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’
3 min
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.
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From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
A long-standing cultural cruise and a new expedition-style offering will soon operate side by side in French Polynesia.
BMW has unveiled the Neue Klasse in Munich, marking its biggest investment to date and a new era of electrification, digitalisation and sustainable design.
