Cars
The mother of all SUVs
This text discusses Lamborghini's history of creating off-road vehicles, beginning with the Cheetah project in the mid-1970s.
Who, seeing a Porsche Cayenne, a BMW X5or the Jaguar F-Pace would have thought that it was Lamborghini who invented the SUV? And not with the Urus...
Shortly after the mid-1970s, when Ferruccio had already left the Company and conflicts in the Middle East had brought wars and sent oil prices soaring, the new Swiss owners of the company tried to take advantage of the need for military-type vehicles suitable for the desert, necessary for the Arab countries, and created a vehicle that was completely different from anything previously produced in Sant’Agata: a true off-road vehicle they called Cheetah. But the idea had no luck and the dream ended very abruptly.
In 1980 and on the verge of bankruptcy, Lamborghini found a brilliant new owner in the wealthy French family, Mimran. Jean-Claude and Patrick Mimran, with the support of a talented manager, Emil Novaro, took the Cheetah project out of the drawer to assess its potential.
