Lamborghini began by making tractors.
Today, the name Lamborghini is synonymous with automotive opulence, but the Bologna, Italy-based company has an origin story that’s more humble than you might expect. Born in 1916, Ferruccio Lamborghini served in the Italian Air Force as a mechanic during World War II, learning the ins and outs of some of the most advanced vehicles in the world. Returning home after the war, Lamborghini knew his home country would need to increase agricultural output to recover from the devastation of the conflict. With other tractor companies (one of them being FIAT) too expensive for his war-weary compatriots, Lamborghini put his mechanical skills to work and created cheap-yet-powerful tractors salvaged from surplus military material.
Starting with its first tractor, named Carioca, in 1948, Lamborghini Trattori became an immensely successful business. Lamborghini’s fortune from the tractor business, along with other proceeds from his dabblings into air-conditioning and heating systems, provided enough capital for Lamborghini to buy his own Ferrari 250 GT sports car in 1958. Ever the mechanic, Lamborghini was unimpressed with his Ferrari (especially its less-than-luxurious clutch) and even began a feud with Enzo Ferrari himself. So, he decided to make his own sports car, and in 1963, Automobili Lamborghini launched a legacy of fine automobile craftsmanship that has lasted for 60 years and counting. (They also still make tractors.)
In the early 1970s, Lamborghini was in dire financial straits. To bring in some much-needed cash, the Italian luxury brand looked to an unlikely place — the U.S. military. By the mid-1970s, the Pentagon was seeking to finally retire its WWII automobile warhorse, the Jeep, for a new vehicle that could withstand the rigors of the modern battlefield. In partnership with a defense contractor based in San Jose, California, Lamborghini developed the Cheetah, an all-terrain vehicle, and debuted its creation at the 1977 Geneva Motor Show. Although the concept vehicle ran into some legal troubles, the biggest problem was that its one-off prototype handled poorly and was easily destroyed during testing. The military went another route instead, and in 1983 chose AM General’s High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, otherwise known as HMMWV, or the more phonetically friendly “Humvee.”
