Ferrari Enzo. Oil painting of an
Enzo Ferrari by Tamás Kádár, 2007.
Ferrari S.p.A. is an Italian sports car
manufacturer based in Maranello and
Modena, Italy. Founded by Enzo Ferrari in 1929 as Scuderia Ferrari, the company
sponsored drivers and manufactured race cars before moving into production of street legal vehicles in 1947 as Ferrari
S.p.A.. Ferrari's cars are among the most desirable of vehicles to own and drive,
and are one of the ultimate status symbols of wealth in the world. Throughout its history, the company has been noted for its
continued participation in racing, especially in Formula
One, where it has largely enjoyed great success, especially during the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, late 1990s, and 2000s.
Finally, after years of financial struggles, Enzo Ferrari sold the company's sports car division to the Fiat group in 1969 in order to help ensure continued financial backing for the foreseeable future. Enzo Ferrari
himself retained control of the racing division until his death in 1988 at the age of 90.
Ferrari also has an internally managed merchandising line that licenses a wide range of products bearing the Ferrari brand,
including eyewear, pens, pencils, perfume, clothing, high-tech bicycles, cell phones, and even laptop computers. Financial Times named Ferrari number one on its 2007 list of the 100 Best Workplaces in Europe.
History of Ferrari
-
1929–1946
Enzo Ferrari never intended to produce road cars when he formed Scuderia Ferrari
in 1929 as a sponsor for amateur drivers headquartered in Modena. Ferrari prepared and successfully raced various drivers in
Alfa Romeo cars until 1938, when he was officially hired by Alfa as head of
their racing department.
In 1940, Alfa Romeo was absorbed by the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini as part of the Axis Powers' war effort. Enzo
Ferrari's division was small enough to be unaffected by this. Because he was prohibited by contract from racing for four years,
the Scuderia briefly became Auto Avio Costruzioni Ferrari, which
ostensibly produced machine tools and aircraft accessories. Also known as SEFAC (Scuderia Enzo Ferrari Auto Corse), Ferrari did
in fact produce one race car, the Tipo 815, in the non-competition period; it
was thus the first actual Ferrari car (it debuted at the 1940 Mille Miglia), but due to
World War II it saw little competition. In 1943 the Ferrari factory moved to Maranello,
where it has remained ever since. The factory was bombed by the Allies in 1944 and rebuilt in
1946, with the war ended and the Mussolini government overthrown, to include a works for road car production. Right up to Il
Commendatore's death, this would remain little more than a source of funding for his first love, racing.
"Scuderia Ferrari" literally means "Ferrari Stable"; the name is figuratively translated as "Team Ferrari". (It is
correctly pronounced "skoo deh REE ah".)
1947–present
1952 Ferrari Brachetta 212/225
The first Ferrari road car was the 1947 125 S, powered by a 1.5 L V12 engine; Enzo reluctantly built and sold his automobiles to fund the Scuderia. While his beautiful
and fast cars quickly gained a reputation for excellence, Enzo maintained a famous distaste for his customers, most of whom he
felt were buying his cars for the prestige and not the performance. Ferrari road cars, noted for magnificent styling by design
houses like Pininfarina, have long been one of the ultimate accessories for the rich. Other
design houses that have done work for Ferrari over the years include Scaglietti,
Bertone, Touring, Ghia, and Vignale.
In 2005, four universities were granted the opportunity to design the next vehicle line-up for Ferrari in a student
competition named 'Ferrari Concepts of the Myth'. Twenty winners were allowed to show off their concepts in a ¼ scale model and
present their work to the board at Ferrari to allow for three out right winners to have the chance to work in the Ferrari design
studio at Maranello.
As of 2007, the Fiat Group owns 85% of Ferrari, Mubadala 5%, and Enzo's son Piero 10%. Fiat has
shelved plans for an IPO because Fiat Auto has now returned to profitability,
thus removing pressure from the group.
Racing
-
Enzo Ferrari's true passion, despite his extensive road car business, was always auto racing. His Scuderia started as an
independent sponsor for drivers in various cars, but soon became the Alfa Romeo in-house racing team. After Ferrari's departure
from Alfa, he began to design and produce cars of his own; the Ferrari team first appeared on the European Grand Prix scene after
the end of World War II.
In 1949, Luigi Chinetti drove a Model 166M to Ferrari's first win in motorsports, the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Chinetti drove for all
except twenty minutes of the Grand Prix race. He soon became the American dealer
for Ferraris and established the North American Racing Team, Ferrari's
official racing arm. The dealership is reported to have kept the company in business through sales to wealthy Americans, such as
Briggs Cunningham, who bought the first one Chinetti sold through the new
dealership.
The Scuderia joined the Formula One World Championship in the first year of its
existence, 1950. José Froilán González gave the team its first victory at the
1951 British Grand Prix.
Alberto Ascari gave Ferrari its first Drivers Championship a year later. Ferrari is the oldest team left in the
championship, not to mention the most successful: the team holds nearly every Formula One record. As of 2007, the team's records include fourteen World Drivers Championship titles (1952, 1953, 1956, 1958, 1961, 1964, 1975, 1977, 1979, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004), fifteen World Constructors
Championship titles (1961, 1964, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1982, 1983, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2007), 200 Grand Prix victories,
4735.27 points, 601 podium finishes, 194 pole positions, 12,419 laps led, and 204 fastest
laps in 757 Grands Prix contested.
Notable Ferrari drivers include Tazio Nuvolari, Juan Manuel Fangio, Luigi Chinetti, Alberto Ascari, Wolfgang von Trips,
Phil Hill, Olivier Gendebien, Mike Hawthorn, Peter Collins, John
Surtees, Lorenzo Bandini, Ludivico Scarfiotti,
Jacky Ickx, Mario Andretti, Niki Lauda, Carlos Reutemann, Jody
Scheckter, Gilles Villeneuve, Didier
Pironi, Michele Alboreto, Gerhard
Berger, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost,
Jean Alesi,Eddie Irvine, Rubens Barrichello, Michael Schumacher, Kimi Räikkonen, and Felipe Massa.
The Scuderia Ferrari drivers for the 2006 F1 season were Michael Schumacher and
Felipe Massa. At the end of the 2006 season the team courted controversy by continuing to
allow Marlboro to sponsor them after they, along with the other F1 teams, made a
promise to end sponsorship deals with tobacco manufacturers. A five year deal worth a reported $500 million was
agreed.[citation needed]
The drivers for 2007 are Felipe Massa and Kimi
Räikkönen.
The "Cavallino Rampante"
The famous symbol of the Ferrari race team is a black prancing stallion on a yellow shield, usually with the letters S
F (for Scuderia Ferrari), with three stripes of green, white and red (the Italian national colors) at the top. The
road cars have a rectangular badge on the hood (see picture above) and this race logo on the side.
On June 17, 1923, Enzo Ferrari won a race at the
Savio track in Ravenna where he met the Countess Paolina,
mother of Count Francesco Baracca, an ace of the Italian air force and national hero of World War I, who used
to paint a horse on the side of his planes. The Countess asked Enzo to use this horse on his cars, suggesting that it would grant
him good luck. The original "prancing horse" on Baracca's airplane was painted in red on a white cloud-like shape, but Ferrari
chose to have the horse in black (as it had been painted as a sign of grief on Baracca's squadron planes after the pilot was KIA)
and he added a canary yellow background as this is the color of the city of
Modena, his birthplace. It is worth noting that the Ferrari horse was, from
the very beginning, markedly different from the Baracca horse in most details, the most noticeable being the tail that in the
original Baracca version was pointing downward.
Ferrari has used the cavallino rampante on official company stationery since 1929. Since the Spa 24 Hours race of July 9, 1932, the
cavallino rampante has been used on Alfa Romeos raced by Scuderia Ferrari.
A similar black horse on a yellow shield is the Coat of Arms of the German city of Stuttgart. This horse motif comes from the origins of the
city's name: it comes from Stutengarten, an ancient form of the modern German word Gestüt, which translates into
English as stud farm and into Italian as scuderia. Stuttgart is the home of Porsche, which also uses the Stuttgart sign in its corporate logo, centred in the emblem of the state of
Württemberg.
Fabio Taglioni used the cavallino rampante on his Ducati motorbikes. Taglioni's father was a companion of Baracca's and fought with him in the 91st
Air Squad. As Ferrari's fame grew, Ducati abandoned the horse- perhaps the result of a private agreement between the two
companies.
The cavallino rampante is now a trademark of Ferrari. However, other companies use similar
logos: Avanti, an Austrian company operating over 100 filling stations, uses a prancing
horse logo which is nearly identical to Ferrari's.
Many aspects of the cover design of the third Jamiroquai album, Travelling Without Moving, as well as the single Virtual Insanity and some single promos pay homage to the Ferrari logo.
Rosso Corsa
-
Since the 1920s, Italian race cars of Alfa Romeo, Maserati and later Ferrari and
Abarth were (and often still are) painted in "race red" (Rosso Corsa). This was the
customary national racing color of Italy, as recommended
between the World Wars by the organizations that later would become the FIA. In that scheme, French cars like Bugatti
were blue, German like BMW and Porsche white (since 1934 also
Silver Arrows), British racing green
etc.
Curiously, Ferrari won the 1964 World championship with John Surtees by competing the
last two races in cars painted white and blue, as these were not entered by the Italian factory themselves, but the US-based
NART team. This was done as a protest concerning arguments between Ferrari
and the Italian Racing Authorities regarding the homologation of a new mid-engined Ferrari race car.
List of models
Until the mid-1980s, Ferrari followed a three-number naming scheme based on engine
displacement:
- Four-Cylinder and V6 models used the total displacement
(in decilitres) for the first two digits and the number of cylinders as the third. Thus, the 206 was a 2.0 L Four
Cylinder-powered vehicle, while the 348 used a 3.4 L V6.
- V12 models used the displacement (in cubic centimetres) of one cylinder. Therefore, the famed 365 Daytona had a 4380 cc
V12.
- Flat 12 (boxer) models used the displacement in litres. Therefore, the 512BB was five
litre flat 12 (a Berlinetta Boxer, in this case). However, the original Berlinetta Boxer was the 365 GT4 BB, which was named in a similar manner to the V12 models.
Most Ferraris were also given designations referring to their body style. In general, the following conventions were used:
- M standing for "Modificata," this suffix is placed to the end of a model's number designation to denote that it is a
modified version of its predecessor and not a complete evolution (see F512M and
575M Maranello).
- GTB models are closed Berlinettas, or coupes.
- GTS models, in older models, are convertibles (see 365 GTS4); however, in late models, this suffix is used for targa top
models (see 348 GTS, and F355 GTS; exception being the 348 TS, which is the only targa named differently). The convertible
models now use the suffix "Spider" (see F355 Spider, and Ferrari 360 Spider).
This naming system can be confusing, as some entirely different vehicles used the same engine type and body style. Many
Ferraris also had other names affixed (like Daytona) to identify them further. Many such names are actually not official factory
names. The Daytona name commemorates Ferrari's triple success in the February 1967 24 Hours of
Daytona with the 330P4. Only in the 1973 Daytona 24h, a
365 GTB4 model run by N.A.R.T.
(North American Racing Team, who raced Ferrari's in America) scored 2nd—behind a Porsche
911.
As well, the 250 GTO's famous acronym, which means Gran Turismo Omologato, was
simply a name the Italian press gave the car which referred to the way Ferrari had, in a sense, avoided the rules and
successfully homologated the car for racing purposes (somehow Ferrari had convinced the FIA that the 250 GTO was the same car as previous 250's). This was probably to avoid confusion with the multiple 250 models produced before the GTO.
The various Dino models were named for Enzo's son, Dino Ferrari, and are not formally
Ferraris, though are to all intents and purposes considered so.
In the mid 1990s, Ferrari added the letter "F" to the beginning of all models (a practice quickly abandoned after the
F512M and F355, but recently picked up again
with the F430).
Road models
Sports cars
Ferrari's first models were sports/racing cars quite different from the grand touring models that followed. See below for a
complete list.
2-seat Gran Turismo
Ferrari quickly moved into the Gran Turismo market, and the bulk of the company's sales remain in this area.
Mid-engine V6/V8
The Dino was the first mid-engined Ferrari. This layout would go on to be used in most Ferraris of the 1980s and 1990s. V6 and
V8 Ferrari models make up well over half of the marque's total production.
Mid-engine 2+2
For a time, Ferrari built 2+2 versions of its mid-engined V8 cars. Although they looked quite different from their 2-seat
counterparts, both the GT4 and Mondial were very closely-related to the 308 GTB.
Front-engine 2+2
The company has also produced front-engined 2+2 cars, culminating in the current 612 Scaglietti.
Mid-engine 12-cylinder
Ferrari entered the mid-engined 12-cylinder fray with the Berlinetta Boxer in 1971. The later Testarossa remains one of the
most famous Ferraris.
Supercars
The company's loftiest efforts have been in the supercar market.
Competition models
Current
Past
1958 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa from the
Ralph Lauren collection
- Formula 2
- 1948 125 F2
- 1951 500 F2
- 1953 553 F2
- 1957 Dino 156 F2
- 1967 Dino 166 F2
Concept models
See also
References
External links
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