The Little Book of Ferrari E-Book

Brian Laban

• Herausgeber: G2 Rights
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Written by motorsports enthusiasts Brian Laban and Liam McCann, The Little Book of Ferrari tells the story of the world's most iconic cars. The book looks at the man behind the legend, Enzo Ferrari, as well as the history of the marque as a racing team and manufacturer of iconic road cars. An absolute must for motoring and Ferrari fans.

Leseprobe

LITTLE BOOK OF

FERRARI

First published in the UK in 2005

© G2 Rights 2014

www.g2ent.co.uk

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-782812-40-1 eISBN 978-1-782819-52-3

The views in this book are those of the author but they are general views only and readers are urged to consult the relevant and qualified specialist for individual advice in particular situations. G2 Rights hereby exclude all liability to the extent permitted by law of any errors or omissions in this book and for any loss, damage or expense (whether direct or indirect) suffered by a third party relying on any information contained in this book.

All our best endeavours have been made to secure copyright clearance for every photograph used but in the event of any copyright owner being overlooked please address correspondence to G2 Rights, Unit 7-8, Whiffens Farm, Clement Street, Hextable, Kent BR8 7PQ

Contents

Enzo Ferrari

Twist in the Tale

Ferrari Style

The 50s

Pinin Farina

The Rival

Motorsport

The Simple Direction

Dino

Racing Philosophy

Model Success

End of an Era

Supercars

Production Cars

Concept Cars

Enzo Ferrari

It’s mid winter, northern Italy, February 1898, and it is snowing heavily. Heavily enough, in fact, to prevent one young couple in the area from officially recording the birth of their son until two days after the event, on 20 February after his actual birth on the 18th - so forever after, 20 February 1898 would always be quoted as his birth date. And as it would turn out, that would become typical of the new arrival’s relationship with authority and convention almost throughout his life, when he never seemed to have much time for doing things the ‘ordinary’ way. Because Enzo Anselmo Ferrari, as the boy was officially registered at two days old, would achieve great things, but rarely by working to the book.

The family lived on the outskirts of Modena, where Enzo’s father, Alfredo, ran a small but busy metalworking business that, for most of the time, gave the family a fairly comfortable lifestyle. Enzo had an older brother, also called Alfredo, who was two years his senior. They shared many things, including a bedroom when they were young, and a love of homing pigeons, but in one respect they were quite different, and with a surprising twist. Alfredo senior would have liked both boys to follow in his footsteps and become engineers, but while young Alfredo accepted the idea and studied diligently, Enzo (who would become synonymous with some of the most exotic automobile engineering in the world) never showed the remotest interest in formal engineering training, or to be honest in a formal education at all. At school he was far more interested in sports than in academic subjects, and he fulfilled one of his childhood career ambitions by briefly writing local football match reports for the prestigious newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport. But he grew out of an even bigger ambition, to become an opera singer, and in September 1908, he switched ideas again, after his father had taken him to nearby Bologna where he saw Felice Nazzaro’s FIAT winning the Coppa Florio road race. Now, the ten-year-old Enzo Ferrari wanted to be a racing driver.

The ‘Prancing Horse’ logo made famous by Enzo Ferrari

Nazzaro in Fiat winning Targa Florio, 1907

He had already had contact with cars, at a time when they were still rare in rural Italy where the family lived. His father owned one, and had started to service and repair cars for other owners in his workshops. And in his early teens, Enzo himself began to learn how to drive.

At the same time, he was being forced to grow up very quickly. In 1914, World War I broke out; and in 1916, within months of each other, Enzo’s father and brother both died – his father from pneumonia, his brother from an illness contracted during military service. In 1917, Enzo followed him into the army, and was assigned to be a blacksmith, shoeing horses. Like father and older brother, though, he suffered illnesses, and after a round of operations and hospital stays he was discharged in 1918, with what looked like poor prospects for the immediate future.

The family business had died with his father and brother, he had no real qualifications, and there were very few jobs on offer. He found one, though, and with a motoring connection – driving refurbished ex-military light vehicle chassis between Turin and Milan, for a Bolognese engineer who had started a business rebodying them for the civilian market. And it was through this apparently mundane driving job that Enzo Ferrari moved a step closer to that still burning motor sporting ambition.

It happened more through social connections than directly through work, when he would eat and drink in local bars in Milan and happened to meet a number of people who had been involved in motor racing before the war – including Nazzaro, who had stirred his imagination in 1908. More important even than Nazzaro, though, was one Ugo Sivocci, from CMN, another small manufacturer who was converting ex-military vehicles for the civilian market, and who also planned to build more sporting vehicles – which Sivocci was employed to test and race. Very soon, Ferrari had become his test-driving colleague at CMN, and on 5 October 1919, at the Parma Poggio di Bercetta hillclimb, Ferrari became a racing driver, too, taking fourth place in the 3-litre class in a stripped CMN chassis.

A month later, Ferrari and Sivocci both drove for CMN in the gruelling Targa Florio road race in Sicily – supposedly having survived an attack by wolves in the Abruzzi mountains on their way to the start, because Ferrari was carrying a revolver under his seat and his shots attracted a group of local workers who helped drive the wolves away. In the race, Sivocci finished seventh and Ferrari a distant ninth, after more of the dramas that already seemed to go with most of what he did. His fuel tank came loose at the start of the race, and after repairing that at the roadside and driving hard to make up time, he was stopped, very near the end of the race, by a group of policemen protecting the president of Italy, who was making a speech in the nearby village. They wouldn’t let Ferrari drive on until the long speech was over, then they wouldn’t let him overtake the president’s car – so by the time he finished, the official timekeepers had left, and he was only classified as a finisher after pleading to Vincenzino Florio himself, the patron of the race.

The Alfa Romeo team for the 1920 Targa Florio, with Enzo in the centre car

He was now taking his racing quite seriously, and in 1920 he went to work, and drive, for the far more famous manufacturer Alfa Romeo. In November he finished second for Alfa in the Targa Florio, and over the next couple of years he raced for them many times, and even won on occasion, including 1924 the Circuit of Polesine and the Coppa Acerbo, which was a genuinely important and prestigious event. He was helped by the fact that his more famous team-mate Giuseppe Campari in a newer and faster Alfa broke down early in the race, but Ferrari (and riding mechanic Siena) held off the previously all-conquering Mercedes to win fair and square.

Enzo Ferrari testing his Alfa-Romeo, 1924

And in between, there was another Ferrari win, in an arguably less important race but with much longer lasting consequences – the origins of the famous prancing horse badge. The ‘Cavallino Rampante’ (originally on a white background) had been the emblem of flying ace Francesco Baracca, Italy’s top-scoring World War I fighter pilot. He had been killed in action on 19 June 1918 over the Austrian front lines, but his emblem had been cut from his wrecked aircraft and returned to his parents as a sign of respect. On 17 June 1923 when Enzo Ferrari won the Circuito del Savio race in Ravenna for Alfa Romeo, Baracca’s parents, Count Enrico and Countess Paolina Baracca were watching, and invited Ferrari to visit them at their home – where the Countess dedicated her dead son’s prancing horse to the young racing driver from Modena, to bring him luck.

Enzo Ferrari driving an Alfa Romeo, 1923

Ferrari, of course, accepted the honour, placed the black horse on a yellow shield representing the civic colour of Modena, crowned it with the Italian tricolor of red, white and green, and used it for the rest of his life.

But that was now taking a new turn, away from racing and towards team management and, in spite of his early lack of interest, engineering.

First, there were more races, and another hint of Enzo’s sometimes hazy true story. In 1923 his friend Sivocci was killed while practicing for the Italian Grand Prix and Ferrari was badly affected. In 1924 he should have driven for Alfa in the Lyons Grand Prix, but he withdrew before the start – officially because he was ill (his health was still a constant problem) but some say because he had a nervous breakdown after Sivocci’s death. And although he drove a few more races, and had won perhaps a dozen in all, in January 1932, after the birth of his son Alfredo (soon nicknamed Alfredino, or Dino), Enzo retired for good as a racing driver, to concentrate on his new career – as a racing team manager.

Alfa Romeo Bimotore, 1935

Alfa Romeo P3, 1935

In truth he had been building towards this for some time, and was proving to be good at it. He was particularly adept (oddly given his lack of training) at recognising engineering talent, and attracting it to Alfa’s racing department. So during Ferrari’s years of management, Alfa, with engineers like Luigi Bassi and Vittorio Jano, became the make to beat.

With cars like the P1 and P2 and drivers like Campari and Antonio Ascari (also Ferrari’s choices), Alfa became regular Grand Prix winners, and in 1925 won the title of World Champions – a level of success that they held onto for most of the decade, and always with Ferrari in charge.

Right at the end of the 1920s, though, in December 1929, Enzo’s path took another twist – officially leaving Alfa and emerging as head of a new Alfa racing team, supported by the company but separated from the car building side. It was called Scuderia Ferrari, and in place of the green four-leaf-clover ‘Quadrifoglio’ badge, it now carried the Prancing Horse.

Ferrari moved the team from Milan to Modena and ran Alfas for both official team drivers and for several private owners. And Ferrari continued to attract the best, including Campari, Louis Chiron, Achille Varzi, and arguably the greatest of them all, the legendary Tazio Nuvolari. Between them, and with the genius of Jano in particular creating ever greater cars, they won everything from the Targa Florio to the Mille Miglia road races, and from numerous Grands Prix to the Le Mans 24-Hour race. Even when Alfa was taken over by the government, the race team was still run by Ferrari, and continued to win through the 1930s until the cars from Italy were finally overwhelmed after 1937 by the Nazi government-backed Mercedes-Benz and Auto-Union Grand Prix ‘Silver Arrows’.

Official team drivers, Varzi and Chiron driving an Alfa Romeo P3, 1934

Enzo, and Scuderia Ferrari, though, had already built a reputation second to none, and now he planned to take on the Germans with a car of his own, designed by another engineering genius, Gioacchino Colombo. It never raced under Ferrari’s name, but as Enzo himself described it, it was taken over by Alfa as they returned to racing in their own right, and Ferrari was invited to manage the new Alfa Corse team which ran it in a handful of races, just below Grand Prix level, before World War II began.

Auto Union Silver Arrows Grand Prix team

Even before that happened, Ferrari had fallen out with Alfa, after major personality clashes with some of the other people involved in the team, and in effect that was the final move in the early part of the game that was building up to Ferrari becoming a car maker in his own right.

Twist in the Tale

Naturally, though, given Ferrari’s character and past history, it was never as simple as that - and now came the next, brief twist in the tale.

Ferrari left Alfa in 1939 with a reasonable financial settlement but a restriction on racing against them under his own name for a period of four years. Which was why, immediately after leaving Alfa, he created a new company called Auto Avio Costruzione – an engineering and design agency, with staff including the brilliant Bazzi, to build sporting cars that would be Ferraris in everything but name. And he started even as the war was starting, entering two Auto Avio Costruzione 815 sports cars in a race that (thanks largely to the Germans) was actually held after the war had started but before it called a complete halt – the Brescia Grand Prix, which was nominally a version of the Mille Miglia, ran in April 1940.

The 815s had in-line eight-cylinder 1.5-litre engines, based on four-cylinder Fiat engines with a special cylinder head and four carburettors. They had Fiatbased chassis with independent front suspension, drum brakes and wire wheels - and with streamlined open two-seater bodies they would reach more than 100mph. In Brescia, both 815s, driven by Marquis Lotario Rangoni Machiavelli and Alberto Ascari (son of the late Alfa star Antonio) led their class, but both retired with engine problems. The next time a Ferrari racing car appeared, it would be a real Ferrari.