The Lamborghini You Can Keep on Your Desk

If you’ve ever replayed the opening of The Italian Job just to watch that orange Lamborghini Miura thread its way through the Alps, you’ll understand why Montegrappa’s latest collaboration caught my attention. To celebrate 60 years of the Miura, the Italian penmaker and Automobili Lamborghini have made a limited-edition fountain pen and rollerball. And yes, there’s a tiny retractable headlight in the cap. That detail alone would have got me to pick it up.

To understand why that headlight matters, go back to Geneva in 1966. Lamborghini put a transverse V12 behind the cockpit, and Marcello Gandini at Bertone gave the whole thing a body so low and shapely that it still looks exotic today. The Miura’s wide hips get plenty of attention, but its face is what does it for me. Those little eyelashes around the headlights gave one of the fastest cars of its day an almost mischievous expression. Sixty years on, you can recognise a Miura from a close-up of a single corner.

Montegrappa understood that. Press the button on the pen’s cap and a miniature headlight made of rock crystal rises into view. Look closely and you’ll see that the surface beneath it is engraved to evoke the texture of the original lamp. At the other end, the black finial takes its cues from the louvred engine cover, with the slatted motif picked up again on the clip and cap band. The whole thing makes more sense when you turn it over in your hand, the way a Miura rewards a slow walk around it.

My pick would be the Verde Miura fountain pen. Black is handsome and Giallo Fly has all the drama you’d expect, but that particular shade of green is pure period Lamborghini. I’d go for the fountain pen for the pleasure of putting its ruthenium-plated 18-carat gold nib to paper. Even the nib carries the engraved Lamborghini shield. The rollerball gets the same headlight mechanism, and Montegrappa is making just 60 examples of each colour in each format.

So why do you need one? For the same reason you take the long way home when the road is clear and you’ve got nowhere in particular to be. There’s pleasure in the act itself. I’d keep this pen within reach and use it for the good stuff: a handwritten note to the friend who got me into cars, a route sketched out over coffee, or the first page of a logbook for a car I’d waited years to buy.

The best bit will be handing it to someone who loves cars and letting them discover the headlight for themselves. You’ll know the moment they get it. They’ll press it again.