I had the opportunity of a lifetime this past June to tour the Lamborghini Factory in Santa' Agata Bolognese, Italy. I wanted to share this once in a lifetime opportunity with anyone who cared to read about it.
If you don't know me, I'm going to come out and say it.
I'm a car fan. A HUGE car fan.
Everything "car", I consume.Yup, now it's out there. The first step to admitting you have a problem is putting it out in the universe right? Anyway! Let me just say what a great time to be a car fan. With all the new YouTube content, access to Motorsport races, the industry is changing rapidly.
I enjoy watching and reading the recent reviews on your everyday models, including high-end super cars like the Lamborghini Aventador SVJ.
It's truly an amazing experience if you ever get to go. I hope you enjoy. The pictures are from the museum that you enter before going into the factory.
Anyways, I myself have always been a BMW fan, then gradually growing up and really wanting evolving into a Porsche fan. My current to buy list would be GT3 touring model, possible GTS, in the new 992 model. but, I digress!
However, as stated above, after doing the Lambo factory tour, I had a new deep appreciation for Lamborghini's and those special one-off colors, like matte baby blue, and matte orange. Pictured below.
But the detail and craftsmanship that goes into each and every model is so outstanding it's hard not to like Lamborghini. It's that company that has employees that love the labor of it all, and in this day and age of robots, Lamborghini stands out as example for us all to do what we love, and if you put everything into something, what kind of product you can end up with.
Sant’Agata Bolognese is a small town located approximately 20 miles away from Bologna, just 30 min from Maranello, where long-time rival Ferrari is based.
You can't bring any camera's into the factory, and I'm not the media but I will try and recap as much as possible from the factory tour.
When you walk into the factory the first thing you notice is the first manufacturing line is the Huracán, also that this is the original Lamborghini factory from 1963!
Lamborghini employees work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday to Friday, with two coffee breaks measured at 15 min each and an hour lunch.
The nearby carbon fiber plant operates three shifts in order to keep up with demand. Lambo workers are easily identifiable in Sant’Agata because they wear a black Lamborghini uniform that clearly indicates whether they’re assembly line workers, part of the factory’s logistics team, assigned to the prototype-building division, or someone else entirely.
Lamborghini trains all of its workers in-house, and employees are encouraged to move from station to station once they’ve mastered a certain skill, or every 12-16 weeks they will rotate positions so they can learn new skills and to keep things fresh.
For example, a worker who assembles Huracán doors today could be fitting Aventador master cylinders in six months’ time. Once a worker has spent enough time on the factory floor to know Lamborghinis inside and out, he or she is eligible to become one of the company’s test drivers.
Pictured below is the Centenario
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The most impressive part of touring the factory is to see the cars being assembled by hand. This can not be described enough.
It's simply amazing!
An in-house upholstery shop makes every part for the interior of each car.
What's so amazing is this special booth capable of replicating a wide array of different lighting conditions helps ensure the leather- and Alcantara-upholstered panels that come together to make up a specific car’s interior are the same color regardless of the amount of light it’s exposed to beforehand. Interior parts are only sent to the assembly line for installation once they have passed this test.
For example each leather hide has to be inspected to make sure it's of the utmost quality for holes, or mosquito bites, (side note, all the leather hides from Lamborghini come from north Italy where there are less mosquitoes, which in turn produce better hide because of the lower amount of bites).
Pictured below is the new Hurcan Evo
Pretty crazy right?!?!
They stretch the hide over this machine and using their hand they feel for each and every possible imperfection, then they will transfer that hide to a giant table and the computer scans the hide to determine the best use of material from that particular piece.
You would be surprised to learn there are only two robots in the entire plant, a machine that drops the bare bodies onto the assembly line and a rotisserie that turns the cars upside down when needed. As a result, the factory is a lot quieter and more spacious than most people imagine it to be.
Every single Lamborghini built since 1963 has been tested on the picturesque roads of Italy.
Pictured below is the Hurcan Performante
From start to finish, the Aventador spends 90 minutes at 12 different stations while the Huracán spends 40 minutes at 23 stations.
Each one is built on a separate assembly line, and a screen located above each station keeps track of how long the car has been there for, which helps workers manage their time more efficiently.
When we were finished touring the Aventador, and Huracán, factory we took a short van ride to the new Urus facility and much in the same fashion ( new factory of course) the Urus is completed.
Urus has fundamentally changed Lamborghini and it will be interesting to see the end of 2019, just how many Urus were manufactured after a full production year.
Lamborghini builds each of the high-revving 10- and 12-cylinder engines — again, entirely by hand — and bench-tested.
When a car is completed it has to go through three rounds of final testing before it is delivered to its lucky new owner. The first round involves using lasers and cameras to check that every part (including suspension-related bits and pieces and body panels) is precisely aligned.
The second step consists of running the car on a dyno (a treadmill for vehicles) for 40 minutes at a top speed of 180 km/h (about 112 mph) to ensure all mechanical components are in working order.
Finally, the third step is a full 20-to-30-mile test drive on public roads.
Every single car built in Sant’Agata since 1963 has been tested on the picturesque roads around the factory.
Just seeing the factory has allowed me to have a different appreciation for the car.
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