History of Lamborghini : Love for Machines, the breakdown & The Rebuild! Case Study

The History of Lamborghini, the international pioneer of luxury cars, produces 2,500 cars acquired in more than 50 nations every year. The business has indeed been centered in Sant’Agata Bolognese ever since its establishment.

History of Lamborghini : Love for Machines, the breakdown & The Rebuild! Case Study

History of Lamborghini. The story of Lamborghini takes us to the northern Italian province of Emilia-Romagna in the quiet township of Renazzo di Cento. It is there that the poor grape farmers Antonio and Evelina Lamborghini introduced their son Ferruccio to the family’s vineyards.

Young Ferruccio was born a Taurus, though you’ll experience why that’s important a little bit later. Most specifically, in the midst of the First World War he was born in 1916. Despite this, Ferruccio grew up to be hopeful and ambitious, but like most poor Italians during the early 20th century he was faced with one crucial dilemma. Either he might continue to traditional work as a farmer, or he could aim to keep ahead of the cycle and take risks on factory and industrial business.

Yet Ferruccio had a clear decision to make; he was fascinated with machines and could barely stay away from his father’s garage. This eventually led him to study mechanics and in 1935 he felt confident enough to start his own workshop.

Second World War sculpting the Fate of Lamborghini

History of Lamborghini. 5 years later, due to World War 2, Ferruccio finds himself ripped from his civilian life. He was finalised by the Royal Italian Air Force in 1940 yet was appointed as a mechanic to the garrison more on Greek island of Rhodes. In the midst of his responsibilities, Ferruccio acquired useful expertise in dismantling and re-using obsolete machines.

However in 1943, since Italy had withdrawn, the German formation violently captured over regiment and expelled their former comrades. Ferruccio may have returned, instead he wanted to continue along as a resident and with the approval of the Germans, he began to run his own workshop. As 1945 came around and with it arrived the Allied forces. They rescued all the prisoners from the garrison, but after they learned what Ferruccio could do, they wanted him to operate for another year repairing their cars, before they eventually sent him home in 1946.

On further his return to Italy, Ferruccio opened another small workshop, but shortly as he was inspired by a genius idea. His expertise from both Allied and Axis vehicles earned him, over any other mechanics, a sharp advantage. He realized that Italy will have to expand its agricultural productivity after the war in order to heal the wounds of war, and where else to really get the machinery of doing it than from the large stockpiles of military hardware commissioned by Mussolini’s government.

The beginning of Production of Tractors

History of Lamborghini. When he established his first corporation, Ferruccio’s ambitious plan was initiated right at the end of 1947. Ferruccio brought the huge manufacturing of inexpensive tractors into his own hands with only 3 fellow mechanics and 2,000 lira of initial capital. His main supplier was ARAR, the government-owned company responsible for selling all the excess military equipment left after the war. By taking an old British Morris engine and modifying it to run on cheap diesel instead of expensive petrol, Ferruccio created a ground-breaking affordable tractor that he could sell all across Italy.

This was to be the first of his ‘Carioca’ tractors, unveiled on February 3rd, 1948 and Italy went nuts over them. The layout was really promising that even a new venture, Lamborghini Trattori, was founded by Ferruccio. He hired four new workers, bought a factory in Cento and borrowed 10 million liras backed by his family’s grape farm in order to buy hundreds of Morris, Perkins and Dodge engines from ARAR.

He even wanted to participate the Mille Miglia, a prestigious endurance race. He did drive his renovated Fiat Topolino, but he ended up crashing into side of the restaurant and decided to give up racing for the rest of his life. Amidst this, his business was doing great and Trattori had a staff of 30 employees by 1950 and was able to manufacture up to 200 tractors annually. Market rose exponentially, so Ferruccio bought 1,000 m2 of land in 1951, around which he constructed a new plant.

1951 also saw the introduction of the ‘L33 tractor’, whose popularity would greatly benefit from the government subsidies to farmers who used domestically-built machinery. After signing a deal with Motoren- Werke Mannheim for their diesel engines, Lamborghini could now produce tractors entirely on their own. By 1956, Ferruccio’s newest factory manufactured the first tractor and had simplified its engine architecture to about three levels of horsepower by that time.

Ferruccio also traveled across the Atlantic to buy heating and air-conditioning technologies from the US. By the early 1960s, 400 workers churned out as much as 30 tractors a day at Lamborghini’s tractor plant. A set of air-cooled tractor engines and helicopter designs have been some of their main inventions during the period, although they were never accepted by the government.

Clash with the Ferraris

History of Lamborghini. In 1961 Ferruccio established a separate oil heating facility, and was really rich and powerful during that stage that he wanted to invest in his love for sports cars. Being a learned mechanic himself, Ferruccio was very critical of any engineering faults he found in any of cars he owned. Among them were two Alfa Romeos, two Maserati,a Jaguar E-type, a Mercedes Benz, and, of course, several Ferraris.

The Ferraris approached Ferruccio principally, yet he regarded him overly outrageous and figured had a bare bone. He was especially infuriated by the Ferrari’s strange ability to ave clutch break down. This has been the most interesting part of the History of Lamborghini. After finally getting sick of all the repair bills, Ferruccio took the problematic vehicle straight to Modena, where he personally confronted Enzo Ferrari about the clutches.

Enzo practically shrugged him apart, according to Ferrucio, and instructed him to stay to the tractors. This isn’t really shocking because the man fired most of his executives because they complained of his wife, but Ferruccio found it a challenge. In 1963, the Tycoon tractor founded an automotive company near Sant’Agata, which he was well informed of the gains in the major touring market. Ferruccio established Automobili Lamborghini out from the primitive willingness to display Enzo the middle finger.

For the brand’s emblem, he chose a bull: After all it was his own astrological sign and he also had a deep fascination for bullfighting. This very formidable living being was a perfect reflection of the business of Lamborghini, since it is rewarded year after year across milestones. The first functioning Lamborghini, the GT 350, was established in 1964 with both the aid of young engineer Paolo Stanzani. The innovation, such as a V12 motor, five-speed transmission, four-wheel disk breaks and 4-wheel independent interlocking, was absolutely phenomenal.

The development of the GT 350 wasn’t really easy, and its model struggled from certain significant technical problems which were made abundantly clear during its hurried entrance into the 1963 Turin Auto Show. The most noticeable problem was the fact that perhaps the engine actually did not fit into the automobile interior trim. Ferruccio’s solution was to fill the compartment with bricks and to keep the lid closed at all times. After all, the show was all about looking only at cars, not driving. Throughout the end, the GT 350 was a technical work of genius and received widespread critical acclaim and customers alike.

In 1966, He Purchased the 400 GT and the Miura P400. The Miura was especially notable for establishing the Rear-mid-Engine layout as the standard for all high-performance cars of the era, the standard that is still in use today. Originally designed as a street-racing automobile by a team of brave engineers led by Marcello Gandini.  They hold the project private from Ferruccio, Because of his very own 1948 racing crash, he has been against creating race cars. When Ferruccio learned of the new design,he was charmed enough not to scrap it, but he doubled down on his no-racing policy.

Era of Breakdown

History of Lamborghini. 1968 saw the Espada establish itself as one of Lamborghini’s greatest classics along with the Islero 400 GT. The brand resumed the prosperous career, premiering iconic models such as the Countach LP500, the Urraco P250 and the Jarama 400GTS. The 1970s would be the troubled era for Lamborghini. In 1973, two years after the abolishment of the Bretton Woods system, the global stock market experienced a dramatic crash, with the Dow erasing nearly half of its value.

Around the same time, OAPEC introduced an oil embargo, which massively inflated petrol costs and threw the car industry into its turmoil. As if all of that wasn’t enough, Lamborghini Trattori was also hurt when a deal to supply Bolivia with 5,000 tractors was cancelled after the 1971 coup by Hugo Banzer. Ferruccio did his best to keep his various enterprises alive: He eventually found buyers for the unsold tractors and he also relocated his oil heater factory to Dosso in Nigeria.

In the end though he was forced to sell shares of Lamborghini to outside investors in order to save his business from bankruptcy. The crisis broke Ferruccio, and although he managed to save Lamborghini, he retired in the face of the widespread strikes and unionization that had spread across Italy. He sold the Trattori company to another Italian maker of tractors in 1973.

A year later he sold his remaining 49% stake in Automobili Lamborghini to a Swiss businessman: René Leimer. A friend of René had previously bought the remaining 51% and together they hoped to revive the brand. Despite their attempts, they failed and eventually Automobili Lamborghini was forced into liquidation.

In 1980, the Italian government sold Lamborghini for $3 million to the Mimran brothers, two French entrepreneurs who held huge sugarcane plantations and flour mills in Africa. The brothers ambitiously wanted to renovate all Lamborghini facilities and to assemble a new team of engineers, but they quickly ran over budget and ended up selling the company.

In 1987, Lamborghini passed into the ownership of Chrysler, whom desired to import the luxury car model to the United States. Less than 5 years later, however, Lamborghini still hadn’t turned a profit, and so Chrysler sold it to an Indonesian conglomerate. The Indonesians actually managed to restore the brand somewhat and in 1996 Lamborghini made a modest profit of $120,000. As luck would have it, in 1998 a financial crisis struck Asia and Lamborghini got sold again.

Lamborghini Rebuild

History of Lamborghini. The owner was Ferdinand Piëch of Volkswagen, who already acquired Bentley and Bugatti that year. Under the parental treatment of Volkswagen, Lamborghini finds the framework indeed very efficient. This allowed it to finally start taking back its place in the luxury sports car market. To meet the challenges of the 21st century Lamborghini has been aggressively marketing its brand name, while at the same time investing heavily into material research and development.

They have diversified their cars to appeal to a wider range of budgets, though even their lowest prices are still prohibitively expensive to the average Joe. The pinnacle of success for the modern Lamborghini is undoubtedly the Gallardo, which has, over the course of its ten year production run, sold slightly over 14,000 units, thus becoming Lamborghini’s most popular design ever!

2015 marked the best year in the company’s history, as their sales jumped from just over two and a half thousand cars to over 3 thousand. They’re already manufacturing other heavy-hitters such as the Urus SUV concept or the Huracan, successor of the Gallardo. So far it appears that Lamborghini’s game of corporate hot-potato has finally come to an end, at least for the time being. It’s safe to say, though, that if Ferruccio could see his company now, he would be pleased to learn that Lamborghini is once again playing the red flag to Ferrari’s bull.

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