How Lamborghini Was Born Out Of A Rivalry

You can thank Enzo Ferrari… kind of. 

The car and motorsport industry was built on fierce rivalries from the late 19th century, to our current modern times. Competition makes the world go round, it is what creates innovations and new inventions, whether they wanted to or not. Since the beginning of the automobile, when four wheels slapped on to a coffin shaped body was called a car, when roads were made of dirt. When man wanted to go fast since the beginning, and new car companies, racing teams, and engineers went head-to-head, to come up with some of the most interesting, and odd designs. You can’t stop change, and thats what the early car industry was all about, it was an era filled with test-and-trial, and what fueled it was the desirable notion of being number 1. 

Ford vs. Ferrari, Carroll Shelby vs. Alejandro Detomaso, Mercedes vs. Red Bull, or Tazio Nuvolari vs. the Nazis. We can sit here and go on and on, listing the amount of rivalries and underdog stories that have occurred in the automotive world. I have given these examples to make an argument and a statement, that competition and rivalries produce some of the best cars, drives, technology, and stories. No one could scare Enzo Ferrari, he held all the titles, his brand was unbeatable, unmatchable, until one thing went under his skin. The rise of Ford in the mid 1960s was the single thing that could make the Maranello based team shake in their racing boots. Henry Ford and Enzo’s rivalry was first sparked when Ferrari did not agree to sell his company to Henry Ford II because if he did agree, Ford would not give the rights to let the Italian run his own racing department. After a few choices of words that Enzo sent to the Ford boss, both men had an abrasive tension that was bound to go against each other on track. Ford put Carroll Shelby up to the task to bring them to Le Mans and to win the 24-hour endurance race, and most importantly, to beat Ferrari, which they did, four times in a row. Ferrari retaliated with the 330 P4 as the Americans brought the GT40,  the utmost game-changing race cars to have ever driven on De la Sarthe. 

Tazio Nuvolari at the 1935 German Grand Prix 

You must be wondering where I’m going with this, and how this somehow correlates to Lamborghini, but first, you must know why Ferruccio Lamborghini ever wanted to create cars in the first place, and what he did before that. Ferruccio Lamborghini was always interested in farming technology as a child, this fascination with mechanics led to him studying engineering at the Fratelli Taddia technical institute near Bologna. When the second World War erupted, Ferruccio was sent off to the island of Rhodes with the Italian Air force. The Catholic was a supervisor for the vehicle maintenance unit, and much later he was taken as a prisoner, when Rhodes fell into British hands and control in 1945. For another year, Lamborghini wasn’t allowed to return to his home of Italy. World War II came to an end, and Ferruccio decided to return to his hobbies, or maybe even discover a new one. One day, the bound founder of one of the most iconic supercar companies wanted to modify an old Fiat Topolino he had just lying around. The 750cc was tuned up to his liking, and Lamborghini entered it into one of the  most difficult and debilitating races. The race that went through Italian villages and cobblestone roads, the Mille Miglia. 

Although, his racing days were short-lived. Just an inch shy of 700 miles (1,126.54 km) Ferruccio stopped to grab a bite at a restaurant in Turin. Admiring his work at the same time, but knowing that his stomach is more important than a straining and grueling race that would only lead to a weak handshake after crossing the finish line. He was a man obsessed with fine details and perfection, and it was then and there when Ferruccio had a lightbulb moment, and he remembered his love for farming technology. 

Shortly after, he realized the demand and need for agricultural transport, and that there was a growing place for it in the market. To build his own tractors, Ferruccio didnt have many resources to work from, so instead he used left over military parts to build tractors from scratch that wore the Lamborghini name for the first time. You think the Lamborghini 350 GTV was the first vehicle to wear the Lamborghini badge? Well, you’re wrong. The first ever Lamborghini tractor had a straight six engine derived from a Morris truck, which was fitted with Ferruccio’s own fuel atomizer. And because of Ferruccio’s out of the box, yet traditional thinking, this made the tractors able to be started with petrol, and then switched to diesel, so people could afford it. For Italy, in the post-war era, this was something else. Lamborghini wanted perfection, and later on he was also able to perfect the mass production of his tractors, racking up a lot of fame, but also a lot of money. 

After his new-found notability and success, Lamborghini was able to buy any car he desired, he swiftly built up a collection from scratch, from Maserati, to Mercedes and Lancia, and first and foremost, Ferrari. Little did Ferruccio know that a Ferrari 250 GTE Pininfarina coupe, that had one little flaw that bothered the perfectionist, would become his ticket to the automotive industry. 

Ferruccio Lamborghini noticed that the Ferrari’s clutch, along with other Ferraris, was extremely flabby and weak. The amount of power that would come-forth from the front-engined V12’s would overpower the clutch, and the clutch wasnt able to take and deal with such immense and vigorous horsepower. The clutch on his 250 GT kept breaking, Lamborghini sent it to be fixed at Ferrari, when it was sent back, Ferruccio once again noticed that no difference was made to the clutch. This angered him even more and went straight to the boss himself, Enzo Ferrari. The Italian complained and explained endlessly to Enzo, but Ferrari’s pride and stubbornness could not believe, not even an inch, that his cars werent carved to perfection. Two powerful personalities, going back and forth, convinced Ferruccio that he would show Enzo what was true perfection. Before he ever did that, his pettiness took over, so he took out the cheep clutch out of the Ferrari, and put in one from his tractors. That Ferrari became a working Ferrari that day, that could handle any power. Ferrari’s ego was silenced… Cheeky indeed. 

Ferruccio hired ex-Ferrari employees that were fired by Enzo, the likes of Giotto Bizzarini, Franco Scaglione, and Gian Paolo Dallara, were employed for one purpose only, to create a powerful and luxurious GT car. And in 1964, the car industry wouldnt ever be the same. A tractor builder knocked down the door and entered the automotive industry with a car called the Lamborghini 350 GT. The first ever Lamborghini to wear the bull badge and logo on its front nose, Ferruccio wasnt done showing Ferrari what a clutch should be, he went a step further. He went on to birth the 350 GT, a bull willing to fight the prancing horses, it had a classy, detailed look, with a luxurious interior that matched its outside persona. Yet, the thing that really touched a nerve was how the 350 GT, as a luxury grand tourer, still was more advanced than some of Ferrari’s race cars. It was pushed to high revs by its 3.5 liter 336bhp V12, it could do 0-60 in just 5.8 seconds, and go on with a top speed of 158mph (254.28 km/h). 

Ferruccio Lamborghini divulged that he never invented anything or came up with a ground-breaking design, instead, he copied other people’s ideas, using that base to improve on others’ work and make them into his own. To be fair, he did use the Ferrari V12 of Ferrari, making it even better with twin cams from the 4-cylinder Alfa Romeo. Ferruccio was a traditional, simple, man, and it took many designers and many nights of convincing to get him outside his comfort zone. When he did with the Miura, Lamborghini never returned to the ways that first made the company. 

Touring Superlegera bodied the ever-so-beautiful and bulletproof 350 GT, its 6 side draft weber carburetors pumped fuel all around that Italian V12 that is music to our ears. Bizzarini went on to design the Lamborghini 12-cylinder engine on the next car, the 400 GT, which went on to be used in every Lamborghini until the Murcialago in the early 2000s. A versatile engine with a distinctive ear-filling noise. It was Lamborghini’s goal to create the best ever grand touring sports cars for the road, to show Ferrari that even he could do it. Lamborghinis were built for the road, and for the road only, Ferruccio never wanted his cars to touch a racetrack, unlike Enzo, he wanted to created cars, while Ferrari had to create cars to fund his racing. 

Both entrepreneurs and founders were different in countless ways, but both shaped the car industry into what it is today, without them, we wouldnt have all the cars we know and love. And without that weak clutch, Lamborghini might have never dipped his toes in the automotive world, and would have never created the iconic supercar company that stands today. If he did join later on, it might have been very different from how it was and is. Ferruccio might have said, eat your heart out Ferrari, but we say thank you, Enzo, for giving us one of the most astonishing brands, whether you wanted to do it or not.     

Published in Car Stories