“You can drive a tractor but you will never know how to drive a Ferrari. If Ferrari hadn't done this meanness to me one day when I was complaining for the umpteenth time about unsolvable clutch problems on my Ferrari, I might never have built my own Lamborghinis."
These words were pronounced in 1983 during an interview with the magazine “Automobiles Classique” by Ferruccio Lamborghini born under the sign of the bull in Renazzo da Cento, in the Emilian countryside, on Saturday 28 April 1916. The Emilian “big boy” takes up the powerful physicality and the fumantino character as well as making it the emblem of his future car company. In the Italy of post-war reconstruction Ferruccio Lamborghini starts his first business of selling gymnastic equipment and cultivates his automotive passions; the Fiat Topolino 500 number 427 of the Lamborghini/Baglioni team is entered in the Mille Miglia of 1948, the " Topolino/Lamborghini" has an engine with displacement increased to 750cm³, cylinder head modified to "Testa d'Oro" , reduced weight and cabriolet bodywork but they won't be enough to cross the finish line and she will be forced to retire; Lamborghini will have to watch as a spectator the first historic Ferrari victory in an automobile competition, the Ferrari n. 166 by Biondetti is, in fact, the winner of the Targa Florio in 1948. Lamborghini's interests already in those years, however, had turned towards the production of agricultural machinery and the "Lamborghini Trattori" within a few years became the third Italian manufacturer of agricultural tractors after Fiat and Ferguson with a production capacity of 15 tractors per day. The strength of the Emilian company derives from the construction technique used, cutting edge for the times, from the quality of materials and finishes superior to the competition and particular attention to customer needs, needs that Ferruccio Lamborghini knew well; in 1962 at the Verona trade fair Lamborghini outperformed the competition by proposing a full two-year guarantee for its products, a guarantee that no other agricultural tractor manufacturer offered. "Lamborghini Bruciatori" was founded in 1960 and in the midst of the economic boom, which in a short time produced about 100 heating or cooling radiators per day and where the principles are the same as those of the tractor company, advanced construction techniques, quality of materials superior to competition and particular attention to the customer; if there are around 150 workers in the factory, the assistance network is instead made up of around 2,000 maintenance technicians. In Ferruccio Lamborghini's head, however, the dream of a lifetime still remains to be realized, to build his own car; after buying a 90,000 m² piece of land in Sant'Agata Bolognese, he creates a team made up of the "rebel" genius of Giotto Bizzarrini, the rising stars of automotive engineering, Giampaolo Dallara and Paolo Stanzani, the engineer Franco Scaglione, two others German technicians and a Japanese, investing 500,000,000 lire* from his own pocket and realizing the dream of a lifetime, in 1963 he founded "Automobili Ferruccio Lamborghini Sas" . Whether it was by provocation, outrage or the realization of a lifelong dream, what was achieved on 1 October 1963 at the presentation of the Lamborghini 350GTV wrote the history of luxury sports cars; the car company from Sant'Agata Bolognese has, in fact, openly challenged Ferrari by declaring itself its direct competitor not in car races prohibited by Lamborghini, however, but on the "battlefield" most favorable to Ferrari, that of V12 engines.
* Source Auto-Italiana 1965
