Yahoo Autos Lamborghini Test Driver Started as a Garage Gofer
When Valentino Balboni needed a job, he did what most anyone would do: He went to the front door and asked for one. Except, in this instance, the door in question led directly to Lamborghini, one of Italy's most storied car companies and creator of jaw-dropping exotics for more than 50 years.
Balboni's colorful career covered 40 of those years. We caught up with the charismatic 69-year-old to discuss what it was like being involved with cars such as the curvaceous mid-engine Miura and everyone's favorite pinup poster car, the otherworldly Countach.
Balboni's adventure started under founder Ferruccio Lamborghini himself and survived through a stormy sea of corporate turmoil, including the firm's subsequent ownership by two different Swiss partnerships, followed by the then-still-very-American Chrysler Corporation (which developed the Diablo), on through Indonesia's Megatech, and finally Germany's Audi and the creation of the Murciélago. When Balboni retired from active test driving and took on a role as "brand ambassador" in 2010, the company honored him by naming a special-edition Gallardo the "LP550-2 Valentino Balboni."His 2015 biography is titled The Best Job in the World: Lamborghini Test Driver.
Balboni described a rarely seen side to not only Lamborghini the company but also the people and personalities behind it. These include Ferruccio Lamborghini, the wealthy industrialist who founded the firm in 1963.
How does a young man, still in his early twenties, get a dream job test-driving some of the world's fastest and most expensive cars?
First, Sweep the Floors
Valentino Balboni was born on May 13, 1949, in the tiny village of Casumaro, Italy, about 25 miles north of Bologna. He still lives there now, within a mile from where he was born. Amusingly, when you consider his background, Balboni describes Casumaro as being only a "20-minute drive" from Sant'Agata Bolognese, the home of Automobili Lamborghini. According to several online mapping aids this drive should take 35 to 40 minutes.
When he was young, Balboni attended a mechanic training school close to his home. To commute back and forth, he drove a 1953 Vespa scooter given to him by his father. "This was my first vehicle with an engine," says Balboni, chuckling at the memory.
The next step in his career would take a little luck and perhaps some divine intervention. Balboni recalls a special day in April 1968, when he was hanging out with friends, playing foosball near a church in his village.
"The priest of my village came to us and said, 'I have to go to Sant'Agata Bolognese to see my parents. If somebody wants to join me, instead of staying here playing . . . you can join me.'" Balboni recalls how he and a friend piled into the priest's tiny Fiat 500 for the trip-and the very moment the car drove past the Lamborghini factory gates.
"I told the priest, 'Slow down, I want to stop here and look at those beautiful cars,' " Balboni recalls. In a moment, he would have his first hands-on experience with the magnificent Miura, a pioneering mid-engine road machine and one of the most stunning Italian sports cars of all time.
"I went inside the parking lot and saw beautiful Miura bodies parked, and a guy from the company came out and started pushing [them] inside the building," Balboni says. "So, I started helping him, pushing the cars inside. And then, when I came out, after we put in the last one . . . the man at security, which was a good friend of Ferruccio Lamborghini, asked me to fill out an employment form."
Ten days after filling out the application, Balboni received a response in the mail asking him to come back to the factory for an interview. The day was April 21, 1968, and it would become Balboni's first day working at Lamborghini.
"I can't forget: Me and a friend of mine sitting in front of this director . . . he was the production director, financial director, commercial director, he was the only one! He was asking us, 'What can you do? What would you like to do with the company?' " Balboni had barely responded that he and his friend were in school and were willing to learn whatever was necessary when fate (and a chain-smoking Italian industrialist) intervened.
"Suddenly, the door of the office opens, and a man comes in smoking a cigarette, yelling to his director. 'We don't want to waste time talking; we need people to work. Stop talking and put these guys to work!' The director tells us, 'Guys, you just met Ferruccio Lamborghini.' "
Two jobs were available: one on the production line assembling cars, the other in the service department working on cars. Balboni agreed-after a quick discussion with his friend-that he'd take the position in the service department.
His role as an apprentice mechanic meant his tasks included cleaning cars, cleaning tools used by other mechanics, mopping the floors, and generally being at the disposal of whoever might need his help. Balboni was not quite 19 years old yet.
The Boss
Asked about Ferruccio Lamborghini himself, Balboni says, "He was so charismatic. He always wanted to do more and do better than everybody else. He was a very special man . . . able to involve and motivate people."
Balboni remembers that during the first deliveries of the Miura in 1968, there were always small problems that had to be rectified before the cars could be handed over to the customer. During these final checks, Lamborghini would personally hop onto a bicycle and pedal to a local bar located near the factory to get Coca-Cola and sandwiches for the waiting customer-and the mechanics working on last-second fixes. "That was Ferruccio Lamborghini," says Balboni.
Balboni also recalls how his former boss would smoke all day, every day. "He was always smoking, 24 hours a day!" This included one memorable interview on Italian television, with Lamborghini sitting in a Miura and chain-smoking during the entire conversation.
Either Fired or Promoted
Balboni's progression from apprentice mechanic to test driver took a relatively quick and highly unexpected turn. "I always loved driving cars," he explains. "When I was an apprentice, every time I had the opportunity to drive the car around the building, I didn't hesitate. Driving the car two or three times around the building, just for the pleasure of driving!"
This was not exactly condoned. Balboni’s boss told him he shouldn't be driving the cars so much, that his job was to be an apprentice. "My boss was always complaining," says Balboni. "After many times they told me, 'Stop it, or we'll fire you.' "
So he was fearful when, one day, as he was assembling a blue Miura for a customer in the service department, Balboni's boss told him to go upstairs where the company's general director was waiting to speak with him. "I was so afraid, because I thought this was my last day at Lamborghini."
After going upstairs, Balboni was faced with Ferruccio Lamborghini, Bob Wallace-Lamborghini's first chief test driver, a New Zealander who'd been hired away from Maserati's race team and a man Balboni himself refers to as "mythical" for his driving ability-and Paolo Stanzani, the company's chief technical director. They told him he'd been warned about driving the cars many, many times. Yet considering that the company needed a young test driver, they offered him the chance to apply his driving enthusiasm to some actual good use.
Wallace took Balboni under his wing personally, for a one-year course in how to test and develop prototypes and production cars. Until 20 years ago or so, these tests all took place on public roads. It was the company's practice to have every newly finished production car test-driven before it could be cleared for delivery to a customer, so the workload was steady even when-as sometimes happened-Lamborghini went many years between developing new models.
In September 1973, with a black Miura SV, Balboni was given free rein for a test drive for the first time. At the factory gates, the same security guard who'd encouraged him to fill out a job application was there to raise the gate for his maiden solo voyage as a Lamborghini test driver. At this point in the retelling of this story, Balboni takes a moment to gather his emotions, the memory remaining vivid and special after all these years.
"Then, on my own, in a black Miura SV . . . [I'm an] official Lamborghini test driver, driving on the roads around Sant'Agata." He was 24 years old and the assistant to Wallace, who would leave the chief-driver duties to Balboni only two years later. Italian labor law would require Balboni's own retirement in 2009; in between, it is estimated that he drove 80 percent of all the Lamborghinis that were built.
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