Saab 95 V4, and I was perfectly happy with it. A person’s expectations make a big difference.
From his text:
Oh, and there was speculation in the comments from my original post if the owner was one of the people descending the stairs in my photo. Yep, it’s the woman on the right, as confirmed by some Iranian sources
What a wonderful story and great photo !
Revives memories, I graduated from UCB in 1975. Also serendipitous was the fact that both the Miura and the young woman were wearing light colors.
Didn’t see this the first time around till today. I looked and said to myself I know that front. Then it hit me, I House. One of my new grad school classmates roomed there our first year in 1977. Was up there one night with a bunch of classmates and ended up playing poker. I am not a gambler after losing $5 at Del Mar in 1974. Well I lost $20 on one hand here to Big Ray and that was the last time I played poker of gambled. My wife plays poker and won $200 last weekend in Reno.
Great shot and since I know the location well I can see, in my head, where you stood when taking it. The front has changed a bit since then. Also 77 was only time in I House but walked past it last month.
It’s a fabulous shot. The fascinating backstory only adds to it. I wonder what the young lady’s parents got her to replace the Miura!
Great story and photo! I suppose that every photo captures a specific moment of history, whether or not it becomes famous. Miuras were pretty expensive when they were new, but it’s hard to grasp that they are so stratospherically expensive now. Though I once read in a Collectible Automobile article back in the late 80’s, that stated that there were more rich people now, (then) and they were richer than they have ever been. I guess that this was back when the billionaire displaced the mere millionaire.This was in an article about Cadillac’s dilemma in the 1990’s, where it was stated that Cadillac, being based upon corporate GM platforms, could never sell at the high prices of more exclusive marques. This made them less attractive to rich potential buyers, as they could not evoke the same level of status. That made a lot of sense to me at the time, and we saw how Cadillac has struggled to find it’s position in the market. Now Cadillac has thrown caution to the wind with their new 245,000.00 car. At least they will now be smart enough to only build those to order, and there won’t be unsold units sitting on dealer’s lots. From a current review in Motor Trend, it’s described as a pretty good car.