The Super-Rare Lamborghini He Found at the End of an Oregon Dirt Road

Jeff Meier, a 62-year-old automotive consultant living in Los Angeles, on his 1969 Lamborghini Miura S, as told to A.J. Baime.

In 2000, I was visiting relatives in Oregon. My aunt told me about this guy who owned an old orange Lamborghini. I asked, “What model?” She said, “How would I know?” I was curious. My sister knew everyone in this little town, and she was able to find him. He lived on an 800-acre ranch. There was this long dirt road, and a shack that looked deserted. I knocked on the door and this hunched-over man came out.

He asked, “Hey, son, how can I help you?” I said, “I’m visiting from out of town. I’m a car guy. I heard you’re a car guy.” He said, “Come on in.”

His name was Earl, and he started telling stories. I asked about a photo of this orange Lamborghini on his refrigerator. He led me to his garage, pulled a tarp away, and there was this Miura. I could not believe my eyes. This is an incredibly rare vehicle. It has been called the father of all supercars, and the most beautiful car of all time. It is also the car that put Lamborghini on the map.

As the story goes, back in the 1960s, Ferruccio Lamborghini was just a couple years in business as a car manufacturer in Italy. He had made his money building tractors. He had young guys working for him and they wanted to go racing. They designed this chassis and engine, and through a series of events, this car went into production with a body built by the coachbuilder Bertone. [A coachbuilder is a designer and builder of car bodies.]

When the Miura debuted in 1966, it was as if a spaceship had landed. It was the most outrageous and extravagant thing—a mid-engine, transverse-mounted V-12 race car with a streetcar body. It was the fastest car in the world. All kinds of celebrities bought Miuras—Miles Davis, Twiggy the model. [Lamborghini ended up building 763 Miuras between 1966 and 1972, according to the company’s website.]

I have been involved in cars my entire life. When I was growing up, my father owned an auto repair shop. When I was 20, I got a dream job caretaking a collection of vintage cars. The job paid $5 an hour, but I would have done it for free. I have been involved with vintage autos ever since. When I discovered Earl’s Miura, I knew it was one of the finest unrestored original examples I had ever seen. It was amazing because existing cars typically had rust problems, or they’d been in accidents, or they’ve had engine fires. This car had none of that. And it was an S version, with more horsepower and nuanced styling.

I asked Earl how he had gotten it. He had been an engineer who purchased this car as a retirement gift to himself from a Chicago dealership in 1970. He had driven it out to Oregon. From the time he bought the car to when I first saw it, he was the only person who had driven it. The car had 16,000 miles on it, and it still had its original set of tires. It was a true needle-in-a-haystack scenario.

Earl refused to sell me the car, but I kept in touch. When he died in 2005, I was notified by the estate, and I was able to acquire the Miura at market price. In a 10-year period, I took the car from being a “barn find” to a first-in-class winner at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance [widely regarded as the most prestigious vintage car show in the world] in California.

What is it like to drive this car? The Miura sits so low to the ground that when you look out your window you are looking at the wheels of the cars around you. The high-revving engine is right behind you. The music from this 12-cylinder, the mechanical sounds of the transmission, it is all hard to describe. It is just magical.

The most 2026 element of the latest screen adaptation of 1847’s hottest novel, “Wuthering Heights,” is the scene in which Heathcliff repeatedly asks the young lady he’s undressing, “Do you want me to stop?” even as she writhes with lust, indicating an affirmative response is unlikely.

Previously understood as a notorious brute even by 19th-century standards, Heathcliff now exhibits signs of having earned perfect grades in today’s campus training modules.

There’s also a reference to septicemia, which is writer-director Emerald Fennell’s perhaps too-technical stab at explaining the nonspecific Victorian disease that afflicts one character.

Mostly, however, Ms. Fennell has done an admirable job of not modernising a dark and moody romance. If most of today’s filmmakers crave hearing, “This is not your mother’s (fill in the blank)” when adapting classic material, this pretty much is your mother’s “Wuthering Heights,” or at least one she will recognise.

Catherine Earnshaw, played with great soapy gusto by Margot Robbie, is still the same judgment-impaired social-climbing drama queen as ever, and Ms. Fennell frequently associates her with a rich, decadent red—the colour of the bordello—to suggest that she has unwisely traded her body for riches.

Ms. Fennell, who won an Oscar for writing the feminist parable “Promising Young Woman,” doesn’t bother suggesting that Catherine is a victim of society’s impossible expectations for women, which allows her to focus on the core story without intrusive mutters of disapproval for 19th-century mores.

The plot is a template for every Harlequin romance about a woman caught between a sexy beast and a languid but wealthy wimp.

Catherine, who lives with her frequently drunken father (Martin Clunes) on a struggling Yorkshire estate called Wuthering Heights, grows up with a wild, apparently orphaned boy adopted by her father after being found hapless in the street.

The boy at first doesn’t even talk, and seems to have no name, so Catherine calls him Heathcliff. As an adult, he is played by Jacob Elordi , an excellent match for Ms. Robbie, both in comeliness and star power.

The pair grow up best friends and even sleep in the same bed. The desperate attraction between them is evident to both, but Catherine has her sights set on a higher-status mate than this mere stable boy.

After much figurative and literal peering over the walls of the posh neighbouring estate, Thrushcross Grange, she twists an ankle and becomes a six-week houseguest of the gentleman who owns it, the wealthy Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif). He lives with his ward, Isabella (Alison Oliver). Heathcliff, in agony, moves away without notice while Catherine marries Edgar.

Ms. Fennell has greatly streamlined the complicated plot of Emily Brontë’s novel, eliminating the framing device, the supernatural element, several peripheral figures and a second generation of characters.

Other adaptations have made similar excisions, and yet the latest version is luxuriantly long, fully half an hour longer than the much-loved 1939 film by William Wyler that starred Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier and David Niven.

Ms. Fennell is a millennial who might have been expected to make the material slick, hip or at least fast; she has done none of that.

The story is a slow burn, as it should be, an extended sonata of moaning winds, crackling storms, smouldering glances and heaving bosoms. When you’ve got two actors as luminous as Ms. Robbie and Mr. Elordi, you don’t need them to say clever things, and they don’t.

Having simplified matters, Ms. Fennell sloughs off the psychological depth of the novel and instead lavishes attention on the heavy breathing and the decor, exhibiting much interest in the ornate mansion in which the Linton family lives (one room is set aside for ribbons only) and the costumes and accessories with which Ms. Robbie is gloriously draped.

Catherine essentially becomes a character in a Sofia Coppola movie who grows increasingly trapped and anguished in proportion to her cosseting. A slate of songs by Charli XCX captures Catherine’s tragic self-absorption without seeming jarringly modern.

The movie is very much aimed at female viewers, and Heathcliff (whose bare-chested form Ms. Fennell’s camera adoringly takes in) is less robustly drawn than in some previous iterations, driven mainly by carnal lust rather than a more all-encompassing rage.

Olivier’s demonic anger at the world came through clearly, whereas Mr. Elordi’s Heathcliff seems as though he’d be content to simply peel away Catherine from Edgar. And though Nelly (Hong Chau), Catherine’s maid and confidante, plays an essential role in developments, her character remains a bit frustratingly hazy.

Still, in the wake of adaptations such as 2012’s “Anna Karenina,” with Keira Knightley , and 2013’s “The Great Gatsby,” with Leonardo DiCaprio, that were all sizzle and flash, “Wuthering Heights” is a worthy throwback.

Deeply felt longing is its own kind of sizzle.

The Super-Rare Lamborghini He Found at the End of an Oregon Dirt Road

Jeff Meier’s 1969 Miura S was preserved in original condition on a rural ranch and is a model some call ‘the most beautiful car of all time’

Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi star in an adaptation of the classic novel that respects the romance’s slow burn.