Lamborghini History, Explained: Is It Italian, the First Lamborghini and the Best Ever Made

Lamborghini history	Year	What happened
Founded	1963	Automobili Lamborghini established on 7 May in Sant’Agata Bolognese. The 350 GTV prototype at the Turin show in October.
First production car	1964	The 350 GT at the Geneva show: a front-engined V12 grand tourer with a 2+1 cabin.
The first supercar	1966	The Miura at Geneva, its V12 mounted sideways behind the cabin.
Ferruccio sells	1972–74	51% to Georges-Henri Rossetti in 1972; in 1974 Ferruccio retires and Rossetti and René Leimer run the company.
Bankruptcy	1978	The company goes bankrupt at the end of the year.
Mimran	1981	The Mimran Group buys it and starts the work that leads to the LM002.
Chrysler	1987	Lee Iacocca’s Chrysler buys it and completes the Diablo.
Megatech	1994	Chrysler sells to Megatech, an Indonesian investment fund.
Audi	1998	Acquired on 10 July 1998; part of the Audi and Volkswagen Group ever since.

The history, with a key Lamborghini Huracán Evo, Yellow A naturally aspirated V10 from the last Lamborghini line to have one. In Los Angeles at $1,299 a day. Dates and rate →

Is Lamborghini Italian, and who owns Lamborghini?

Lamborghini is Italian by birth, by address and by factory, and German by ownership. Both halves of that sentence are true, and the second one is the reason the first one survived.

The company was founded in Sant’Agata Bolognese and has never moved. Lamborghini describes the Aventador SVJ as entirely manufactured at Lamborghini’s plant in Sant’Agata Bolognese, and Volkswagen’s history of the brand says its super sports cars are built there. Ferruccio Lamborghini himself was born on 28 April 1916 in Renazzo, a village in the municipality of Cento, not far from the factory he would build.

The owner is Audi. Lamborghini’s own site signs itself Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A., a company with sole shareholder subject to the management and coordination of AUDI AG, and Audi is part of the Volkswagen Group. Volkswagen’s own history of the brand dates the acquisition to 10 July 1998.

Getting there took four owners. Lamborghini’s milestones tell it plainly: in 1972 Ferruccio sold 51% to Georges-Henri Rossetti to steady the company’s finances, and in 1974 he left industry altogether, with Rossetti and René Leimer running the business. At the end of 1978 it went bankrupt. The Mimran Group bought it in 1981, Chrysler in 1987 under Lee Iacocca, and the Indonesian investment fund Megatech in 1994. Audi was chosen from several suitors in 1998, and the first product was a Diablo with a 6.0-litre engine. A quarter of a century of stable ownership followed, with the Murciélago, the Gallardo, the Aventador, the Huracán and the Urus.

When was Lamborghini founded, and why did Lamborghini start making cars?

Lamborghini was founded in 1963, and the car company was Ferruccio’s third business. Lamborghini’s own history lists them: trained as a mechanic, he first turned surplus combat vehicles into tractors, which is what Lamborghini was first known for; in the 1950s he moved into heating and cooling systems; and by the time he turned to cars, Lamborghini says, he had a number of sports cars sitting in his garage. The tractor firm, Lamborghini Trattori, dated from 1948.

Why cars? The story everyone tells is that Ferruccio drove a Ferrari, complained to Enzo Ferrari about its clutch, and was told to stick to tractors. Ferruccio’s own 1991 account has Enzo replying that he might be able to drive a tractor but would never handle a Ferrari properly. The same source calls the episode as much the stuff of legend as of fact. The less colourful reasons are just as real: Ferruccio wanted the perfect touring car that he felt nobody would build for him, and he reasoned that components he already used in his tractors could earn far more profit in a high-performance car.

What he did not want was racing. Lamborghini says its founder never believed in racing as a way to sell road cars. That made Lamborghini the opposite of Ferrari from the first day: road cars as the point, not as the funding. Even the badge is personal. The bull came from Ferruccio’s star sign, Taurus, and from a phrase he used about himself, tamugno come un toro, as strong as a bull.

The first and oldest Lamborghini: the 350 GTV and the 350 GT

The oldest Lamborghini is the 350 GTV. It made its debut at the Turin Motor Show in October 1963, five months after the company was formed: designed by Franco Scaglione, bodied by Sargiotto, with a 3,497 cc V12 and twin overhead camshafts by Giotto Bizzarrini. It was a concept car, built to be shown.

The first Lamborghini you could buy was the 350 GT, launched at the Geneva Motor Show in March 1964. Paolo Stanzani reworked Bizzarrini’s racing V12 for the road, to 270 CV, and Carrozzeria Touring of Milan built the body using its Superleggera method of aluminium panels over a light frame. Inside it had two seats in front and a third set in the middle behind them. Lamborghini counts 150 standard cars built, plus two Spiders. The 400 GT followed with proper rear seats, and the 60-degree V12 that began in that first car was still powering the Countach when it ended production.

The best Lamborghinis ever made

Best is an opinion. The facts behind each choice below are Lamborghini’s own; the order is ours, and it ranks the cars by how much each one changed what a Lamborghini is.

The best Lamborghini	Arrived	Why it makes the list
1. Miura	1966	Mid-mounted transverse V12. The first car the press called a supercar.
2. Countach	1974	The wedge, and scissor doors new to a production car. 1,999 built over 16 years.
3. Aventador SVJ	2018	770 CV, 0–100 km/h in 2.8 s, and a 6:44.97 Nordschleife lap, then the production-car record.
4. Diablo	1990	The fastest car in the world when it was presented, at over 320 km/h. 2,903 built.
5. Huracán	2014	610 CV naturally aspirated V10, and the car that launched Squadra Corse customer racing in 2015.
6. Murciélago	2001	The first new car of the Audi era. 4,099 built by 2010.

The Miura comes first because it set the template. Shown at Geneva in March 1966, it put a 4.0-litre V12 sideways behind the cabin to keep the wheelbase short, under a Bertone body that stood 110 cm tall. Lamborghini’s biography of the car says it was the first the media termed a “supercar”. Orders surprised both Ferruccio and Nuccio Bertone: 265 P400s, 338 P400 S cars and 150 of the SV.

The Countach is the one on the bedroom wall. Shown as a concept in 1971 and built from 1974, it made the wedge the shape of a supercar for a decade, and its scissor doors were an absolute novelty for a production car. 1,999 were built across sixteen years, ending with the 25th Anniversary of 1988.

The Aventador SVJ is the high point of the Aventador’s V12: 6,498 cc, 770 CV at 8,500 rpm, 0–100 km/h in 2.8 seconds and over 350 km/h. On 26 July 2018, before it had even been unveiled, Lamborghini announced a Nordschleife lap of 6:44.97, the production-car record at the time. The Aventador itself, from 2011, had already given the V12 a carbon-fibre chassis.

The Diablo replaced the Countach in 1990 with a 5.7-litre V12 of 492 CV, and Lamborghini calls it the fastest car in the world at the time. Many people call it the first modern Lamborghini; four-wheel drive arrived with the VT in 1993, and 2,903 were built by 2001.

The Huracán arrived in 2014 to replace the Gallardo, with a 610 CV naturally aspirated V10, a seven-speed dual-clutch gearbox and an aluminium and carbon chassis. It was the car Lamborghini built its Squadra Corse customer racing around from 2015. The Temerario that replaced it in 2024 is a 920 CV hybrid twin-turbo V8, which makes the Huracán the last Lamborghini with a V10. Of the six, it is the one you can drive in Los Angeles this week.

The Murciélago closes the list because of what it started: the first brand-new car of the Audi years, designed in-house under Luc Donckerwolke, with a 6.2-litre V12 and four-wheel drive as standard. 4,099 were built before production stopped in 2010. Where the names come from, Miura and Murciélago included, is a story of its own.

The Lamborghinis you can drive in Los Angeles

The Huracán and the Urus are the parts of that history in our garage. The Huracán Evo we keep is the rear-wheel-drive car, a 5,204 cc V10 making 610 CV at 8,000 rpm, 0–100 km/h in 3.3 seconds and 325 km/h, at $1,299 a day. It is the closest thing on a public road today to the cars in the list above: an engine with nothing between it and the throttle, and its best noise saved for the top of the rev range.

The Urus is the other half of the modern company. Lamborghini presented it in 2018 as the first Super Sport Utility Vehicle, with a 650 CV twin-turbo V8, and it is a direct descendant of the LM002 of 1986. It seats five, is the car for a day with luggage or passengers in it, and starts at $999 a day. If the question is which of them suits your day, Ferrari vs Lamborghini covers the V10 against the Ferrari’s V8.

What it costs, and how it reaches you

The Urus carries a refundable deposit from $1,500 and every Huracán $2,000, both held on the primary driver’s card rather than charged and back 5–7 business days after the car returns. The Protection plan is priced per day off the deposit band, and every Lamborghini here sits in the top one; your own qualifying policy works instead. The live figures and the calendars are on the Lamborghini page; what a Lamborghini costs to rent in LA is set out line by line.

Collection from our lot on Robertson Boulevard is free and delivery to the partner hotels in Beverly Hills is complimentary. Airport delivery is $150 both ways standard, where the car waits in the airport parking structure and you take the shuttle out to it, or $300 both ways VIP, where it is at the terminal when you walk out — half that for one direction. The shuttle is half an hour with luggage, which the Urus carries and the Huracán does not, so the VIP tier earns its money on a Huracán more than on a Urus. Under twenty-five there is a young-driver fee per day, the higher of the two we charge. Mileage, fuel and the rest are in the terms.