History of Lamborghini

Before founding his own sports car company, Ferruccio Lamborghini was already a successful tractor maker. His business had already expanded to oil burners and air-conditioning units. Having owned the best examples of luxury cars including American and Ferraris, he had his own idea of what an idea GT was.

He always had much respect for Enzo Ferrari. However, it is said (and himself did not really deny) that he had trouble with his Ferrari and went to Maranello to complain. However, he did not receive the respect he expected, therefore he decided to build his own GT cars to beat the Ferrari.

Lamborghini was highly motivated. He poured countless money into his new advanced factory in Sant’Agata and employed some ingenious engineers and designers, these including Giotto Bizzarrini (who designed the engine of Ferrari 250GTO), Giampaolo Dallara (chassis engineer and the founder of Dallara Racing), Paolo Stanzani (who was going to serve Lamborghini for more years, during which created Countach) and Bertone’s rising designer Marcello Gandini. With these people and the funding by Lamborghini himself, the first car, 350GTV, debuted in 1963 Turin motor show and immediately became the star of the show. In a few years’ time since then, the Sant’Agata factory created a lot of world-class supercars, such as 350GT, 400GT, Miura, Espada, Islero, Jarama, Countach and Urraco. In particular, the Miura and Countach were among the all-time greatest cars.

When Lamborghini's future seemed to be promising, it was actually suffering from continuous loss, because of high cost for supercars as well as oil crisis. F. Lamborghini’s enthusiasm cooled down quickly and finally sold the factory in 1972. As a result, production ceased for 2 years. Since then, the control of the company shifted to different hands many times and financial instability remained unchanged.

In 1987, it was taken over by Chrysler and enjoyed sufficient fund again. Most money was put into the Diablo project, which made it better developed than any previous models. Besides, an unknown amount of investment was put into the Formula 1 engine program, which saw some potential but finally ended when Chrysler pulled out. Anyway, the US giant maker sold Lamborghini to Megatech, a Malaysian company, in the early 90's. Meanwhile, the owners became Malaysian company Mycom Setdco and the Indonesian company V'Power. In the new owner's hands, Lamborghini started to find its momentum and strengthening itself. In 1998, Volkswagen group bought the supercar specialists via its subsidiary, Audi. Given the financial strength and the ambition of the German empire, hopefully the future will be brighter.