Ferruccio Lamborghini Museum offers an insight into the inventor's early works

But modern day fans of the brand may not be aware the Italian manufacturer's first machines were tractors.

Founder Ferruccio Lamborghini was born in Renazzo on April 28, 1916, and grew up on the family farm as the eldest of five sons.

While his father tried to instill in him a love for the land, his destiny lay elsewhere.

When World War II arrived he was sent to Rhodes, an island in the Aegean sea, which was an Italian territory at that point in time.

Mr Lamborghini was assigned to a unit responsible for maintaining and repairing military vehicles.

He quickly went on to become head of the workshop department and seized the opportunity to work with the sophisticated tools available.

All of the workshop staff fled in 1943 but in a fascinating twist, Mr Lamborghini returned to Rhodes and opened a workshop.

Rather than imprison him, the Germans decided to take advantage of his mechanical skills.

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Mr Lamborghini returned to Italy a year after the war ended in 1946 and discovered the country's agricultural industry was in crisis.

He set about to repurpose surplus war equipment and provide farmers with more affordable tractors.

And so, the Carioca tractor was born.

The Carioca featured a special vaporiser of Mr Lamborghini's own design.

It was applied to the Morris engine and meant the tractor could start on gasoline and then run on petrol.

Martina Vurchio from the Ferruccio Lamborghini Museum offered this insight into Mr Lamborghini's life at that time.

"During the Second World War Ferruccio was assigned to an American military camp to work on military vehicles and learned a lot about diesel engines," she said.

"When he came back from the war he decided to turn munition dumped ex military vehicles into tractors because he thought Fiat and Landini were too expensive for middle class farmers.

"So the Carioca, the first tractor he built in 1948, is a very powerful tractor and was much cheaper than the others built in that period."

The Carioca was a success and with his father's help he was able to use the farm as collateral to finance an expansion of its production.

Mr Lamborghini continued to innovate and in 1951 he released his second tractor, the L33.

The L33 featured his patented fuel atomiser and was powered by a six-cylinder Morris engine.

That same year Trattori Lamborghini was formed and a bigger facility acquired to support the company's expansion.

In the 1950s the DL models were released including the first Lamborghini crawler, the DL 25 C, in 1955. This range ran on Italian-made diesel engines.

The story of Mr Lamborghini's transition into producing sports cars is the stuff of legend.

He drove a Ferrari but was unhappy with its clutch and went to Enzo Ferrari with a proposition, "build your beautiful cars with my tractor parts".

Mr Ferrari effectively told him to stay in his lane, which fired up Mr Lamborghini, and in 1963 he founded Lamborghini Automobili.

The company started selling the 350GT with a 3.5 litre V12 engine in 1964.

Two years later the fastest production car money could buy, the Miura, made its debut.

When admiring Mr Lamborghini's early works in the Ferruccio Lamborghini Museum outside the city of Bologna, the word that springs to mind is 'genius'.

A true mechanical mind, over the course of his life he was constantly inventing.

This wasn't just limited to tractors and cars. He designed burners, air conditioners and a helicopter prototype.

He also had an interest in boats and the Fast 45 Diablo was equipped with two V12 Lamborghini engines.

The 13.5 metre long aluminum class one offshore boat won 11 championships.

Over the years the fiery Italian faced plenty of criticism but he was determined to stay the course.

He did not waver in his quest for quality and desire to push mechanical boundaries.

"I should operate in this region because the best GT are made here; all I have to do is render them more beautiful," the late Mr Lamborghini said.

"Here we have world class technicians and a highly specialised and skilled workforce who have experience gained in Ferrari and Maserati.

"It is a bold choice, criticised by all and considered an impossible challenge."