or potential:
True Story: Back in the days when one had to pass an interview with il Commendatore to purchase one of his roadgoing automobiles, which he only soiled his hands with to generate funds for his racing team, one Italian industrial magnate got rejected for his purchase by Enzo as an ill-bred parvenue and thus not worthy of owning a prancing horse. Thus rejected, Ferruccio Lamborghini said “Screw you! I’ll start my own sports car company!” And so he did…
2 comments:
Long ago, when we were young and optimistic, my brother and I would go to the Los Angeles car shows at the convention center to look at the expensive cars. One time we decided to go to the local BMW dealer to see if we could wangle a test drive of a 320.
The salesman said we (my brother) wasn't sincere in his interest in buying a BMW. It's been 30 years, and I've since bought three vehicles, two of which could have been BMW's, my brother has likewise bought two vehicles that could have been BMW's, and my other brother who only heard this sordid tale second hand and after the fact buys Toyotas. In fact, I can't think of a member of my family OR THEIR IN-LAWS who have bought BMW's in the intervening years. Of Jim's friends I can only think of ONE (once) who bought a BMW, and he had quite a diverse collection in the first place, so it didn't seem so unusual.
Likely the salesman no longer works there, and where ever he is, has long forgotten the conversation, but we have not.
I could never work out whether Enzo Ferrari used his appallingly un-reliable toys for very rich boys, to fund his racing ambitions, or his racing to advertise his toys.
Lamborghini, a very good tractor manufacturer, was disappointed with the poor reliability and performance of the Ferrari car he had just bought, and understood that the root of the problem was extremely poor engineering.
He'd had written to Ferrari, as a fellow motor engineer and industrialist, to let him know what crap his engineers were perpetrating in his name...
Lamborghini was following a well trodden path of tractor makers with super car manufacturing;
David Brown is the DB in Aston Martin model names.
A pal who lives in a grouse shooting area, said that the gunsmith for the Emir of Dubai, used to have a Lamborghini Cheetah (V12 off roader) in the 1980s - he said it sounded like a herd of motorbikes coming.
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