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Ferruccio Lamborghini. Photos courtesy Lamborghini.
On April 28, 1916, Ferruccio Lamborghini was born into a grape farming family in Renazzo di Cento, in Italy's Emilia Romagna Region. From these humble beginnings, and following the hardships of World War II, he would rise to start a series of successful manufacturing companies, including Lamborghini Automobili, the Italian supercar manufacturer begun as a slap in the face to Enzo Ferrari. On the 100th anniversary of his birth, we lift a glass of (virtual) Chianti to the life of Ferruccio Lamborghini.
Though blessed with broad shoulders, a large build and a powerful handshake, Lamborghini also possessed a keen mechanical aptitude. This gained him entrance into the Fratelli Taddia technical institute, but the Second World War intervened before Lamborghini could complete his coursework. Drafted into the Italian Air Force in 1940, he would spend the bulk of the war stationed on the Greek island of Rhodes, serving as a mechanic and working in logistics. In 1945, Lamborghini was captured by the British and briefly held as a prisoner before being repatriated to Italy in 1946.
Lamborghini’s first business venture was an auto repair garage, opened in Pieve di Cento in late 1946 or early 1947. Using what little spare time and money he had, Lamborghini turned a secondhand Fiat Topolino into a competition car, entering it into the 1948 Mille Miglia. A late-race crash destroyed the Fiat and convinced Lamborghini that his path to fame and fortune would not come as a racing driver.
Lamborghini's factory in Sant'Agata Bolognese in June 2009. Photo by Umberto Guizzardi.
Instead, Lamborghini looked to his agricultural past with an entrepreneurial eye. With military surplus hardware both plentiful and cheap, Lamborghini found ways to repurpose this for sale to the region’s farmers. His equipment soon gained a reputation for durability, and in 1949, Lamborghini Tractori SpA, a tractor manufacturing business, was born. To distinguish his tractors from those of the competition, Ferruccio adopted a black-and-white livery and used a logo that incorporated a fighting bull, a nod to both the equipment’s rugged construction and to his own zodiac sign.
As David Joliffe and Tony Ward point out in Lamborghini: Forty Years, Lamborghini understood the importance of marketing. To demonstrate the advantages of his namesake tractors, Ferruccio would often stage tug-of-war competitions with competing brands in towns and villages near his plant, and sales grew with the brand’s reputation. Now a comparatively wealthy man, Lamborghini left his Fiat days behind, instead favoring automobiles from Alfa Romeo, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz and, eventually, Ferrari.
Ferruccio Lamborghini purchased his first Ferrari, a 250GT, in 1958, and would buy several more in the coming years. While he admired their style and performance, he found their durability and comfort lacking, viewing them as racing cars only mildly repurposed for road use. Worse, perhaps, was the brand’s post-sale support, and after several trips to Maranello for repairs or mechanical adjustments, Lamborghini had had enough. A call was placed to Enzo Ferrari himself, during which Ferruccio Lamborghini intended to request a face-to-face meeting.
Except that Enzo Ferrari would neither take nor return Lamborghini’s call, relegating the task to one of his management staff. To Lamborghini, who viewed Enzo Ferrari as an equal (since both were prominent businessmen in the region), this was the ultimate insult, prompting a vow to beat Ferrari at his own game. With the fiery determination of a man scorned, Lamborghini set out to start a new company, one that would craft the finest grand touring cars in the world.
Lamborghini's first production car, the 350 GT.
His timing could not have been better. After finding an available tract of land in nearby Sant’Agata Bolognese, Lamborghini cut a now-unbelievable deal with the local government, desperate to reduce unemployment in the region. In exchange for allowing factory workers to join the powerful sheetmetal workers union (which essentially guaranteed there would be no layoffs at the plant), Lamborghini was granted a tax exemption on corporate profits for the first 10 years. Better yet, he was granted interest-free loans to build the plant, and set up with an account that paid a guaranteed 19-percent interest on profits from his new business venture. With this part of his plan locked up, construction on the factory began in 1962.
Lamborghini needed engineering talent to realize his goal, and among his first recruits was Giotto Bizzarrini, a man who’d spent five years working as Ferrari’s chief engineer, before walking away from the company in 1961. Thanks to a plentiful pool of local talent, Lamborghini and Bizzarrini had no trouble in staffing the bold startup with experienced designers and mechanical engineers, and Bizzarrini’s first task was to design a Ferrari-beating V-12 from a clean sheet of paper.
While Lamborghini wanted the new engine to use a short stroke and dual overhead camshafts on each head, he left the rest of the design up to Bizzarrini. Legend has it that Bizzarrini, working as a contractor for Lamborghini Automobili, refused outright payment for the design of his engine, opting instead to charge a fee for each horsepower his new engine produced above and beyond Ferrari’s road-going 3.0-liter V-12, which then produced 250 hp.
Giotto Bizzarrini (L), Ferruccio Lamborghini (C) and Gian Paolo Dallara.
In early testing, Bizzarrini’s 3.5-liter V-12 was said to produce an impressive 360 horsepower, but this was dialed back to 280 horsepower (still 30 more than Ferrari) by the time the engine was dropped into a car. The automaker’s first effort, the Lamborghini 350 GTV, was styled by Franco Scaglione and shown to the public at the 1963 Turin Motor Show. Despite a warm reception from the press and public alike, Lamborghini was said to be unhappy with the build quality of the car (which, in fairness, had been completed in just 120 days), so the 350 GTV was proclaimed a concept at the end of the show and parked in the company’s warehouse.
For its next effort, the 350 GT, Lamborghini would turn to Touring of Milan to produce its body. Debuting at the 1964 Geneva Motor Show, the car would enter production the same year, and by January of 1965, Lamborghini had delivered 13 examples into the hands of paying customers. In just two years, Ferruccio Lamborghini had taken his dream of producing GT cars to challenge Ferrari and turned it into a reality, but the best was yet to come.
Lamborghini Miura
In 1965, Gian Paolo Dallara, Lamborghini’s chief designer, penned a chassis with Paolo Stanzani and Bob Wallace for a project that Lamborghini referred to as the P400. Wearing a body styled by Marcello Gandini, the P400 debuted to rave reviews at the 1966 Geneva Motor Show, and those in attendance were blown away by the car’s futuristic styling and mid-engine design (though the engine cover was kept closed to hide the fact that ballast occupied the space where the engine would be). Production examples would come powered by a variant of Bizzarrini’s V-12, now displacing 3.9 liters and producing 350 horsepower, and the car that would become best known as the Miura solidified Lamborghini’s reputation as an automaker capable of producing the highest performance road cars in the world.
The early 1970s weren’t kind to Lamborghini, who sold off his tractor company in 1972 along with 51 percent of his holdings in Lamborghini Automobili. The oil crisis of 1973 worsened sales, and in 1974, Ferruccio Lamborghini sold off his remaining 49 percent share in the company. Opting to retire at age 58, Lamborghini moved to his 740 acre estate in central Italy, where he spent his days hunting, making wine and running the businesses he was still involved with. Somewhat remarkably, he even fathered a daughter with his third wife, but largely remained out of the public eye. On February 20, 1993, Ferruccio Lamborghini died of a heart attack at age 76.
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GM V8 power from several generations dominates the list of vehicles successfully sold on Hemmings Auctions and Hemmings Make Offer this past week that are detailed here. Original condition, low-mile examples included a pair of cars with Corvette-sourced engines: a 1996 Impala SS with LT1 V8 power and a 2006 Pontiac GTO with a 6.0-liter LS2 that made the Australian-built coupe a potent performer. A 1955 Chevy 210 sedan street rod with Bel Air trim looked to have been modified by a builder with an exceptional eye for detail. The latest generation Corvette showed no signs of diminishing in the eyes of collectors, though we do hope everyone is enjoying driving these American-made exotics, like the 2023 Vette that changed hands last week. A ’40 Ford Coupe with a modified flathead V8 had all the old-school, stealth hot rod vibe anyone could ask for. Finally, a Fiat 600 Jolly replica gave off its own old-school vibes, but in more of a Mediterranean beachfront sort of feeling.
For the week of May 5 through May 11, a total of 46 listings crossed the Hemmings Auctions block. Including Make Offer listings of previously ended auctions, a total of 30 cars were sold, resulting in a net 65% sell-through rate. An additional 18 cars were sold via direct Make Offer listings.
You can keep abreast of the latest consignments by subscribing to the daily Hemmings Auctions email newsletter.
2023 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray
Reserve: $76,000
Selling Price: $84,000
Recent Market Range: $70,000-$88,000
Though it’s been on the market for five model years (with a few of those years interrupted by pandemic-era supply-chain issues), the eighth generation Corvette remains popular with collectors. This Red Mist Metallic over Natural leather 2023 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray sold at a market-correct price as a post-auction Make Offer listing amid a strong number of views of the listing. Equipped with the top-end 3LT package, it featured the 495-hp, mid-mounted LT2 V8 and eight-speed automatic of all base Corvettes, though it remains hard to call this American exotic a “base” car of any sort. For all intents and purposes, this C8 was a brand-new car with less than 1,500 miles at the time of submission.
1940 Ford Deluxe Coupe
Reserve: $40,000
Selling Price: $44,100
Recent Market Range: $45,000-$67,000
Plenty of ’40 Ford Coupes have been turned into street rods, an understandable situation for someone enamored with the car’s distinctive look and also desiring a bit more power. This 1940 Ford Deluxe Coupe seemed to bridge the gap between original and street rod, with a ground-up restoration from 20 years ago that included some period speed parts for its 221-cu.in. flathead V8, including Offenhauser cylinder heads and intake topped with a pair of Stromberg 97 carburetors. The body and interior appeared stock and clean, with the seller indicating less than 500 miles since all was completed. Though it sold just below market expectations, it did achieve a net sale price 20% stronger than its reserve.
1969 Fiat 500 Jolly Replica
Reserve: $0
Selling Price: $26,250
Recent Market Range: $24,000-$32,000
With the assistance of Ghia, Fiat made approximately 650 Jolly runabouts based on the Fiat 500 and 600 in the late 1950s and early 1960s. With a fringe-lined fabric roof and wicker seats, the diminutive Jolly proved a perfect beach car, whether in Calais or California. Though no definitive numbers are available, estimates have the remaining original Jolly population in the low triple digits. Given that limited availability and the huge number of Fiat 500s built over the years, more and more replicas are reaching the market. This 1969 Fiat 500 Jolly replica appeared to be a faithful reproduction based on a later car. Offered at no reserve, a single, early knockout bid landed this one squarely in the market range.
1955 Chevrolet 210 Restomod
Reserve: $63,000
Selling Price: $57,750
Recent Market Range: $49,000-$70,000
This 1955 Chevrolet 210 restomod included a lot of conventional features, such as its recently rebuilt 350-cu.in. V8 with Edelbrock four-barrel carb, aluminum intake manifold and aluminum cylinder heads. It was all backed with a TH350 three-speed automatic and Ford 9-inch rear end. What did appear to be unconventional was its exceptional level of detail, such as its smoothed engine bay which looked very tidy in the seller’s photos. There were plenty of other custom touches, too, from the Dakota Digital gauge cluster to the Lexus-sourced leather seats and lots more. A former magazine car that scored well in shows, this 210 two-door sedan sold for a market-correct price as a post-auction Make Offer listing.
2006 Pontiac GTO
Asking Price: $28,750
Selling Price: $28,350
Recent Market Range: $22,000-$32,000
Pontiac did not go out with a whimper at the end of 2009, with GM’s excitement division selling some interesting cars in its final decade. Among those hot cars was this 2006 Pontiac GTO, a two-door coupe sourced from GM’s Holden subsidiary out of Australia. While the car may have been assembled down under, the LS2 6.0-liter V8 under the hood of all ’05 and ’06 GTOs was cribbed directly from the Corvette. This example was equipped with the desirable six-speed manual and featured a relatively rare hue known as Brazen Orange. Most importantly to bidders, this direct Make Offer listing indicated that the car was original and that its odometer reading of 10,667 miles at submission was accurate.
1996 Chevrolet Impala SS
Reserve: $15,400
Selling Price: $20,738
Recent Market Range: $15,000-$24,000
Chevrolet’s swan song in the body-on-frame sedan category included a bona fide muscle car in the form of the 1994-’96 Impala SS. Based on the Caprice 9C1 police package, the Impala SS brought back a storied name and turned the staid sedan into a serious performer. Powered by a 260-hp, all cast-iron LT1 V8 mated to a 4L60-E four-speed automatic and 10-bolt Posi rear end with 3.08 gears, the SS also featured four-wheel disc brakes and 17-inch alloy wheels. For 1996 only, the SS got a floor shifter and analog gauges. This 1996 Chevrolet Impala SS showed less than 39,000 miles on the odometer, with a listing boasting of lots of originality, and easily bested its reserve by a strong 35%.
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