Italian industrialist Ferruccio Lamborghini,who founded the eponymous luxury car company that produced some of the fastest, most expensive and sought-after sports cars in the world, died on Feb. 20, 1993, at age 76. Lamborghini, born on April 28, 1916, worked as a mechanic in the Italian army during World War II. After the war he started a tractor company and later built air conditioning and heating systems.

Wealthy from the success of the tractor and heating and cooling business, Lamborghini dreamed of building his own sports car company after owning a Ferrari. He started working on the project in late 1962, and by May 1963 he had founded Automobili Ferruccio Lamborghini and acquired a large plot of land in Sant'Agata Bolognese, Italy, near Bologna, to build supercars.

Automobili Lamborghini was officially established in 1963 in Sant'Agata Bolognese, and the same year introduced its first car, the Lamborghini 350 GTV, a two-seat coupe with a V-12 engine, at the Turin Motor Show.

The company's logo featured a bull, a reference to Lamborghini's zodiac sign, Taurus. Lamborghini models often adopted names related to bulls or bullfighting, including the Miura -- named for Don Eduardo Miura, a breeder of fighting bulls -- a midengine sports car that was released in the mid-1960s and helped Lamborghini gain an international following and a reputation for prestige and cutting-edge design.

Lamborghini's tractor business faced mounting problems starting in the early 1970s and he eventually sold his interest in the sports car business and retired. Automobili Lamborghini changed hands several times and in the late 1990s was purchased by Volkswagen.