Ferruccio Lamborghini was born in 1916, his parents were farmers but Ferruccio soon decided he wanted to do something related to mechanics. Lamborghini started working on his father’s tractor out of interest and was able to attend a technical school in Bologna.
During the second World War he was enrolled into the Italian Air Force, working for the transport sections, after 1944 he became a prisoner of 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 people. Lamborghini began his tractor business in a small garage but he got really successful and had to move into larger premises soon thereafter.
During this time he also started tuning Fiat cars, he built a Fiat Topolino for himself and competed with it in the 1948 Mille Miglia, unfortunately the car was wrecked in an accident. By 1949 he was able to start building tractors from scratch, without using any leftovers, his own Lamborghini Trattrice factory was founded and the production soon took off. Soon after the venture 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 him a very wealthy man, and he started a second factory to build air-conditioning and central heating equipment. This enterprise made Ferruccio even richer and soon he was one of the wealthiest men in Italy, his love for fast cars became known and Ferruccio owned several exotic cars back then, a Mercedes SL300, a Jaguar and a Ferrari among other cars. But his Ferrari ran into problems with the clutch and Ferruccio went to visit Enzo Ferrari to complain about it, but Enzo refused to meet with him but that didn't stop Lamborghini. He noticed that the clutch fitted to his Ferrari wasn't any different from the ones he mounted in his tractors so he drove the Ferrari to Cento and fitted a Borg & Beck clutch of his own in the car, the problem never returned after that.
Ferruccio Lamborghini decided it was time to start a new business and the Grand Turismo cars seemed like a good idea, so he built a completely new factory at Sant'Agata and started building probably the best GT cars of that time. The company went fine and did prosper for quite some time.But things weren't always that simple and during the early Seventies he decided to sell most of his companies related to Lamborghini and retire at his estate near Perugia, further South in Italy were he began making wines known as 'The blood of the Miura'.
His son Tonino went to Japan and started a few shops over there selling designer clothing under the Lamborghini name, while Ferruccio married his second wife Maria Theresa, together they had a daughter.
This large estate La Fiorita near the Lake Trasimone now held a state of the art winemaking facility producing over 800,000 bottles of wine each year. This estate also housed small private museum of Lamborghini cars Ferruccio owned, and the vineyard and golf terrain were open for visitors by appointment only, in his car museum you would find Ferruccio's favorite Lamborghini, the Miura. There were rumors that Ferruccio was involved in Paolo Stanzani's attempt to take over the Bugatti Automobile Spa factory but this was never officially confirmed. There are different models of Lamborghini available now like Diablo,Countach, Murcielago, Gallardo, KitCar, Replica etc. Ferruccio Lamborghini died in February 1993 at the age of almost 76.Tonino Lamborghini created a tribute to his father, he contacted the architect Diversi in Imola to design a kind of 'arch' to hold just about everything Sig. Ferruccio Lamborghini ever did during his life.
This museum was constructed on the grounds of Lamborghini Calor, at Dosso di Ferrara, the official grand opening occurred on May 13th, 1995. This project was named the Cento Polifuzionale Ferruccio Lamborghini and reached great popularity the moment its doors opened for the public. All visits were by appointment only, but still during 1997 over 4000 pilgrims arrived at Sant'Agata to visit this spectacular space-like museum. If you ever have the opportunity to visit it, don't hesitate it is surely worth it, I was able to visit it during the summer of 1998 and it was overwhelming.
