The Evolution of the Lamborghini

The first time I saw a Lamborghini was in a video game called Need for Speed.

Owning a Lamborghini was my dream since then. That I shall fulfil one day. I had posters of it all around in my room. Lamborghini has been producing solid and iconic vehicles since 1963. Despite being a symbol of wealth and luxury today- Lamborghini had very humble origins.

The company was named after its founder Feruccio Lamborghini. Mr. Lamborghini served as an air force mechanic in the Italian Royal Air Force in the World War 2. How cool is that! After the war Mr. Lamborghini opened a repair shop, and after acquiring many military units he converted them into tractors and started a business. This may be a surprise for many, but yes, Lamborghini started off by producing tractors. In 1959 production started for a vehicle that is known as the great grandfather of all Lamborghini vehicles, The DLA 35 Super. It used a Lamborghini 2.2l three cylinder diesel engine and could only reach the top speed of 24kph, and total of 117 of these were made.

After sometime Mr. Lamborghini turned towards his true passion, sports cars. Back in the day Feruccio owned a Ferrari 250 GT. Well we should thank god that Ferrari messed up and made Lamborghini what it is today, because when Mr. Lamborghini once complained about the clutch of his Ferrari, Enzo Ferrari himself said and I quote, “You’re just a tractor manufacturer. How could you possibly know anything about sports cars.”. Lamborghini took that very personally and unveiled their first sports car. The Lamborghini 350 GT in the year 1964 which was a very capable competitor to the Ferrari 350 GT. It had a 3.5l V12 engine and could reach the top speed of 249kph and could reach from 0-100kph in 6.8 seconds. It was priced $18,000 at that time, which is cheap if you ask me cause if u find one of these beasts today in good condition you’ll have to pay around a million dollars for it, as a matter of fact one restored Lamborghini 350 GT was sold in a an auction for a whopping $935,000. As we can see this was a massive jump from the DLA 35 Super and showed that Lamborghini was all set to beat Ferrari at their own game.

In 1966 Lamborghini produced a sequel to the 350 GT, the Lamborghini 400 GT 2+2. As the name suggests this car had space for four people and was a family sports car, this could reach the top speed of 270kph and was sold for $14,750.

An interesting fact is that the Lamborghini logo in a bull because Feruccio Lamborghini was a Taurus by birth sign and was a bull fighting enthusiast, which is why most of the future Lamborghini cars are named after famous fighting bulls.

In 1969 Lamborghini started the production of one of it’s most iconic cars The Lamborghini Miura. Miura had the top speed of 285kph making it the fastest production car in the world for it’s time. In the next couple of years Lamborghini produced many iconic cars like the Lamborghini Spada(Espada), Lamborghini Jamara, I personally don’t like both of them a lot because they were more of family cars and didn’t have the typical Lamborghini look.

Then in 1971 came the Lamborghini Miura SV which is one of my FAVOURITES, it had 385 horsepower and it was the first Lamborghini to touch the top speed of 300kph, and in general the SV series of cars from Lamborghini are super fast because as the name is SV which translates to super veloce which literally means super fast.

Then came the Lamborghini Countach which led the company from sports cars to super cars. I find it very revolutionary because it had a completely different design from the previous lamborghinis and was the base for the Lamborghini designs we see today.

In 1978 the unexpected happened. Lamborghini went bankrupt as the sales went down because of high fuel consumption. Patrik Mimran stepped in and bought the company for 3 million dollars and he somehow managed to build it up again. It took some time but in the 90’s came the era of supercars for Lamborghini. Lamborghini Diablo was launched which was an average car in my opinion but it could reach the speed of 303kph and had a price of $211,000. Since then Lamborghini has made multiple super cars and they also made entry in the track racing industry with their GTR series. Nevertheless the Diablo range did pretty well and sold around 3000 units.

In 1998 Volkswagen bought Lamborghini and many other car companies like Audi, Bentley, etc. After all the ups and downs for Lamborghini, they launched Lamborghini Murcielago. It was a masterpiece in it’s time and was loved by so many people because of it’s function and design. People went crazy when they saw Bruce Wayne drive Lamborghini Murcielago in Batman.

Then came Lamborghini Gallardo and I guess all of you who are reading this article know about this car or have heard about it. This car was so loved that it sold approximately 14,000 units and it came into so many racing games especially the need for speed series, from where I got introduced to it. After Gallardo came Lamborghini Reventton and Estoque, but Lamborghini broke the ground in 2011 when they launched my dream car, THE LAMBORGHINI AVENTADOR. Aventador had 700 horsepower and had such great performance that it became the fastest Lamborghini at the time. Around 5000+ of these beasts were made between 2011-2015, so it’s not in production anymore. This is the car i will buy to fulfil my childhood dream.

In 2011 with Aventador, Lamborghini also made the Sesto Elemento which was mostly made of carbon fiber and it was a milestone for Lamborghini because the Sesto Elemento was the lightest, quickest and their fastest Car at the time. In 2014 Lamborghini Veneno was launched to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the company and it is the fastest Lamborghini ever made. The latest Lamborghini is the Huracan which was a massive success at launch and still is. Bonus fact that Lamborghini has just re-launched the Countach with a revamped design and trust me, it looks so cool. If you’ve reached the end of this article then congratulations you now know the complete evolution of Lamborghini.