Lamborghini Independent Service

The Tractor Maker Who Challenged Ferrari

Ferruccio Lamborghini (28 April 1916 – 20 February 1993) was born in Renazzo di Cento, a small village near Ferrara, and made his name as an important tractor manufacturer in the years around the Second World War.

Lamborghini owned a Ferrari, and he soon noticed that some of its clutch components were essentially the same parts he used in his own tractors. When he raised the matter with Enzo Ferrari, he was dismissed as a simple tractor maker whose opinion on high-performance sports cars was not worth hearing. As the story goes, he then repaired the clutch himself with unexpected ease — and resolved to build rival sports cars of his own.

His first car, the 350GT, set out to better the Ferrari in every respect he had criticised. His third model, the Miura, became a legend of its era when measured against contemporaries such as the Ferrari 250 GTO and the 365 GTB/4 Daytona.

The bull on the company crest comes from Ferruccio's own star sign, Taurus. The Miura takes its name from Don Eduardo Miura, a famous trainer of fighting bulls, while the Countach was reputedly named after an exclamation of astonishment in the local dialect, uttered at first sight of the design. Ferruccio Lamborghini died in Perugia in 1993, at the age of 76.