Lamborghini was founded by Ferrucio Lamborghini who was born in a family of farmers. Ferrucio had interest in mechanics rather than his family work. He used to work on his father’s tractor out of interest and also attended a technical school to learn more skills.
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History
He started working at the Italian Airforce as a mechanic during the second World War. Ferrucio was taken in as a prisoner of war by the British who put him to work in an automobile industry. In this period Ferrucio was able to get hands on to car parts and was able to work on them.
The Tractor Business
After coming back home, Ferrucio was able to apply all what he had learned and started building tractors out of old war surplus materials. His business soon became appreciated and he started expanding it. The company then started making tractors from scratch and also tuned cars like the Fiat. Soon, Ferrucio was able to earn good money and owned cars of renowned brands like Ferrari, Mercedes and Jaguar.
The Ferrari Problem
Ferrucio encountered a problem with his Ferrari’s clutch and went to meet Enzo Ferrari, the owner of Ferrari to discuss the problem. It is said that Enzo refused to meet and told Ferrucio that he was better off driving tractors and could never handle a Ferrari. This is said to be the motivating point for Lamborghini. This is when he decided that he himself would make cars better than Ferrari.
Lamborghini observed that many Ferraris had the clutch problem similar to his and it took a long drive to go visit the Ferrari technicians who would spend several hours on the car and could still not satisfy the driver. Lamborghini also observed that the clutch installed in his Ferrari was similar to his tractor so he went down to his garage and made a few changes himself. To his surprise, he was able to solve the problem. He successfully modified his Ferrari 250 GT to outperform the stock 250 GTs.
The era of Lamborghini starts
Lamborghini then started to build high performance cars to beat the Ferraris. His cars were exotic and had better ride quality than the Ferraris. But the spotlight did not last long for Ferrucio since Lamborghini soon found itself in the midst economic crisis. 1970’s was harsh for Lamborghini; many customers cancelled their orders and the oil crisis made sales of high performance cars rare. Lamborghini was soon forced to sell all his shares and retire. He bought a 740-acre estate and returned to his family roots of farming and producing his own wines.
Lamborghini is currently acquired by Audi which continues to live up to Lamborghini’s legacy by producing high performance exotic cars!
