MY FEEDLY: Project Vehicle: An Original 1962 Lamborghini 1R Tractor

This 1962 Lamborghini 1R tractor is in solid drivable condition and it benefits from a recent mechanical overhaul and servicing.

The tractor now carries decades of hard-earned patina and it’ll be up to its new owner to decide if they want to keep it as-is or give it a full restoration.

Fast Facts – A Lamborghini 1R Tractor

Although we now associate the name Lamborghini with high-end supercars this wasn’t always the case, the company famously got their start in the years just after WWII building tractors from military surplus machinery.
Lamborghini Trattori was founded by Ferruccio Lamborghini in 1948. Ferruccio grew up on his family’s vineyard in Italy and always showed much more interest in the mechanized farming equipment than the actual practice of farming.
The first tractor from Lamborghini Trattori was released in 1948, the post-WWII demand for agricultural machinery was such that the company grew rapidly. By the early 1960s he was in a position to start his own car company, known today as Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A.
The Lamborghini 1R tractor is one of the company’s more popular designs, it’s powered by a 1.5 liter diesel twin-cylinder engine, it has a 3-speed transmission, a 2-speed transfer case, and a top speed of approximately 13 mph.

Lamborghini Trattori

Ferruccio Lamborghini was born in 1916 to a viticulturist family in Renazzo, in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. Growing up on a vineyard exposed him to a wide variety of machines and agricultural equipment from an early age, and he showed a natural mechanical aptitude.

Ferruccio Lamborghini pictured here in 1970 with a Lamborghini Jarama and one of his tractors

Ferruccio Lamborghini pictured here in 1970 with a Lamborghini Jarama (left) and one of his tractors (right). Image courtesy of Lamborghini Trattori.

After leaving high school Ferruccio attended the Fratelli Taddia Technical Institute near Bologna in Italy. In 1940, due to the outbreak of WWII, he was drafted into the Italian Royal Air Force where he served as a mechanic.

He became a prisoner of war when the British took the island of Rhodes upon which he was stationed, and he wasn’t able to return to Italy until 1946, many months after WWII had ended.

He opened a garage to put his hard-earned mechanical skills to work in Pieve di Cento, Bologna and began modifying a Fiat Topolino – he turned it into a race car and entered the 1948 Mille Miglia. He completed 680 miles of the 1,000 mile course before colliding with a restaurant in Turin.

It was during this time he began building simple tractors from military surplus engines and vehicles. Demand for machinery like this was high and production levels in Italy (and much of Europe) were still low due to the devastation wrought by the war.

Lamborghini’s tractors began to sell, well enough that he established it as its own company named Lamborghini Trattori, and began selling a number of different variants. Over time he began to manufacture more of the parts in-house, including engines, and the company became a one of the largest in its industry.

The 1R is powered by an inline two-cylinder diesel engine with Bosch mechanical fuel injection, and power is sent back through a three-speed transmission and a two-speed transfer case.

By the early 1960s Ferruccio decided to revisit his early love for performance cars and established his own automobile company – famously inspired to do so after an argument with Enzo Ferrari about the reliability of his cars.

Lamborghini Trattori remains in business today as part of the SAME (Società Accomandita Motori Endotermici) group of companies.

The Lamborghini 1R Tractor

The Lamborghini 1R was one of the more affordable and thus more popular tractors from the Italian company. Mechanically it was very simple, though it wasn’t primitive – it has a full synchromesh gearbox and Bosch mechanical fuel injection.

The 1R is powered by an inline two-cylinder diesel engine that produces approximately 26 bhp, power is sent back through a 3-speed manual transmission and a 2-speed transfer case – effectively giving 6-forward speeds.

As you would expect from a tractor it has a power takeoff for operating farm machinery and it has a somewhat casual top speed of just 13 mph or approximately 21 km/h – this may not sound like much but it’s considerably quicker than the horses and carts that it replaced.

As with all tractors from this era the controls are simple and largely mechanical. This tractor is said to be recently serviced and working well – with the exception of the brakes.

The surviving examples of the Lamborghini 1R tractor now remain one of the more popular vintage Lamborghini tractors as they tend to be a little more affordable, oftentimes selling for somewhere in the region of $15,000 – $25,000 USD.

The 1962 Lamborghini 1R Tractor Shown Here

The tractor you see here is believed to be an unrestored original, and looking at the amount of patina its acquired it does seem highly unlikely that it’s been previously refurbished.

It does benefit from some recent mechanical work as noted above, including new tires and inner tubes front and rear, new headlamps, a recent servicing with new oils, filters, and some pipe work, new front axle bearings, new seals in the rear axle, and it’s said to start and run well, and shift through the gears properly.

The main issue is that the mechanical brakes are inoperative, so they’ll need to be fixed before any serious driving is attempted.

If you’d like to read more about this unusual Lamborghini project vehicle you can visit the listing here. It’s being offered for sale in an online auction on Car & Classic.