1951

A 1951 Lamborghini 22PS farm tractor

Ferruccio Lamborghini, the man who would found Automobili Ferruccio Lamborghini S.p.A. in 1963, was the child of viticulturists living in Renazzo di Cento, Province of Ferrara, in the Northern Italy's Emilia-Romagna region.^[3][13][14] After serving as a mechanic in the Italian Royal Air Force during World War II, Lamborghini went into business building tractors based on surplus WWII military hardware.^[15][16] By the mid-1950s, Lamborghini's tractor company, Lamborghini Trattori S.p.A.,^[17] had become one of the largest agricultural equipment manufacturers in the country.^[18] He was also the owner of a successful gas heater and air conditioning manufacturer.^[15][18][19]
Lamborghini's wealth allowed him to cultivate a childhood interest in cars, owning a number of luxury automobiles including Alfa Romeos, Lancias, Maseratis, and a Mercedes-Benz.^[19] He purchased his first Ferrari, a 250GT, in 1958, and went on to own several more. Lamborghini was fond of the Ferraris, but considered them too noisy and rough to be proper road cars, likening them to repurposed track cars.^[19] When Lamborghini discovered that the clutch on his Ferrari was broken, and actually was the same clutch that he used on his tractors, Lamborghini went to Ferrari and asked for a better replacement. Ferrari responded, saying that he was just a tractor maker, and could not know anything about sports cars.^[19][20][21] Lamborghini decided to pursue an automobile manufacturing venture with the goal of bringing to life his vision of a perfect grand tourer.^[18]