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Old 04-24-2016, 03:36 PM   #5
stepwilk
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Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY
Posts: 5
Slight thread drift, but some years ago, I was testing a Lamborghini for five days on Sardinia, as an automotive journalist, and I was accompanied by Lamborghini's PR director, who happened to have a summer house on Sardinia.

He told me that the old story of Ferruchio Lamborghini deciding to get into the exotic-car business because Enzo Ferrari somehow insulted him wasn't true.

The actual story is that Ferruchio owned a Ferrari and needed a clutch replacement. Called the factory to make an appointment, and they didn't have an available time for something like a month.

No problem,Lamborghini said, I'll just have my own chief mechanic do it. After all, how hard can a clutch replacement be for a highly skilled tractor technician?

A day later, his mechanic came to Ferruchio's office and put a clutch down on the boss's desk. "That's the clutch from your Ferrari, and Ferrari wants five million lira (or whatever the actual amount was) for a replacement unit." He then put an absolutely identical clutch unit down next to it and said, "That's the clutch we use in our largest tractors, and we charge five thousand lira."

Ferruchio suddenly saw the financial advantages of building a value-added automobile and decided to get into the car business.
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