Ferruccio Lamborghini

Ferruccio Lamborghini (28 April 1916 – 20 February 1993) was an Italian automobile designer, soldier, inventor, mechanic, engineer, winemaker, industrialist, and businessman who created Lamborghini Trattori in 1948 and the Automobili Lamborghini in 1963, a maker of high-end sports cars in Sant'Agata Bolognese.

Ferruccio Lamborghini was born on 28 April 1916 to viticulturists Antonio and Evelina Lamborghini in house number 22 in Renazzo di Cento, in the Province of Ferrara, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy.

According to his baptismal certificate, Ferruccio was baptised as a Roman Catholic four days later, on 2 May.

As a young man, Lamborghini was drawn more to farming machinery rather than the farming lifestyle itself.

Following his interest in mechanics, Lamborghini studied at the Fratelli Taddia technical institute near Bologna.

In 1940 he was drafted into the Italian Royal Air Force, where he served as a mechanic at the Italian garrison on the island of Rhodes, territory of the Kingdom of Italy since 1911, after the Italo-Turkish War, becoming the supervisor of the vehicle maintenance unit.

When the Germans turned on their former Italian allies in September 1943, most soldiers either fled or were among the 30,000 Italians captured as prisoners of war.

Lamborghini initially escaped capture but later returned to his former workplace in civilian clothes working several odd jobs and with the permission of the German forces opened a small vehicle workshop.

When the island fell to the British at the end of the war in 1945 he was arrested as a collaborator, and was not able to return home to Italy until the following year.

He married, but his wife died in 1947 while giving birth to his first child, a boy named Tonino.

After World War II, Lamborghini opened a garage in Pieve di Cento.

Lamborghini modified an old Fiat Topolino he had purchased (the first of many that he would own over the years), and in his spare time he made tractors which would be the first Lamborghinis he would make.

In 1947 Ferruccio Lamborghini recognized an emerging market in post-War Italy devoted to agricultural and industrial revitalization.

Using parts from military vehicle engines and differentials from ARAR centres, Lamborghini built the first of his "Carioca" tractors, themselves based on the six-cylinder petrol engines of Morris trucks.

As petrol in Italy was prohibitively-priced, Lamborghini augmented the Morris engines with a fuel atomiser of his own creation, which allowed the tractors to be started with petrol, then switch to the cheaper diesel fuel.

Based on the initial success of the Carioca, Lamborghini founded Lamborghini Trattori and began manufacturing tractors.

Born to grape farmers in Renazzo, from the comune of Cento in the Emilia-Romagna region, his mechanical know-how led him to enter the business of tractor manufacturing in 1948, when he founded Lamborghini Trattori, which quickly became an important manufacturer of agricultural equipment in the midst of Italy's post-WWII economic boom.

He made use of his mechanical abilities to transform the homely city car into a roaring 750-cc open-top two-seater and entered the car in the 1948 Mille Miglia.

His participation ended after 1100 km when he ran the car into the side of a restaurant in the town of Fiano, in Turin.

He owned cars such as Alfa Romeos and Lancias during the early 1950s and at one point he had enough cars to use a different one every day of the week, adding a Mercedes-Benz 300SL, a Jaguar E-Type coupé, and two Maserati 3500 GTs.

Of the latter, Lamborghini said, "Adolfo Orsi, then the owner of Maserati, was a man I had a lot of respect for: he had started life as a poor boy, like myself. But I did not like his cars much. They felt heavy and did not really go very fast."

In 1958, Lamborghini traveled to Maranello to buy a Ferrari 250 GT: a two-seat coupé with a body designed by coachbuilder Pininfarina.

He went on to own several more over the years, including a Scaglietti-designed 250 GT SWB Berlinetta and a 250 GT 2+2 four-seater.

Lamborghini thought Ferrari's cars were good, but too noisy and rough to be proper road cars.

He categorized them as repurposed track cars with poorly built interiors.

Lamborghini found that Ferrari's cars were equipped with inferior clutches, and required continuous trips to Maranello for rebuilds; technicians would secret the car away for several hours to perform the work, much to Lamborghini's annoyance.

He had previously expressed dissatisfaction with Ferrari's after sales service, which he perceived to be substandard.

Lamborghini brought his misgivings to Enzo Ferrari's attention, but was dismissed by the notoriously pride-filled Modenan.

After successfully modifying one of his personally-owned Ferrari 250 GTs to outperform stock models, Lamborghini gained the impetus to pursue an automobile manufacturing venture of his own, aiming to create the perfect touring car that he felt no one could build for him.

Lamborghini believed that a grand tourer should have attributes that were lacking in Ferrari's offerings, namely high performance without compromising tractability, ride quality, and interior appointments.

A clever businessman, Lamborghini also knew that he could make triple the profit if the components used in his tractors were installed in a high-performance exotic car instead.

In 1959, he opened an oil burner factory, Lamborghini Bruciatori, which later entered the business of producing air conditioning equipment.

A Riva Aquarama Lamborghini (Hull #278) was registered and delivered on 7 June 1968 to Lamborghini.

The boat was the first and only one fitted with two Lamborghini engines, and it had a special side railing for holding on to during water-skiing and record attempts.

The engine compartment was modified to fit the engines and a special open exhaust was built to meet Lamborghini's demands.

Lamborghini founded a fourth company, Lamborghini Oleodinamica, in 1969 after creating Automobili Lamborghini in 1963.

Lamborghini sold off many of his interests by the late 1970s and retired to an estate in Umbria, where he pursued winemaking.

During the 1970s, Ferruccio Lamborghini's companies began to run into financial difficulties.

He owned the boat for over 20 years until July 1988, when he sold it to Angelo Merli, a close friend.

Lamborghini's increasing wealth allowed him to purchase faster, more expensive cars than the tiny Fiats he had tinkered with during his youth.