58 Fun Facts About Enzo Ferrari

In which Italian city was Enzo Ferrari born in 1898?

Modena. His birth certificate is dated 20 February 1898, but Enzo said he was born two days earlier and that heavy snow had kept the birth from being registered.

In which city, a short trip from his home, did the 10-year-old Enzo watch his first motor race in 1908?

Bologna. The family outing was to watch the cars on a circuit along the Via Emilia, and the boy came away from it set on becoming a racing driver.

Which carmaker turned the young Enzo down after World War I, then bought half his company in 1969?

Fiat. Rejected in Turin in the winter of 1918-19, he found work as a test driver for a small firm that stripped down light trucks so their chassis could be rebuilt as cars.

In what kind of event did Enzo make his racing debut in 1919?

A hillclimb. He raced from Parma up to Poggio di Berceto, and only later that year took a CMN to Sicily for the far more famous Targa Florio.

What did the white-haired Enzo almost always wear in public during his later decades?

Dark glasses. They were part of a carefully kept air of mystery: he rarely left his home town and seldom went to a race, following his team through television and written reports.

Why did Enzo begin selling road cars to the public in the late 1940s?

To pay for his racing. Road cars interested him little, and he took to selling them, grudgingly at first, only as a way to finance the Scuderia's Grand Prix and endurance campaigns.

Ferrari's prancing horse emblem was originally painted on the plane of which Italian World War I fighter ace?

Francesco Baracca. Italy's leading ace was shot down in 1918; by Enzo's account the airman's mother later urged him to carry her son's horse on his cars for luck.

Which part of Ferrari's prancing-horse badge did Enzo add in honour of his home city?

The yellow background. Canary yellow is his birthplace's civic colour, and the finished shield brought instant luck: on its first outing, at the 1932 Spa 24 Hours, the team's cars came first and second.

Which Italian rival quit Grand Prix racing in 1955 and handed its cars and equipment to Enzo free of charge?

Lancia. In financial trouble after its lead driver was killed, it gave up racing, and Juan Manuel Fangio then won the 1956 world title in the inherited cars, rebadged as Ferraris.

Which German city's rearing-horse arms, also on Porsche's badge, does one legend link to Ferrari's prancing horse?

Stuttgart. One tale has the wartime ace painting the horse to mark a downed pilot from that city, but his own museum says he took the emblem from his old cavalry regiment.

What does 'scuderia', as in Scuderia Ferrari, literally mean in Italian?

Stable. Enzo founded the team in 1929 as a club that prepared Alfa Romeos for wealthy owner-drivers, and within four years it was running Alfa Romeo's whole racing effort.

What event in 1932 prompted Enzo to retire from driving?

The birth of his son Dino. With the baby due, Enzo drove his last race in August 1931, finishing second, and from then on put his energy into managing other men's driving.

What kept Enzo's name off the firm he founded after leaving Alfa in 1939?

His exit deal. Alfa barred him from racing under his own name for four years, so the new firm was called Auto Avio Costruzioni and spent the war making machine tools.

The first car Enzo built, the 815 of 1940, was made for which race?

The Mille Miglia. Two cars were built in a few months for the 1940 race, and neither saw the finish: both retired with mechanical failures.

What does the name of Enzo's first car, the 815 of 1940, stand for?

Eight cylinders and 1.5 litres. With only months to build it, and race rules demanding production-based cars, the engine and chassis were adapted from a small family saloon's parts.

Why did Enzo move his factory out of the city to the small town of Maranello in 1943?

He feared Allied bombing. Getting out of the city did not save the works: the bombers found the new Maranello factory anyway and hit it twice before the war ended.

Which British star travelled to Italy in 1951 for a promised Ferrari drive, only to find the car given to another driver?

Stirling Moss. He never raced for the factory team: a deal for him to drive a privately run Ferrari was at last agreed ten years later, just before the crash that ended his career.

What kind of engine did the Ferrari 125 S have, setting a pattern for decades?

A V12. Each of its twelve tiny cylinders displaced about 125 cc, which is where the model's name came from, and twelve cylinders became the marque's signature.

Which famous American race did Enzo's works team enter just once, sending a single car across the Atlantic in 1952?

The Indianapolis 500. It then counted towards the Formula One world championship, though Europe's teams usually ignored it; Enzo's lone car retired with a failed wheel and he never went back.

Who ended Ferrari's 21-year wait for a tenth drivers' title?

Michael Schumacher. Enzo saw nine drivers' titles, the last in 1979; Schumacher arrived in 1996 already a double champion, broke a leg in 1999 and came back to end the wait in 2000.

Who won Ferrari's first Formula One world championship, in 1952?

Alberto Ascari. Enzo had put him in one of his very first cars in 1940; twelve years on he won six championship Grands Prix in a row to take the title.

At which British circuit did Ferrari win a world championship Grand Prix for the first time, in 1951?

Silverstone. A year earlier Enzo had kept his cars away from the first-ever championship race at the same track, sending them to a minor event in Belgium instead.

Ferrari won which endurance race six years running, from 1960 to 1965?

Le Mans. Then the well ran dry: after 1965 Ferrari did not win the race outright again until it returned to the top class in 2023, 58 years later.

Which illness did Enzo's son Dino live with until his death in 1956?

Muscular dystrophy. Too frail to race, Dino worked on engine designs from his sickbed, and his grieving father put the name Dino on the V6 cars that followed.

Which Ferrari driver died with his co-driver and at least nine spectators in Italy's 1957 1,000-mile road race?

Alfonso de Portago. A tyre failed on a fast straight near Guidizzolo, and the disaster led Italy to ban racing on public roads, ending its most famous road race for good.

What was Enzo charged with after the 1957 Guidizzolo disaster?

Manslaughter. Investigators blamed the tyres his car was running, and the case hung over him for four years before he was cleared in 1961.

What happened at Ferrari in the 'Great Walkout' of late 1961?

Eight senior managers left at once. Enzo sacked them, his chief engineer and team manager among them, and they regrouped to launch a rival marque, ATS, which soon failed.

Which American carmaker spent weeks negotiating to buy Ferrari in 1963 before Enzo walked away?

Ford. Within a month of the talks collapsing, the company set up a special unit to build an endurance racer of its own, the GT40, which went on to end Ferrari's long winning run.

Why did Enzo abandon the 1963 sale to the Americans?

He would not be left in control of racing. After weeks of hard bargaining he pulled out just before signing; six years later he sold half the firm to an Italian buyer that left the racing to him.

Which motorcycle-champion-turned-driver won Ferrari's 1964 F1 title?

John Surtees. He took the crown by a single point in the last race, in Mexico, after the team signalled his teammate to slow down and let him through into second place.

What did Enzo build beside his factory in 1972?

A test track. The old local autodrome no longer served for testing, so he laid out Fiorano, with corners modelled on famous Grand Prix circuits, to try out both road and racing cars.

Which Austrian driver won the F1 title for Ferrari in 1975 and 1977?

Niki Lauda. Furious that the team had lined up a replacement while his burns from the 1976 Nürburgring crash healed, he stayed, won the 1977 title and then promptly left for a rival.

Which newcomer, with one Grand Prix behind him, did Enzo hire in 1977 to replace his departing world champion?

Gilles Villeneuve. Enzo said the Canadian's all-out style reminded him of his pre-war hero Tazio Nuvolari, and he kept faith when the newcomer was outscored by his teammate throughout 1978.

One of Enzo's best-known Italian nicknames borrowed the name of which English seafarer?

Francis Drake. 'Il Drake' is said to have been coined by British rivals, half in complaint and half in admiration, for a small outfit that kept carrying off the big prizes like the Elizabethan privateer.

After his cars first beat Alfa Romeo in a world championship race, Enzo said he felt he had killed whom?

His mother. He had spent some twenty years at Alfa as driver and racing boss, and wrote that he wept with joy and with pain when José Froilán González at last beat its cars in 1951.

Which Ferrari, launched the year before Enzo's death, was the last road car he personally approved?

The F40. The name marks forty years of Ferrari cars, and he wanted it raw: a twin-turbo V8 with none of the electronic aids that flatter less expert drivers.

Enzo's last taste of victory was a Ferrari one-two at the final race of 1987, led by which driver?

Gerhard Berger. He had also won the race before, in Japan, ending a long losing streak, but the revival stalled: McLaren won every Grand Prix of 1988 that Enzo lived to see.

Enzo's second son Piero was born in 1945 to which woman, his mistress?

Lina Lardi. Enzo kept this second family secret for decades and acknowledged Piero only after his wife died in 1978; Piero, who had worked at the factory as Piero Lardi, then took his father's name.

Enzo's son Piero owns about a tenth of Ferrari and, as of 2025, holds which post there?

Vice chairman. His father's will left him a tenth of the company, a stake now worth billions, though as a boy he had been kept out of public view.

Which tractor maker, unhappy with faults in the Ferraris he owned, started a rival sports car firm in 1963?

Ferruccio Lamborghini. As he told it, he took his complaints about failing clutches to Enzo in person and was brushed off, and that snub set him building a grand tourer of his own.

Who played Enzo Ferrari in Michael Mann's 2023 film Ferrari?

Adam Driver. He was the third star attached to the director's long-delayed passion project: Christian Bale and then Hugh Jackman had each signed on and dropped out.

Which Oscar winner played Enzo's wife, Laura, in the 2023 film Ferrari?

Penélope Cruz. The real Laura Ferrari was no bystander: she stayed closely involved in running the company and, after their son died, was a feared presence on the factory floor.

Which change to Grand Prix car design did Enzo resist until 1960, a year before it won him both world titles?

Rear-mounted engines. He insisted the horse should pull the cart, not push it; once he gave way, his first championship car with the engine behind the driver swept the 1961 season.

What did Enzo like to tell interviewers he had never once taken?

A holiday. He worked on through August while the rest of Italy shut down, and loathed the mid-August Ferragosto break above all; by a twist of fate he died on the eve of that very holiday.

The 400th Ferrari Enzo was a gift for whom?

Pope John Paul II. Ferrari had planned only 399 of the cars; the extra one was auctioned for charity, and the proceeds of about $1.1 million went to the Vatican for humanitarian relief.

At which circuit did Ferrari finish first and second a month after Enzo's death, the only 1988 race McLaren lost?

Monza. The leading McLaren tripped over a backmarker two laps from the end of the Italian Grand Prix, the red cars swept through to a one-two, and the crowd poured onto the track.

Which Italian title, from a state honour he received in the 1920s, was Enzo known by for the rest of his life?

Commendatore. The state gave him the rank for services to motor racing while he was still driving other people's cars, twenty years before any car carried his own name.

Ferrari World, the first Ferrari-branded theme park, opened in 2010 in which city?

Abu Dhabi. Its launch coaster, Formula Rossa, hits 240 km/h, fast enough that riders are issued goggles; it was the world's fastest from 2010 until a Saudi ride overtook it at the end of 2025.

Why were Enzo's competition cars painted red from the very start?

Italy's national racing colour. Red was the shade assigned to Italian cars between the wars, and Enzo famously dropped it for two 1964 races, running in American blue and white in protest at the sport's rulers.

The museum opened beside Enzo's birthplace in 2012 has a sweeping modern roof shaped like what?

A car bonnet. The architects took the curve from the bonnets of 1950s racing cars, and next to it the house and workshop of Enzo's father still stand, the workshop now filled with engines.

After a run of fatal crashes in the 1950s, the Italian press likened Enzo to which Roman god?

Saturn. In myth he devoured his own children, and the jibe was that Enzo did the same to his drivers; it was doubly cruel, because his own son had died only a year or two before.

What was Enzo's job in a mountain artillery regiment during World War I?

Shoeing mules. The future maker of racing cars spent his war tending pack animals, until a grave illness and two operations got him discharged.

Which Ferrari driver became the first American to win the Formula One world championship, in 1961?

Phil Hill. He clinched the title at the Italian Grand Prix, one point ahead of his teammate and only rival, Wolfgang von Trips, who was killed that day in a crash that also took spectators' lives.

Besides racing driver and sports journalist, what did the young Enzo dream of becoming?

Opera singer. By his own account his youthful passions were operetta, motor racing and journalism, and the writing came first: as a teenager he got into print in La Gazzetta dello Sport.

In 1935 Tazio Nuvolari's outdated Scuderia Ferrari Alfa humbled Mercedes and Auto Union at which race?

The German Grand Prix. At the Nürburgring his ageing car beat the full Mercedes and Auto Union teams in front of their own crowd; Enzo rated him the best he ever saw and measured later drivers against him.

Whom did Enzo appoint as Ferrari's sporting director and F1 team manager in 1974?

Luca di Montezemolo. Aged just 26, he became the old man's eyes and ears at the races Enzo no longer attended, and within two seasons the team had its first world titles in more than a decade.

Enzo left orders that news of his death in August 1988 be held back until after what?

His funeral. He died on 14 August, aged 90, and was buried the next day with only a handful of invited mourners present; the announcement went out once it was over.

By what Italian name are Ferrari's devoted supporters known around the world?

Tifosi. The word is usually traced to tifo, Italian for typhus, so a supporter is someone running a fever.