Lamborghini Miura chosen and featured in the company's newly created badge. The car gained the worldwide attention of automotive enthusiasts when it was chosen for the opening sequence of the original 1969 version of "The Italian Job". In press interviews of the time Ferruccio Lamborghini was reticent about his precise birth date, but stressed that he was born under the star sign Taurus the bull. The earliest model of the Miura was known as the P400 (for "Posteriore 4 litri"). It was powered by a version of the 3.9 L Lamborghini V12 engine used in the 400GT at the time. The engine
V12 engine the advantages of lower centers of gravity and improved pilot visibility for single-engined designs. Only the pre-war origin BMW VI V12 of Germany was an "upright" engine. The United States had the experimental Continental IV-1430 inverted V12 engine under development, with a higher power-to-weight ratio than any of the initial versions of the German WW II inverted V12s, but was never developed to production status, with only 23 examples of the Continental inverted V12 ever being built. The only American-design inverted V12 engine of any type to see even limited service in World War II was the air-cooled Ranger V-770,