William Comai retweetledi
Daylight's burnin'! Time to rise and shine with a Dave's Car ID Service salute to tractor makers who tried their hand at car making. Famously, the most successful of whom was Ferruccio Lamborghini. The story has been told a million times, but here are the Cliff Notes:
Born on a grape farm in Ferrara, young Ferruccio Lamborghini studies mechanics and metal working, then is drafted to serve as a mechanic for the Italian Air Force in WW2. Post war, patents a fuel atomizing device for quicker starts of diesel engines, and begins a business to convert surplus WW2 machinery for agricultural use. He introduced his L33 tractor in 1951, the first to be completely made by Lambo. In pic #1, his bread & butter: a 1952 DL 30, one of the DL series tractors that debuted that year, and were very popular in Italy and beyond.
And this is where the fun starts. By 1962 burly, no-nonsense Ferruccio Lamborghini was a wealthy man, wealthy enough to afford a different luxury car for every day of the week: Mercedes 300 SL, E-Type Jaguar, Maserati, and of course several Ferrari 250 GTs. He had nagging clutch problems with his Ferraris that required numerous rebuild jobs at Ferrari's factory in Maranello. He had his own employees pull the clutch on one, and discovered it was a cheap type, the kind used on his tractors.
Now he's pissed off. He fires a complaint letter directly to Enzo Ferrari about it, to which Ferrari famously replied "I'll stick to my cars, you stick to your tractors."
Now he's REALLY pissed off and decides to start his own car company. He hires a few of Ferrari's key engineers and decides to go straight after Enzo's territory: Exotic V12 supercars. Starting with the 1963 350 GTV, and then in 1966 with possibly the prettiest car ever made, the Miura. Unlike Ferrari's prancing horse, they wore a raging bull.
The rest is history, as they say. And Lamboghini still makes tractors.
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