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Enzo, the thug?


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#1 Ursus

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Posted 06 September 2001 - 11:07

On another forum on the net I read a post by someone who stated that part of the reason why he disliked Ferrari was because Enzo in 1966 had hired some thugs to "intimidate" the Lamborghini family, for whatever reason. I understand that they didn't like each other one bit, but to the point of hiering thughs to threaten the others family? You'd think something like this would be more known even if it just were a rumor.

I figured this was the place to ask if this story have any semblance of truth or if it is pure fabrication.

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#2 BRG

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Posted 06 September 2001 - 12:43

I never heard of this (not that that signifies anything...) but I always wondered about the bad blood between Ferrari and Lamborghini. Surely you don't go out and set up a supercar maufacturing company in a fit of pique just because Ferrari won't sell you a car, as the story goes? So maybe there was more to it all...

#3 quintin cloud

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Posted 06 September 2001 - 14:30

which Forum :confused:

#4 Ursus

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Posted 07 September 2001 - 08:22

quentin,

It's a forum at a swedish news siteon general motoring. A self professed expert on cars in general made the above statement. He usually seem have his facts straight however the way he expresses them and his opinions are less than agreeable. I don't argue with people like that so I thought I'd ask here instead.

#5 Ursus

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Posted 08 September 2001 - 14:36

More info:

This is supposed to have happened in a last ditch attemt to stop the a series production of the Miura. Supposedly Enzo saw the Miura as a serious threat to his own company and tried anyhting to to stop it.

#6 prettyface

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Posted 08 September 2001 - 17:54

Not that I know anything about it for sure, but I guess it would be very out of character for Enzo to even care what other manufacturers were up to; much less an "upstart" like Lamborghini, even when they were in similar market brackets. It seemed that he only cared about the race program and didn't mind the least bit about his production cars as long as they were still selling.

However, the "accepted" version of the Lamborghini legend says that Ferruccio, a proud tractor and air-conditioner manufacturer and a perfectionist with mechanical knowledge and something of a penny-pincher in a bad day, just couldn't live with paying a fortune for a Ferrari road car and putting up with a temperamental gearbox; so being who he was, he thought he could just show up at Ferrari's door and demand his gearbox to be fixed while giving a few suggestions to the old man on ways how he could improve them...

Not clear if Enzo ever met him, but the legend says he did and said something along the lines of
"Please let the people who know how to make cars keep making them and you go make your little tractors"
And Ferruccio blew through the roof, vowing to set up a factory and teaching Ferrari a lesson on how to make a proper road car.

Now, according to a friend who has been to Italy and is engaged to an Italian, the whole thing is very much in the spirit of the italian character. That is, passionate, over-the-top, overdramatized, exaggerated reactions over simple things. "Explosions of emotion" are his words, and that it can get scary sometimes.

It's all probably exaggerated, but as a legend, sounds good! :)