46 Fun Facts About Lamborghini

In which Italian town is Lamborghini headquartered?

Sant'Agata Bolognese won the factory with a deal from its communist council: generous terms on the firm's profits in return for a unionised workforce.

Lamborghini unveiled its first car at which city's motor show in October 1963?

Turin saw the debut months after the firm was founded; the prototype is said to have sat there with bricks where its V12 should have been, bonnet firmly shut.

What did Ferruccio Lamborghini's first company, founded in 1948, manufacture?

Tractors made his first fortune: Lamborghini Trattori, founded in Cento in 1948, was later sold to rival SAME and still builds them under his name.

What were Ferruccio Lamborghini's first post-war 'Carioca' machines built from?

Surplus military vehicles were being sold off after the war, so he bought them up and reused their engines and differentials in his own machines.

In which 2013 film does the drugged hero wreck his white Countach on the drive home?

The Wolf of Wall Street has Jordan Belfort struggle home in his Countach as long-delayed sedatives kick in; the next day he is told the car is a wreck.

In Ferruccio's telling, which part of his own Ferraris kept failing, prompting a complaint Enzo brushed off?

The clutches on his Ferrari 250 GTs kept needing rebuilds at Maranello; brushed aside by Enzo, he resolved, by his own account, to build a better car himself.

Don Eduardo Miura, the breeder of fighting bulls whose ranch Ferruccio visited in 1962, was based near which Spanish city?

Seville is where the fourth Miura built was later taken to be unveiled to Don Eduardo, proud that a car carried the name of his family's bulls.

Which two-seater, bodied by Touring of Milan, was Lamborghini's first production car?

The 350 GT of 1964 turned the firm's show prototype into a practical car, and Lamborghini sold the early ones at a loss to keep prices level with Ferrari's.

Which small British car inspired the Miura's trick of casting engine and gearbox as one unit?

The Mini showed the way: Lamborghini's engineers cast the Miura's V12 and gearbox as a single unit sharing one oil supply, mounted sideways behind the seats.

Ferruccio opposed his engineers' spare-time Miura project because he preferred which kind of car?

Sedate grand tourers were his ideal, 'conventional but perfect'; he still let the Miura go ahead, reckoning it would at least be a useful marketing tool.

Which designer's sleek styling of the Miura made his reputation at the 1966 Geneva show?

Marcello Gandini had only just replaced Giorgetto Giugiaro as his studio's chief designer when he drew the Miura, from first sketch to prototype, in a matter of months.

The Miura won worldwide attention in the first scene of which 1969 film?

The Italian Job opens with an orange Miura sweeping through the Alps to Matt Monro's 'On Days Like These'; the wreck was a second, already crashed car, and the one driven still exists.

The Countach's name comes from an expletive in which regional dialect?

Piedmontese 'contacc' is a cry of astonishment; by the designer's account a workshop hand who spoke little else kept saying it, and it stuck as the car's name.

Which design house, pioneer of the sharply angled wedge shape, styled the Countach?

Bertone built the LP500 prototype shown at Geneva in 1971; the one-off was later destroyed in a crash test to win the production car its type approval.

What distinctive type of door did the Countach introduce to Lamborghini's road cars?

Scissor doors were first drawn for a 1968 Alfa Romeo concept with dire rear visibility: the driver could lift a door and lean out to see while reversing.

What does the 'LP' in Lamborghini designations such as LP400 stand for?

LP stands for 'longitudinale posteriore', Italian for longitudinal rear: the V12 sits lengthwise behind the cabin, unlike the Miura's transverse layout.

Which future supercar maker restyled the 25th Anniversary Countach of 1988?

Horacio Pagani joined Lamborghini as a junior bodyshop worker and within a few years ran the composites department he had proposed, which reshaped the Countach for 1988.

Which was the first production Lamborghini with a top speed above 200 mph?

The Diablo of 1990 passed 200 mph; its name, Spanish for devil, recalls a bull said to have fought an epic battle with the matador El Chicorro in Madrid in 1869.

What did 'VT' stand for on the 1993 all-wheel-drive version of Lamborghini's V12 flagship?

Viscous Traction: a viscous coupling could send up to 25% of torque to the front wheels when the rears slipped, making this Lamborghini's first all-wheel-drive sports car.

Which American carmaker bought Lamborghini in 1987 and had its next flagship's styling softened in Detroit?

Chrysler's managers found the Italian design too aggressive and had their Detroit studio smooth it; the designer later built his original shape as the Cizeta V16T.

Between its American owner and Volkswagen, Lamborghini belonged to a group led by the son of which country's president?

Indonesia's Tommy Suharto, the president's youngest son, led the buyers in 1994; the Asian financial crisis of 1997 set the stage for the sale to Volkswagen a year later.

Which Volkswagen Group brand was handed control of Lamborghini in 1998?

Audi was handed control when Volkswagen bought Lamborghini in 1998; its investment brought new model lines and far higher output.

Which mid-engined BMW began as a Lamborghini development contract that fell behind schedule in the 1970s?

The BMW M1 was to be built by Lamborghini, but its 1978 cash crisis made BMW take the project in-house, with Baur assembling the Giugiaro-bodied cars from late 1978.

Which driver's third place for Larrousse at the 1990 Japanese Grand Prix was Lamborghini's best F1 result?

Aguri Suzuki inherited third at Suzuka after the two title rivals collided at the first corner; it was the first podium for a Japanese driver and the only one for a Lamborghini engine.

Which F1 driver was impressed testing a rebadged Lamborghini V12 in 1993?

Ayrton Senna tested a McLaren fitted with the V12, badged for Lamborghini's American parent, in late 1993 and reportedly wanted to race it, but the team chose a Peugeot engine instead.

Which Luc Donckerwolke design of 2001 was Lamborghini's first all-new model in eleven years?

The Murciélago is named for a bull said to have survived a fight in Córdoba in 1879 and gone on to sire a famous line; the word is also Spanish for bat.

Which V10 model, built 2003-2013, became Lamborghini's best-seller at the time with 14,022 made?

The Gallardo revived the idea of the Calà, a 1995 concept shelved when Lamborghini changed hands three years later.

Which organisation received two Gallardos in 2004, later using them to transport organs?

The Italian State Police took delivery of two Gallardos in 2004 to mark its 152nd anniversary; they patrolled the Salerno-Reggio Calabria motorway and carried donor organs.

Which Lamborghini flagship, launched in 2011, is named after a bull that fought in Zaragoza in 1993?

Aventador was a noted fighting bull; the car brought Lamborghini's first clean-sheet V12, replacing an engine family that went back to the very first model.

The Lamborghini Urus is named after which animal?

The aurochs, also called the urus, was the wild ancestor of domestic cattle and died out in 1627; this time the name honours a wild ox, not a bull of the ring.

Which was Lamborghini's first SUV, produced from 1986 to 1993?

The LM002 grew out of prototypes that failed to win a military contract; given a Countach V12 up front, the luxury off-roader earned the nickname 'Rambo Lambo'.

Which luxury SUV shares its Volkswagen Group platform with the Lamborghini Urus?

Bentley Bentayga and Urus both sit on the group's MLB Evo platform, as does the Porsche Cayenne, which spared Lamborghini from engineering an SUV from scratch.

Which 2023 model became Lamborghini's first plug-in hybrid?

Revuelto went hybrid without giving up the naturally aspirated V12, adding three electric motors; its name comes from a bull that fought in Barcelona in the 1880s.

Which model, unveiled in August 2024, replaced the Huracán?

The Temerario swapped the Huracán's V10 for a twin-turbo V8 hybrid, yet became the first Lamborghini able to rev past 10,000 rpm.

Which Lamborghini was named for the bull that killed the famed matador Manolete in 1947?

Islero gored Manolete, Spain's most celebrated matador, at Linares in August 1947 just as he delivered the killing thrust, so bull and bullfighter both died.

Which one-off 2013 car, built for the company's 50th anniversary, was designed for a single occupant?

Egoista is Italian for 'selfish': Walter de Silva gave it a single seat and styling drawn from military aircraft such as the Apache helicopter.

The 2010 Sesto Elemento concept was made almost entirely of what, weighing just 999 kg?

Carbon fibre explains the name: Sesto Elemento means 'sixth element', carbon's atomic number, and building almost everything from it kept the car to 999 kg.

The 2014 Asterion hybrid concept was named after which creature of Greek legend?

Asterion was the Minotaur's given name in Greek myth; the half-man, half-bull hybrid suited a half-petrol, half-electric concept car.

For what, besides cars, did Lamborghini build 8.2-litre V12 engines?

Offshore powerboat racing has used Lamborghini's big marine V12s; Ferruccio himself had a Riva speedboat fitted with a pair of his car engines back in 1968.

In the mid-1980s Lamborghini lent its name to a limited run of what?

Sports motorcycles carried the Lamborghini badge in the mid-1980s but not its engines: France's Boxer Bikes built the small run around Kawasaki power.

What did Ferruccio Lamborghini refuse to let his company do, unlike his rival in Maranello?

Go motor racing was, to Ferruccio, a costly distraction; the ban so frustrated his chief engineer that he left in 1968 to run another firm's Formula One programme.

After retiring in 1974, Ferruccio Lamborghini took up which pursuit on his estate by Lake Trasimeno?

At La Fiorita, his estate at Castiglione del Lago on Lake Trasimeno, Ferruccio took up winemaking, producing a red he called Sangue di Miura.

Who was appointed Lamborghini CEO in November 2020, having previously run Bugatti?

Stephan Winkelmann returned as Lamborghini CEO from 1 December 2020 after running Bugatti, having already led Lamborghini from 2005 to 2016.

Who designed the engine for the first Lamborghini cars in 1963?

Giotto Bizzarrini, the engineer behind Ferrari's 250 GTO, is said to have been promised a bonus for every horsepower his V12 made beyond Ferrari's; its descendants lasted until 2010.

Which royal drove Lamborghini's glass-doored Marzal concept on a parade lap before a 1967 Grand Prix?

Prince Rainier III took the one-off Marzal round Monaco with Princess Grace beside him; the show car was never produced, but its shape and ideas fed into the Espada.

Which V8 sports car was Lamborghini's cheaper stablemate to the Countach through the 1980s?

The Jalpa reworked the Silhouette, a sales flop, into a cheaper stablemate that sold in the hundreds before falling sales ended it in 1988.