Ferruccio Elio Artur Lamborghini was born on April 28, 1916 in a family of farmers but Ferruccio decided he wanted to do something with mechanics. He started working on his father’s tractor out of interest and was able to attend a technical school in Bologna later on.
During the second World War, he was enrolled into the Italian Air Force, an was also prisoner of war in the British military forces who put him to work in their motoring department. After the war he returned to his hometown and started converting old war surplus material into much needed tractors for the local farmers, the Lamborghini tractor business was inaugurated in a small garage.
Ferruccio built a Fiat Topolino for himself and entered in the 1948 Mille Miglia competition, unfortunately the car was wrecked in an accident. By 1949 Ferruccio Lamborghini was able to start building tractors from scratch, without using any leftovers, the Lamborghini Trattrice factory was founded and production soon grew even further. The Lamborghini tractors became known as the best in Italy and Ferruccio started organizing tractor-pulls in his hometown just to show the superiority of his machines.
The tractor business made wealthy, and he started another factory building air-conditioning and central heating equipment. This additional enterprise made Ferruccio Lamborghini even more money and soon he became one of the wealthiest men in Italy.
But his personal Ferrari ran into problems with the clutch and Ferruccio, being the hands on person he was, went to visit Enzo Ferrari to complain about it … Enzo refused to meet him as history is told, but that didn’t stop Ferruccio Lamborghini.
Unfortunately things took a turn for the worse, and after a series of deals going bad with the tractor factory combined with the economical unrest in Italy, Ferruccio decided to sell his interest in most of his companies during the Seventies and retire at his estate near Perugia, further South in Italy.
Ferruccio’s estate La Fiorita held a state of the art winemaking facility producing over 800,000 bottles of wine each year and housed a small private museum of Lamborghini cars Ferruccio owned in those days, both the vineyard and the golf terrain were open for visitors, albeit by appointment only. In this private car museum you would find Ferruccio’s favorite Lamborghini model, the Miura, there was even talk about Ferruccio being involved in Paolo Stanzani’s attempt to take over the Bugatti Automobili SpA factory but this was never officially confirmed.
Information from http://www.lambocars.com
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