There is no doubt that the twentieth century was the century of the automobile and, I might add, of cinema. These two inventions, which are based on the opposing principles of transforming reciprocating motion into uniform circular motion and vice versa, have held hands throughout their growth and their illnesses, through thick and thin, just like two betrothed and contrasted. They developed impetuously until the end of the 60s, when serious troubles began for both: the oil crisis for the car, the advent of the television era for the cinema.
Previously there had been even serious crises – such as the Wall Street crash of ’29 and the arrival of sound a couple of years earlier – but they were exanthematous diseases linked to growth, even if they were able to send several car manufacturers and erase stars who were unable to renew themselves. It must be said that the wars – horrendous and detestable – were also an opportunity to revive the gasping industries thanks to military orders and, as far as cinema is concerned, to respond to the hunger for escape, hopes and dreams of tranquility of anguished spectators from all over the world from conflicts.
I would like to tell of two passionate industrialists, two men who could not be more different but similar in character and – although belonging to different generations, nations and backgrounds – dominated by the same implacable energy. They are Sir David Brown (Huddersfield, 1904 – Principality of Monaco, 1993) and Ferruccio Lamborghini (Renazzo, 1916 – Castiglione del Lago, 1993), who came into the world twenty years later and died at the same time after retiring from the activity.
They shared not only that they produced some of the most beautiful and celebrated sports cars in the world, enduring far beyond their creators and still active today, but that they came from the construction of agricultural machinery and gears, activities that seem very brutal and crude, very far from the refinements of elite motoring. Quite the opposite! Having to deal with materials resistant to enormous stress forces the “tractors” to a sophisticated design, much more severe than the standards required by “normal” motor vehicles.
David Brown Engineering Limited had been founded by his grandfather (he was also called David Brown) and had specialized in gears and military contracts which had greatly expanded it. On the death of his father Percy in 1931, the 25-year-old David took over the leadership of the company and started the construction of tractors which became its core business. In 1947 David Brown bought Aston Martin (for £20,500!) and the following year Lagonda, another legendary marque (he paid a little more for it: £52,500). In 1955 he also secured the Tickford body shop, thus becoming completely independent, and called on some exceptional collaborators: the general manager John Wyer, the designer Harold Beach, the Polish engineer Tadek Marek (who had worked in Fiat, General Motors and Austin) for the engines, the Austrian Eberan von Eberhost (ex-Auto Union) for the chassis, the designer Frank Feeley (who had given shape to sir Malcolm Campbell’s record-breaking Rapier) for the style, alongside the veteran Claude Hill.
With this parterre de rois he will launch a series of cars that will be his flagship, so much so that his initials, DB surrounded by the white rose of Yorkshire and the red one of Lancashire, are inscribed in the coat of arms. The various DB series – James Bond’s DB5 is very famous – continue to be produced today in amazing desirable reincarnations.
The story of Ferruccio Lamborghini is instead that of a self-made man. Son of farmers, studied in Bologna as an industrial technician, he was immediately employed by a company that overhauled military vehicles. During the war he was a mechanic repairman in Rhodes in the Dodecanese, where he risked being taken prisoner by the Germans. In the immediate post-war period, sensing the need for massive agricultural mechanization, he used the war residues left by the Allies to build his first rudimentary tractors, integrated with gearboxes and reducers of his own manufacture. In 1948 he founded Lamborghini Trattori which was soon able to do everything in house: design and construction of tractors, engines, hydraulic pumps and burners, becoming one of the leaders in the sector. Legend has it that, humiliated by Enzo Ferrari (who reproached him for crumbling the clutches of the Maranello jewels with his heavy tractor driver’s foot), he had sworn revenge, terrible revenge, deciding to challenge the Drake on his turf.
Gathering the best technicians of the time – geniuses such as Giotto Bizzarrini for the engine, Gian Paolo Dallara and Paolo Stanzani for the chassis, Franco Scaglione for the bodywork – Ferruccio Lamborghini was able to present his first 350 GT at the 1963 Turin Motor Show . However, it will be in 1966 that the revolution will break out with the amazing Miura, the car that will revolutionize all the habits of the segment: 12-cylinder engine arranged in a central-transverse position, gearbox en bloc in the crankcase, futuristic and stupendous line (by Marcello Gandini, chief designer of Bertone). The Miura will suddenly make all the others yellow and its resounding
Both have had to withdraw from their companies. Brown obtaining a considerable profit, even if later the brand will have to deal with a thousand difficulties, Lamborghini because he encountered these difficulties immediately, to the great joy of his rivals who badly tolerated his fumantino character.
Exactly thirty years after their death, these companies are instead in excellent health and fill their final buyers with profits: Canadian tycoon Lawrence Stroll for Aston Martin, Swiss pharmaceutical industrialist Ernesto Bertarelli and Mercedes-Amg Petronas Motorsport, while Lamborghini is firmly in the hands of Audi. Who knows how pleased their creators will be while, behind the wheel of their respective racing cars, they compete up there in the great pastures of the sky.