Ferruccio Lamborghini; Founded Exotic Car Firm

Ferruccio Lamborghini, who formed the luxury car company that bears his name by amassing a small fortune in tractors he made from recycled World War II tanks, has died at age 76.

The Italian news agency ANSA reported that Lamborghini died Saturday at Silvestrini Hospital in Perugia, Italy. His son, Tonino Lamborghini, said the industrialist had been hospitalized after suffering a heart attack Feb. 5.

Lamborghini, born in a town near Ferrara in central Italy, was educated as an industrial engineer. He first tasted success with a tractor business he began shortly after World War II, reconditioning and remodeling German tanks left behind in Italy.

He had been a mechanic in the Italian army and then a prisoner of war in Greece. In 1959, in Sant’Agata Bolognese near Bologna, Lamborghini opened an ultra-modern factory to build the cars that eventually would compete with Ferraris and Maseratis. With the help of the engineer Paolo Stanzani, the Miura SV was born. Lamborghini later constructed the Countach.

By the late 1960s, Lamborghini had an industrial empire producing heaters, tractors, auto parts and “super cars” constructed for such celebrities as Princess Grace and Frank Sinatra, who ordered a leopard-skin interior.

Lamborghini entered the world of exotic cars after determining that he could make an automobile that would be more reliable than those of Enzo Ferrari, whose cars he drove for sport.

Lamborghini and another engineer, Giotto Bizzarrini, created a four-cam, V-12 engine with six carburetors. The body was styled to resemble a melding of the Jaguar XK-E and an Aston Martin with a Ferrari-like profile. He called his first car the 350 GT. Later models included a more complex Miura model and the Countach. It was powered by the 420-horsepower V-12s that had top speeds of 170 m.p.h. and sold for about $125,000 in 1987.

The energy crisis of the 1970s hit sales hard and Lamborghini was forced to sell a majority stake in the car company, which passed entirely to American giant Chrysler in 1987.

Lamborghini retired to a 740-acre estate near Lake Trasimeno, in the Umbrian region, with vineyards and collections of his automobiles. He lived quietly, grew to physically resemble the chunky “Godfather” of story and film fame and said that he had grown old in the car business and was tired of its demands.

“When a man gets old,” he told the Washington Post in 1980, “only two things to do: Sell ice cream or go to the farm.”