History

Ferruccio Lamborghini was a tractor manufacturer from Renazzo di Cento who became one of Italy's wealthiest industrialists in the 1950s by supplying mechanised agriculture to the post-war land reform. The founding story of Automobili Lamborghini — that Ferruccio complained to Enzo Ferrari about the clutch on his 250 GT and was told to go back to his tractors — is probably legend, but the competitive dynamic it names is genuine: Lamborghini intended, from the start, to make a road car that was better than a Ferrari.

The 350 GT, introduced at the Geneva Motor Show in 1964 with a V12 engine designed by Giotto Bizzarrini (who had been dismissed from Ferrari in 1961 during the “Palace Revolution” that also expelled many of Ferrari's best engineers), met that ambition. The Miura of 1966 — with its mid-mounted transverse V12 designed by Gian Paolo Dallara — exceeded it: the car was faster, more radical, and more beautiful than anything Ferrari was then making. Bertone's Marcello Gandini designed the body; the Miura became the template for every mid-engine supercar that followed.

Lamborghini sold the company in 1972 following the financial crisis triggered by the Bolivian agricultural crash (Ferruccio's tractors were the country's main agricultural machinery). The brand passed through several owners — Chrysler, an Indonesian investment group — before Audi (VW Group) acquired it in 1998. Under VW Group ownership Lamborghini expanded significantly, adding the Urus SUV in 2017 (the company's best-selling model) while maintaining the Sant'Agata factory as its sole production site.