Lamborghini origins

[snopes]

Comment: I know the old story about how Ferrucio Lamborghini, the Italian tractor
builder, bought a new Ferrari in the early '60s that was out of sorts. He
took it back to the factory, and talked with Enzo about it, who said "you
don't know how to drive my cars!" or "go back to building tractors!" or
something to that effect. So Ferrucio went home and built his own cars. I
am looking for details ... the story has been told so often in car circles
that it gets distorted. Can you uncover the truth?

[Squishy0405]

While I can provide no cites & he isn't too sure if the actual "conversation" ever happened, my hubby claims Lamborghini thought he could make better cars so that's why he got started

According to this site: http//:lamborghinicars.tripod.com/history.html, Lamborghini was dissatisfied with the clutch on his Ferrari, made a complaint, where Ferrarri basically told him to go back to building tractors. Lamborghini at the time was making tractors, as well as Air conditioners, and various other products. He wanted to actually build helicopters, but could not get government approval, so he focussed on cars. In the 60's he began building and racing cars. His first car had a Ferrarri engine with Alfa Romeo heads. This site has quite a long history written, but does agree with Lamborghini building a car out of spite from his treatment by Ferrari.

[Hans Off]

So no one has yet bothered to actually look at the Lambo website??

The history is written there in full

The Lamborghini story is told rapidly: The others weren't good enough.

Nice!

It is acutally a pretty good website... there are video clips of interviews with the man himself!

In one he sort of comfirms the OP...

He was having an agrument with his friend Enzo who said

You can't drive my cars go back to tractors

No mention of shoddy Ferrari gearboxes at all.


Lambo

[Meka]

Originally Posted by Hans Off

So no one has yet bothered to actually look at the Lambo website??

The history is written there in full



Nice!

It is acutally a pretty good website... there are video clips of interviews with the man himself!

In one he sort of comfirms the OP...

He was having an agrument with his friend Enzo who said



No mention of shoddy Ferrari gearboxes at all.


Lambo

Forgive me for playing devil's advocate here, but can we even trust Lambo's website? It strikes me that if I were in their PR department, and there was an entertaining legend about the company's origins that also happened to paint my biggest competitor in a bad light, true or false I'd milk it for all it was worth.

Then again, if the legend was false, I'd expect a vehement denial from Ferrari.