Lamborghini cars are a beloved of all car aficionados around the world. All cars with the flagship of this brand are built to deliver excellent speed and designed with style. They are the top rival of Ferrari. Like any other great brand that came into being, Lamborghini’s story is worth a read. It all started when two legends met, one a wealthy tractor manufacturer and the other was Enzo Ferrari, with a complaint against one of the automobiles from the Grand Old Man.
Just like any other person who’s made a lot of money, he bought a lot of luxury cars and one of them was obviously a Ferrari. Lamborghini had such great passion for cars that he soon began racing some of the cars from his collection. Having a good experience with tractors and a decent amount of knowledge about cars, he realized that there was a scope for fixing a couple of things in the racing cars. When he took his Ferrari for a race, he noticed that it was too noisy and a bit rough on the road. In fact, the clutch needed to be repaired often.
In 1960, there was no luxury sports car that was above Enzo Ferrari’s cars. Being a good mechanic, Lamborghini went to Ferrari to tell him about the imperfections he found in the car. Being the top player in the cars, he didn’t appreciate a tractor mechanic telling him that his car was less than perfect. Ferrari believed that Lamborghini didn't have the required expertise to comment on his cars.
During the 1960s, Enzo Ferrari’s cars were the top-of-the-line in luxury sports cars. Since he was so good a mechanic, Lamborghini decided to tell Ferrari about the imperfections he found in his cars. Considering Ferrari was the top dog in the car business, he didn’t appreciate the young tractor mechanic telling him about the imperfections. Ferrari believed Lamborghini didn’t know a thing about his cars, or cars in general and told him that didn’t want any advice from a tractor mechanic and so began the rivalry and Lamborghini’s passion for cars.
Here’s the thing though, Ferrari didn’t know that Lamborghini was born on a farm and started dabbling with engines with his father’s equipment. Later, during the war, he served in the Italian Air Force’s mechanics corps and became an expert with rugged air engines. When the war was over, Italy was in a desperate need for tractors and so it made sense to utilize the surplus military machines and convert them into tractors. What was once a hobby, now became Lamborghini’s passion.
Now, understand that he did pretty good as a tractor manufacturer because he made the tractors his passion and we all know what he managed to do with his Lamborghinis.
Lamborghini turned Ferrari’s insult as his driving force and started working on his version of luxury cars. He started work on different models under the flagship on his own brand. In just 4 months, he revealed his first car at the Turin Motor Show in October of 1963. It was Lamborghini 350 GTV. By the end of 1964, Lamborghini sold 13 cars and eventually changed the name to 350 GT.
Here’s a little background story about Lamborghini’s first car:
After bringing some good competition to Ferrari, Lamborghini decided to pursue a couple of other businesses as well and before he turned 50, he was a very wealthy man. He became almost as wealthy and powerful as Ferrari. Many people thought him to be a madman challenging Ferrari like that considering the years of experience and wealth of the old man. Ferrari was 64 and Lamborghini was 46 when the rivalry began. Many discouraged Lamborghini telling him that it was way too risky and almost impossible to achieve.
But once a bull sets his eyes on something, he could do anything to achieve it. Lamborghini commenced work sometime in 1962 and by May 1963, he put the official stamp on Ferruccio Lamborghini. He bought a plot of land in Sant’Agata Bolognese and built a new and large factory for his car business. Remember, he already had a good experience form his other companies especially the tractor business. This helped him set up the best facilities for his car company. An unparalleled structure in terms of functionality and stability and strength. The main/central building was the manufacturing building and adjacent to it was the office building. This helped the management to constantly keep an eye on all the work. It was the perfect setup for Lamborghini as he would personally overlook each car and fix anything that didn’t seem to be done right.
Lamborghini only had a couple of months to build and set a date for the first presentation of the first model after the plans were released. Lamborghini put his passion and precision into good use while picking the pieced for his cars. He always went for the best. He chose the engine from Giotto Bizzarrini, the same person who designed some of Ferrari’s engines during that period. For the rest of the car pieces, he hired two young engineers, Giampaolo Stanzani and Giampaolo Dallara. With the help of his team, they released the 350 GT at the Turin Motor Show.
Some interesting facts about Lamborghini:
1- Lamborghini used Taurus the bull, his birth sign, as the symbol of his cars.
2- Most of the cars have names related to bullfighting or famous bull breeds. Like Muira as been named after Don Eduardo Muira- a bullfighting breeder. Islero- named after the bull that took down Manolete, the famous matador. Espada’s name comes from a weapon of a matador, the sword.
3- Ferruccio Lamborghini once confessed that he never invented anything, he simply copied and improved on other’s work. One of the examples is the 12-cylinder motor he took from Ferrari and improved it with the twin cams from the 4-cylinder Alfa Romeo.
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