What Lamborghini teaches us about mentorship
This is the Lamborghini Miura. It changed cars forever. And its story highlights the importance of mentorship.
Miura started as a skunkworks project. Young staffers – all under 30 years old – met after work to engineer the foundations of a wildly innovative car.
It wasn’t on the product plan. Boss Ferruccio Lamborghini was focused on breaking into the crowded world of comfortable weekend cruisers.
But his young design team wanted to build something new: the world’s first supercar.
Their concept: A small, mid-engine sports car, fit for the track but designed for the road. A sideways-mounted V12 would be crammed into an aircraft-inspired weight-saving chassis with millimeters to spare.
Credit to Ferruccio: he bought in. He showed the team's rolling chassis at the Turin Auto Show, and the orders stacked up.
So the bare chassis needed a worthy skin. On his second day of work, 27-year-old Marcello Gandini was assigned to lead. In just two days, he penned Miura’s exterior.
The stunning Miura shipped to universal accolade.
But there were problems. Big problems.
The carburetor tended to catch on fire. One Miura survived three separate burns.
Because it was mounted sideways, the big V12 engine got oil-starved and seized up on spirited drives.
That beautiful design that Gandini whipped up in two days? The front end worked like a wing – at speed, the car would lift off. One allegedly took flight for an aerial crash!
The problems with the Miura went so deep, Ferɹuccio would invite owners to the factory, and take them out on long dinners while his engineers tore their car apart to fix structural flaws – without the owners ever knowing!
So what’s the lesson here?
An inspired team was given complete creative freedom to create something world-changing.
But in their inexperience, they created a deeply flawed, even dangerous product.
In the end, Miura gave birth to the era of supercars and launched Lamborghini to the world stage. But it just as easily could’ve been the young company’s doom.
How would great mentorship have changed the Miura? It would’ve been just as revolutionary, and a much better product.
Pair your experienced, knowledgeable team members with mentees they can coach, develop, and accelerate.
Together they’ll create something truly fantastic.
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And for the gearheads out there – we owe these folks a debt of gratitude for creating this work of automotive art.
Their roles and ages at time of launch:
Gian Paolo Dallara, 29, senior engineer
Paolo Stanzani, 29, assistant engineer
Bob Wallace, 27, chief development engineer
Marcello Gandini, 27, designer
And if you want to hear more about the story that inspired this post, watch the great video doc from Hagerty.