dumrick wrote:Enzo always defended the sillyest things like front-engined sports cars ("the horses pull the wagon, not the other way around"), like what mattered were big and powerful engines, not the chassis, like a sports car is designed to accelerate, not to brake, and so on... to be constantly taken back to reality by the competition (Cooper central-engined F1's, Lamborghini Miura, Porsche and Lotus sports cars, and so on)...
I am so sorry to take this thread as a motive to try to explain what I feel for Ferrari: the truth is... I don't know what I feel for Enzo Ferrari.
This is a really long post,
skip it if you are not in "history mode".
Surely the great Enzo did many silly things in his life. I have said I don't like Ferrari, the brand, but again, I don't like too much any corporation (not even Greenpeace
). I work almost alone.
This is why I like individuals. And Mr. Ferrari certainly did some things well, and, at least like me, a lot wrong. I tried to search about the guy. This is what I found:
- "It seemed that sometimes Ferrari made irrational choices when, in fact, I realised he was often
trusting his instincts or his intuition without worrying too much about rationality, which necessarily tends to stifle dreams and feelings."
- "Ferrari sells every vehicle it makes, and makes a
profit on every vehicle it sells" (talk about efficiency!).
- "The company does not
want to increase its volume or raise the prices of its cars.".
- "... there should always be
one less car available than what the market is demanding." (talk about Just In Time being invented by japanese!)
- "In a mood of deep reflection, Ferrari talks to a journalist... about his long life, which had but one focus- a passion and dream to race cars and then to
build the fastest car in the world."
- "Early Ferraris (say the 60s) had a reputation for being demanding of their drivers.
Cockpit layouts could be illogical and inconvenient or worse."
- "... he met the father of the legendary Italian W.W.I ace Francesco Baracca. The senior Baracca was enamored with the courage and audacity of the young Ferrari and presented the young driver with his son’s squadron badge,
which was the famous Prancing Horse on a yellow shield." (this is a clue for the people complaining about Enzo Ferrari shoving his way:
the guy choose a war squadron badge for his team)
- "... Baracca choose a horse for his squadron because it was part of a cavalry regiment and because he was considered the best
cavalier of his team."
- " ... he was expected to compete driving the latest cars at the years most prestigious race the French Grand Prix. What happened next is not quite clear but it seems that Ferrari suffered a
crisis of confidence and was not able to take part in the the biggest race of his career."
- "In 1929 Ferrari started his own firm, Scuderia Ferrari... With Alfa Romeo he exchanged a guarantee of technical assistance with stock in his company. Ferrari then made similar deals with Bosch, Pirelli and Shell... In his first year the Scuderia Ferrari could boast 50 full and part-time drivers! Scuderia Ferrari caused a sensation. It was the largest team ever put together by one individual... It is also not out of the question that
if anyone could survive as an independent in the current Formula One world then the younger Ferrari would be that man."
- "Enzo kept a famous
aversion towards his clients, because he felt that most of them were buying his cars because of the prestige and not because of its performance."
Finally, to sum up, yes he was a bussinesman. But what bussinesman can give you this description of the work of Tazio Nuvolari?
"At the first bend," Ferrari writes,
"I had the clear sensation that Tazio had taken it badly and that we would end up in the ditch; I felt myself stiffen as I waited for the crunch. Instead, we found ourselves on the next straight with the car in a perfect position. I looked at him,"
Ferrari goes on.
"His rugged face was calm, just as it always was, and certainly not the face of someone who had just escaped a hair-raising spin. I had the same sensation at the second bend. By the fourth or fifth bend I began to understand; in the meantime, I had noticed that through the entire bend Tazio did not lift his foot from the accelerator, and that, in fact, it was flat on the floor."
"As bend followed bend, I discovered his secret. Nuvolari entered the bend somewhat earlier than my driver's instinct would have told me to. But he went into the bend in an unusual way: with one movement he aimed the nose of the car at the inside edge, just where the curve itself started."
"His foot was flat down, and he had obviously changed down to the right gear before going through this fearsome rigmarole. In this way he put the car into a four-wheel drift, making the most of the thrust of the centrifugal force and keeping it on the road with the traction of the driving wheels. Throughout the bend the car shaved the inside edge, and when the bend turned into the straight the car was in the normal position for accelerating down it, with no need for any corrections."
Ferrari honestly admits that he soon became used to this exercise, because he saw Nuvolari do it countless times.
"But each time I seemed to be climbing into a roller coaster and finding myself coming through the downhill run with that sort of dazed feeling that we all know."
This is no Donald Trump.
