ABC News Tours the Lamborghini Factory
A hands-on experience at the house that Ferruccio built, where handbuilt craftsmanship still rules the day.
We really enjoy watching “How It’s Made”-style car factory tours, especially when the factory in question is pumping out handbuilt supercars. Whether in photoessay form or recorded on video, we enjoy poring over every detail, savoring every process. Today, we’re going to take a tour of Lamborghini’s factory in the Italian countryside, courtesy of ABC News.
Located in Italy’s rolling countryside, Sant-Agata Bolognese offers fertile farmland, pastoral views, and an out-of-the-way paradise for exotic car lovers. Employing over 1,800, roughly one sixth of them dedicated to building the cars themselves, Lamborghini’s headquarters are a major employer in the small Italian town.
Unlike larger manufacturers, Lamborghinis are assembled by hand at one of 24 stations inside the factory, at the rate of 13 Huracans and a mere 6 Aventadors per day. Each example built is pre-sold to a customer, or, more rarely, a dealer, desiring one for their showroom. Wait times run between six months and a year; double that for the just-released Urus SUV.
While the Urus is expected to double Lamborghini’s sales — necessitating a new factory walking distance away from the main facility — the number of cars shipped each year will still number fewer than ten thousand. That’s still a tall order for a firm so dedicated to its craft that it employs but one robot, whose sole task is to move heavy drivetrain assemblies to stations staffed with employees eager to complete their tasks the old-fashioned way — by hand.
Should you be fortunate enough to order a Lamborghini of your own, you could visit the factory for yourself to watch your new hypercar take shape before your very eyes. For the rest of us, this video tour offers a taste of the experience. For car lovers like us, that’s a taste better than the finest Italian wine.
