Ferruccio Lamborghini: A Tractor Maker's Racing Ban and the Secret Miura

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Ferruccio Lamborghini, born in 1916, founded the tractor maker Lamborghini Trattori in 1948 and expanded into boilers and air conditioners. Unhappy with the noise, roughness and weak clutches of his Ferraris, he reportedly took his complaints to Enzo Ferrari, and in May 1963 he founded Automobili Ferruccio Lamborghini in Sant'Agata Bolognese to build a refined grand tourer. He hired Giotto Bizzarrini, fresh from Ferrari, for the engine, Gian Paolo Dallara and Paolo Stanzani for the chassis and Franco Scaglione for the bodywork, then banned factory-supported racing.

Dallara, Stanzani and test driver Bob Wallace built a mid-engine chassis, the P400, after hours. Lamborghini approved a body for it on condition it never race, and it became the 1966 Miura, widely considered the first modern supercar. A 1962 visit to Don Eduardo Miura's fighting bull ranch in Seville inspired the raging bull emblem and names like Islero, Espada and Jarama, while the 1974 Countach took its name from a Piedmontese exclamation attributed to designer Nuccio Bertone. Hit by the 1973 oil crisis and troubles at his tractor business, Lamborghini sold 51 percent to Georges-Henri Rossetti in 1972 and the rest to René Leimer in 1974, then retired to make wine. The automaker went bankrupt in 1978 and passed through the Mimran brothers, Chrysler in 1987 and Malaysian and Indonesian investors before Volkswagen Group placed it under Audi in 1998.

• Lamborghini fitted his Riva Aquarama speedboat with two 4.0-liter V12 engines from his 350 GT.
• The Islero was named for a Miura bull that killed matador Manolete in 1947.
• The Countach prototype was known internally as Project 112.
• Under the Mimran brothers the company built the LM002 off-roader, nicknamed the Rambo Lambo.
• The plug-in hybrid Revuelto still uses a naturally aspirated V12.