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Lamborghini: What's in a name

When Ferruccio Lamborghini needed names for his cars he knew exactly where he wanted to look, and now his cars' names are full of bull.

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Drew Stearne Former Director of Video
For over 16 years Drew has been producing video content on technology, video games and entertainment but now spends his days looking at, talking about, or indeed driving, fast cars.
Expertise Cars Credentials
  • Association of Online Publisher Award winner for Best use of Video
Drew Stearne

Ferruccio Lamborghini liked two things: fast cars and bulls. His love of fast cars manifested in a patronage of Ferrari and later in building his own.

Ferruccio had already chosen the bull as Lamborghini's emblem after his star sign Taurus, the bull, but initially the names he gave to his cars were very conventional combinations of letters and numbers, representing displacement and body type. Soon, however, Ferruccio turned once again to bulls. Inspired by a visit to a ranch in Spain owned by a man named Miura, Lamborghini's first mid-engined supercar -- and arguably the world's first -- was named after said man and the bulls that were bred there. 

The incredible stature, power and ferocity of the fighting bulls at the Miura ranch seemed to fit the cars rolling out of the Lamborghini factory, and so the majority of Lambos have shared names with bull breeds, individual fighting bulls and a plethora of bull fighting-related terms. Although Italian is a language in which almost any combination of words sounds exotic and desirable, most Lamborghini names are, in fact, Spanish. And while they aren't always the most intuitive to pronounce, they all have a story to tell. 

Watch the video to find out exactly what your favorite Lambo was named after, be it a matador-slaying bull, an ancient ancestor to the modern cow or an exclamation of desire. 

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