Ferruccio Lamborghini (; 28 April 1916 – 20 February 1993) was an Italian automobile designer, inventor, mechanic, engineer, winemaker, industrialist and businessman who created Automobili Lamborghini in 1963, a maker of high-end sports cars in Sant'Agata Bolognese. Born to grape farmers in Renazzo, from the comune of Cento in the Emilia-Romagna region, his mechanical know-how led him to enter the business of tractor manufacturing in 1948, when he founded Lamborghini Trattori, which quickly became an important manufacturer of agricultural equipment in the midst of Italy's post-WWII economic boom. In 1959, he opened an oil burner factory, Lamborghini Bruciatori, which later entered the business of producing air conditioning equipment. Lamborghini founded a fourth company, Lamborghini Oleodinamica, in 1969 after creating Automobili Lamborghini in 1963. Lamborghini sold off many of his interests by the late 1970s and retired to an estate in Umbria, where he pursued winemaking. Early life Ferruccio Lamborghini was born on 28 April 1916 to viticulturists Antonio and Evelina Lamborghini in house number 22 in Renazzo di Cento, in the Province of Ferrara, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy. According to his baptismal certificate, Ferruccio was baptised as a Roman Catholic four days later, on 2 May. As a young man, Lamborghini was drawn more to farming machinery rather than the farming lifestyle itself. Following his interest in mechanics, Lamborghini studied at the Fratelli Taddia technical institute near Bologna. In 1940 he was drafted into the Italian Royal Air Force, where he served as a mechanic at the Italian garrison on the island of Rhodes (territory of the Kingdom of Italy since 1911, after the Italo-Turkish War), becoming the supervisor of the vehicle maintenance unit. Lamborghini was taken prisoner when the island fell to the British at the end of the war in 1945, and was not able to return home until the next year. He married, but his wife died in 1947 while giving birth to his first child, a boy named Tonino. After World War II After World War II, Lamborghini opened a garage in Pieve di Cento. Lamborghini modified an old Fiat Topolino he had purchased (the first of many that he would own over the years) in his spare time he made tractors which would be the first Lamborghinis he would make. He made use of his mechanical abilities to transform the homely city car into a roaring 750-cc open-top two-seater and entered the