Lamborghini started out as tractor manufacturers.
During World War II, after working as a mechanic, he went into business building tractors from leftover military hardware that had finished being used from the war effort. When the war had ended, he continued and expanded his business of tractor manufacturing, and by the 1950’s it was already one of the largest agricultural equipment manufacturers in Italy.
With a business so large and so profitable, Lamborghini began to grow an interest in expanding into automobiles. This was because he had had an interest in cars since childhood, and even owned several luxury cars.
In 1958, he purchased a Ferrari, but was displeased with how noisy he felt they were. He thought they were too noisy to be proper road cars, and that they were more like repurposed track cars.
One day, the clutch in Lamborghini’s Ferrari was broken, and he realized it was the same clutch he used on his tractors. When he went to Ferrari to ask for a replacement, Ferrari said he was just a little tractor maker and could not know anything about sports cars.
This compelled him to expand into making a luxury car in his vision, which was the start of today’s Lamborghini. What’s funny is that if this had happened in the US, the rich could be out driving John Deere luxury automobiles today.
