In the early 1960s, in a sleepy farming village just north of Bologna in Italy, an entrepreneur with a successful tractor company rewarded himself with a new Ferrari.
However, dissatisfied with the car, he travelled up the road to Maranello to talk with Enzo Ferrari about what could be done better. Made to wait for two hours outside the office, the tractor maker was finally called in, where the prickly Enzo told him in no uncertain terms to mind his own business. Incensed, Ferruccio Lamborghini vowed to make a better supercar and, in 1963, produced the 350 GTV that gave start to the company that still bears his name.
And so the brand that was formed to spite Enzo Ferrari sold a record 2,530 Lamborghinis last year, raking in a record profit of $824-million (U.S.). But success and growth haven't swayed the supercar company from its roots in Sant'Agata, still a farming village of around 7,000 residents. Lamborghini has stayed and expanded its operations with a modern factory and headquarters, a carbon-fibre plant, a small museum and even a restoration shop for vintage Lamborghinis.
Residents are used to seeing cars off the assembly line being tested on their rural roads, just like they were in the 1960s, but it still turns their heads. And yet, the town is humble compared with Ferrari's home in Maranello 35 kilometres away, which has been transformed into a Ferrari shrine that includes a giant factory, a large Ferrari museum and countless shops selling the car maker's ubiquitous memorabilia.
In Sant'Agata, fields of leafy green crops are sliced by a grid of lonely, narrow roads, with pockets of terracotta-coloured, two-storey houses and barns providing an occasional break in the horizon. Besides the factory, there's not much in the small and ancient village centre that gives any indication of Lamborghini's existence.
But that doesn't mean Lamborghini isn't important to Sant'Agata; the company employs 1,200 workers, 192 of those hired just last year, with about half of those younger than 30, and more jobs are in the works.
"Lamborghini is undergoing a strong phase of growth in both sales and in terms of recruitment," said Stephan Winkelmann, chief executive of Lamborghini, in a statement. "We invest significantly in our people: We are committed to continuously seeking excellence in all our employees and all that we do. In 2015, we plan to hire further."
For residents of Sant'Agata, this is indeed the place to work. Lamborghini was named as one of the best places to work in the country by the Top Employers Institute in Italy. Though the carbon-fibre plant runs three shifts around the clock, the assembly line has one shift a day, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. At the end of each work day, Sant'Agata's only traffic jam occurs in front of the factory, and finding a seat at Pizzeria Maggi – a small, unassuming restaurant just around the corner – is next to impossible.
But 2018 will bring a sea of change to both the company and, in part, to the town. With an SUV, the Urus, in the works, Lamborghini is doubling the size of the factory and increasing its work force to 1,700, with the aim of doubling overall sales. Expected to be priced the same as a Huracan – around $260,000 – the Urus will be built on the same platform as the upcoming Bentley Bentayga SUV and the redesigned Audi Q7 (all three brands fall under the Volkswagen Group umbrella).
Winkelmann hints that the Urus will be the first Lamborghini to offer a turbocharged engine and possibly a plug-in hybrid powertrain. And, as VW has plants around the world, Winkelmann and his team worked hard to convince headquarters that building the SUV in Sant'Agata is worth the $141-million investment for new facilities.
In fact, Lamborghini has invested more than $560-million over the past five years; part of that went to educational programs partnered with Ducati and local schools. But much of that investment has also gone into earning the factory carbon-neutral status by DNV GL, a leading environmental certification body. Among the initiatives: reducing energy use and waste at its factory with solar panels on the factory roof; a trigeneration power, heating and air conditioning plant; offsetting carbon emissions with the creation of a public tree park in Sant'Agata and the purchase of carbon credits. The investment is appreciated not just by the town residents, but also by the Italian government, which has contributed about 25 per cent of the cost for the trigeneration plant.
"Lamborghini sets an example of how it is possible to be a successful business and at the same time respect the environment," said Gian Luca Galletti, Italy's Environment Minister, who was at the recent opening of the trigeneration plant. "This is a model I would like to export to other regions of Italy."
But the focus on being environmentally friendly – strange for a company that produces 700-horsepower cars – is just part of Lamborghini's policy toward its home of Sant'Agata Bolognese. Winkelmann recognizes that the area is part of the company's heritage and, as such, part of its future.
"We are here, as managers and entrepreneurs, to pass this territory, unharmed to the next generation," Winkelmann said. "It would be ridiculous to say we are going to save the world; but what we are saying is that everybody has to take responsibility in the territory he is living, and for the people, and the employees."
And with hundreds of millions of dollars invested and hundreds more jobs on the way, Lamborghini has no intention of abandoning its roots any time soon.
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