| Lamborghini
Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A. was founded in 1963 by businessman Ferruccio Lamborghini as an Italian manufacturer of high performance sports cars (supercars) based in Sant'Agata Bolognese (near Bologna), Italy. According to his son, Ferruccio Lamborghini looked to solve a problem with the clutch in his Ferrari 250 GT. Enzo Ferrari sent him away telling him to go back to driving tractors, he couldn't drive cars. Ferruccio disassembled the clutch mechanism and found that it was from the same company as he used in manufacturing his own tractors, replaced the part with a spare and vowed to create a superior car. The first Lamborghini 350GTV prototype began making public appearances in 1963, starting with the Turin Auto Show. It used an advanced aluminum 4 cam V-12 engineered by Giotto Bizzarrini and the car was designed by Franco Scaglione's Scaglione-Touring. Sales of the production model, known as the 350GT, began the following year with great success, with over 130 sold. The excellent sales of the 350GT and its successor the 450GT gave the company sufficient funds to design its first exotic supercar - the legendary Lamborghini Miura. This is where Lamborghini excelled, in the small but expensive world of exotic supercars, and this is where Lamborghini continued to make its name. Countach sales managed to make the company profitable, but the 70's fuel crunch and US emission standards hurt Lamborghini. In 1978, Lamborghini declared bankruptcy and an Italian court sold all his remaining stock in the company to a Swiss investor, and Ferruccio Lamborghini left the automotive industry behind to pursue wine making from the comfort of his villa in the countryside. The 1980s saw things turn around for Lamborghini under its new Swiss-based Mimran brothers ownership. The company was sold to the Chrysler Corporation in 1987. Chrysler brought its vast resources to the playing field, along with design input, pollution controls, and new manufacturing techniques. The result was another success, the Lamborghini Diablo received much like acclaim, and once again put the manufacturer on top of its game. In 1994, poor economic circumstances at Chrysler forced them to sell Lamborghini to an Indonesian investment group headed by Tommy Suharto. These owners sold the company in the late 1990s, also suffering from poor economic circumstances from the Asian finincial crisis. By then however, Audi AG had gained interest in the ailing Italian company, and aqcuired the company in 1998 as the sole owner of Automobili Lamborghini. As Audi AG is a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group since 1964, Lamborghini is in effect a subsidiary of Volkswagen. However, the German automakers impact on Lamborghini has also been significantly positive and Lamborghini remains one of the top desired automotive brands in the world, despite the fact that Lamborghini have never been officially raced.
http://www.lamborghini.com/
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