Enzo Ferrari was born in Modena in 1898. His father and his elder brother both died in 1916, during the First World War, and after the war he was turned away by Fiat. He found work testing and then racing for Alfa Romeo, and in the 1920s was a successful driver. The mother of the fallen fighter ace Francesco Baracca gave him her son’s emblem, a prancing horse, for luck.
In 1929 he founded the Scuderia Ferrari in Modena to run Alfa Romeo’s racing cars. After breaking with Alfa, he built his own, and the first car to carry his name ran in 1947.
He built road cars because customers would pay for them, and the money kept his racing team alive. The 250 GTO of 1962 was one of those cars: built to be homologated for GT racing, it is now among the most valuable cars in the world. The F40 of 1987 was the last car launched under his direction, to mark forty years of Ferrari.
He rarely went to races, watched from Maranello, played his drivers off against each other and was accused of caring more for his cars than for the men who died in them. The death of his son Dino, in 1956, at twenty-four, marked him for the rest of his life.
He died in August 1988, at ninety. The Ferrari Enzo of 2002 was named after him. All three cars are in this catalogue.
Foto: Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
What he built
Cars in the catalog that carry his work — or his name.
