Italy’s Sports Car Legend Began With Tractors

It seems odd that the company that would produce some of the most esteemed sports cars in the world started out in business in a barn. It’s odd, until you discover that Ferruccio Lamborghini began by manufacturing tractors. It was his huge success at building tractors that funded the Italian farm boy’s interest in cars.

Put-Together Tractors

The roots of Lamborghini horsepower go back to a youthful Ferruccio starting a repair shop in northern Italy. This was post-World War II when surplus military machine components were in ample supply. Capitalizing on that availability, Lamborghini purchased engines and transmissions, and he assembled these supplies into durable tractors. Thus was born, in 1948, the Carioca tractor. Though made from repurposed supplies, Carioca offered a fuel atomizer (an advance in Italy in those days), which allowed the tractor to be started with gas and then switched to distillate fuel.

Soon, Lamborghini tractors gained a reputation for being dependable and durable. Lamborghini even organized tractor pulls in his area of Italy to demonstrate the superiority of his tractors. Such demonstrations and that reputation spurred sales and led to the creation of Lamborghini Trattori s.p.a. company in 1949. At this point, Lamborghini began making tractors entirely from his own parts. His continued success resulted in the construction of a factory devoted to tractor manufacturing.

In the beginning, Lamborghini was turning out one tractor per month. Soon, that production jumped to one tractor a week and then climbed to 1,500 a year and then 5,000 a year. By 1952, Lamborghini had four models in his line: DL 15, DL 20, DL 25, and DL 30.

The next year, that was expanded with the DL 40 and DL 50. (The number designates the horsepower of each tractor.)

Crawler Added to Line

By 1954, Lamborghini was building its own diesel engines to power its growing line of tractors. The following year, 1955, the firm produced its first crawler tractors for farming in the DL 25 C. In short order, Lamborghini crawlers were in high demand from producers farming the hilly terrain of northern Italy. Success followed Lamborghini to such a degree that in 1956, he built a new tractor plant to meet the growing demand for his machines.

In 1960, Lamborghini’s business expanded to include oil-burning heaters and air-conditioning units for buildings. At this time Lamborghini had grown wealthy enough to own several sports cars, including a Ferrari. Frustrated with the action of the clutch in that car, he took the matter up with the car’s maker, Enzo Ferrari, who told Lamborghini the problem was not with the car but with its driver. Lamborghini took this as a challenge. In 1962, he set out to build his own vehicle and developed a V-12 engine for that purpose. This led to the creation of the famous 350GT sports cars.

Improving Design

While developing cars and adding to his fame as a first-class builder of racing vehicles, Lamborghini continued to devote himself to tractor development. In 1968, Lamborghini Trattori adopted a strategy aimed at improving the technical quality of its tractors. For example, Lamborghini tractors were the first in Italy to be fitted with a synchronized gearbox as standard equipment.

In the late 1960s, Lamborghini lost interest in tractors. The line of tractors and implements was acquired by Italian farm machinery manufacturer SAME in 1971. The Lamborghini name is still used on tractors today, as part of the SDF (SAME Deutz-Fahr) Group. That line stretches from 20-hp. to 280-hp. models, which include in-field tractors such as the Nitro 130 VRT (shown right) and specialized vineyard and orchard machines plus crawlers sold across the world.