Ferrucio Lamborghini, the founder of Automobili Lamborghini.
Born in Italy in 1916, Ferruccio Lamborghini was fascinated with engines from an early age. Lamborghini joined the army during World War II, and was stationed on the island of Rhodes. There was very little military action on the island considering its isolated position in the Mediterranean. For this reason, any broken vehicles on the island had to be repaired on the spot, reusing old parts. Lamborghini found himself especially good at doing this, his friends calling him a mechanical wizard for his improvisation technique. Lamborghini kept many of the vehicles on Rhodes operational using old or outdated parts. After the end of the war, Ferruccio returned to his home in the north, near Modena. Here Lamborghini found a severe need for tractors due to the areas major agricultural business. Using old military parts, Lamborghini was able to build around one tractor a month. He expanded his company as there became a very high demand for tractors. Eventually Lamborghini began producing his own engines, and even reached a production right of over 400 tractors a month in 1960.
Around this time Lamborghini’s focus shifted to developing a high performance car. He had spent these years of his life owning many other exotic Italian cars, including Oscas, Maseratis and Ferraris. Lamborghini however was never really satisfied with these vehicles. Especially their engines. There is a famous story saying that Ferruccio was having troubles with the clutch of a Ferrari 250 GT he owned. He decided to visit Enzo Ferrari about it in his factory nearby. Enzo however would hear nothing from Ferruccio, who he called a simple tractor maker and dismissed. Angered by this, Lamborghini decided there was nothing a Ferrari could do that a Lamborghini couldn’t, and started production designs for his own car, designing it around a powerful new V12 engine, the design of which was drafted by one of Enzo’s ex-Ferrari engineers.
