Lamborghini Marzal Concept Is 1960s’ Take On The Future

The Lamborghini Huracan Performante Spyder and Terzo Millennio may be the Italian brand’s show stealers at this year’s Geneva motoring event, but they’re not the only ones.

Originally presented by Lamborghini at the 1967 Geneva Motor Show, the Marzal Concept can be admired at the same event, 51 years later.

Designed by Nuccio Bertone and Marcello Gandini as a potential four-seater Lamborghini, the Marzal never really caught on. Its gullwing-style doors, made mostly from glass, weren’t to Ferruccio’s taste, as he believed that a woman’s legs shouldn’t be there for all to see.

However, that doesn’t mean that some of its features weren’t applied to some of Lambo’s next vehicles, including the Espada, which came out the following year with similar exterior and interior (dashboard) cues.

The Marzal show car uses a 2-liter inline-six engine for propulsion, which is basically half of the company’s 4-liter V12 unit of the era, found in the Miura. It works together with a five-speed manual transmission to feed 175 horses to the rear wheels.

Unlike most concepts, which tend to be locked away and forgotten, the Lamborghini Marval was actually driven publicly once. It was shortly after its Geneva presentation, during the Monaco Grand Prix, not as a racer, but as a pace car, by Prince Rainier of Monaco and his wife, Princess Grace.

The Marzal Concept is not resting in the Lamborghini Museum, as it was sold at auction in 2011, for $2 million, to a private collector.