History Of Lamborghini

Lamborghini was founded in 1963 by Ferrucio Lamborghini, an old army member who established their own company committed to building tractors. The tractor business developed as years passed as well as in 1970 a second factory was founded to produce air conditioning units and heaters for buildings. The incredible success was celebrated in Sant’Agata Bolognese, Italy in which the company established its headquarters.



But everything changed when he met Enzo Ferrari. It was as soon as when his desire to build high-speed supercars with luxurious interiors revealed itself. Ferrucio complained to Enzo about a clutch problem the Ferrari he owned had. Enzo told him that "the problem is avoid the car however with the driver…" and that he was asked to deal with his tractors and then leave the issue for those who know what to do.



Disappointed through the answer received, Ferrucio dismounted the transmission of his car and located out that his car used exactly the same transmission as his tractors. Due to this discovery, he asked some talented men who worked for Enzo Ferrari including Franco Scaglione, Giotto Bizzarini and Gian Paolo Dallara to give him help. Consequently, they created the perfect competitor for the Ferrari cars, the Automobili Lamborghini.



Ferrucio was inspired by its birth sign, Taurus, and started utilizing it being an emblem for his cars. In fact, even nowadays the Lamborghini cars are named after bulls. The Italian company also recruited Giotto Bizzarrini, an employee who used to work for Ferrari and asked him to create and manufacture a V12 engine for Lamborghini. This engine was soon built and could produce 400 horsepower. But because Ferrucio wanted a GT car and never a racing car, the power was reduced to 280 horsepower.



The first car manufactured by Lamborghini was the GTV prototype while the first production car was the Lamborghini 350GT produced in 1964. After the Lamborghini 350GT, a brief history of Lamborghini continued using the manufacture and release of the Miura, a genuine supercar named following a well-known bull race. But the success didn’t stop here. In 1968 Lamborghini manufactured the Lamborghini Espada 400GT that was a big hit, a lot more than 1,200 cars being built at Sant’Agata.



In 1970, the race driver Bob Wallace worked to rework his Miura S right into a race car. He redesigned the suspension, reduced the weight and placed new spoilers obtaining a fast race car that could go from zero to 62 mph in 3.6 seconds. But Ferrucio wasn’t thinking about the race proposal of Wallace and chose to sell the prototype from the Lamborghini Miura Jota to an Italian enthusiast. Within the 1970s, an italian man , company suffered because of the economic crunch and Ferrucio sold his shares to some Swiss car lover, George-Henri Rosseti. But the company continued without its founder. After some dark days and only one car produced (the Coutach 400S in 1980), Lamborghini was sold to the French brothers Patrick and Jean-Claude Mimran who produced the off-road LMA series and the Coutach Quattrovalvole. Later, another page from the Lamborghini history was written when Lee Iaccoca bought the organization for $33 millions.



Throughout the Iaccoca era, in 1990 the Lamborghini Diablo was launched. However in 1998 Audi bought Lamborghini and things started to change for that better. Due to a large infusion of money and technologies, the company built the Murcielago in 2001. Its success was then the 2003 Gallardo, which proved this was a company centered on fast, luxurious supercars created for modern drivers. In 2010, the Gallardo was considered probably the most successful car with 10,000 units produced.



Joel Dammann writes about History of Lamborghini at his Car blog.