| Biography of Enzo Ferrari |
| Enzo Ferrari was
born on February 18 1898 in a town called Modena. After having faught in
World War I, in 1918, he became a test driver in Turin.
He made his racing debut in 1919 in the Parma-Berceto race and he entered the Targa Florio that year too. In 1920 he started racing for Alfa Romeo where he worked for/with for nearly 20 years. His career there took him from test driver to race car driver to sales assistant and finally to Director of the Alfa racing division until 1939. In 1929 Enzo Ferrari founded Scuderia Ferrari in Modena, but back then it was an engineering-racing division of Alfa Romeo. In 1940 Scuderia Ferrari abandonned Alfa Romeo and transformed itself into an independent company: "Auto Avio Construzioni Ferrari" which worked for the national aviation company in Rome, Piaggio and RIV. |
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| During World War II, in
1943, Ferrari moved its workshop to Maranello and began to make powered
grinding machines for ball bearings. The workshop was bombed out in 1944
and rebuilt in 1946, when Ferrari started designing and building the very
first Ferrari. In the fifties Ford tried to take over Ferrari, but, obviously, they didn't. They started trying to beat Ferrari in racing, but they didn't do very well with that either! Except for winning the Le Mans 24 hour race one time when the Ferrari's entered in the race all had a problem so the Fords finished 1st, 2nd and 3rd (not a very happy time!) In 1960 the business was turned into a joint stock company in which FIAT became a 50-50 partner in 1969. (FIAT became the majority shareholder in 1988). In 1963 Enzo Ferrari built his Instituto Professionale per l'Industria e l'Artgianata, a training school in Maranello. In 1972 he built the Fiorano test track. Enzo Ferrari was given several awards by the Italian nation, such as:
He died in Modena on
Source--> The
Legend of the Prancing HorseAugust 14 1988. |
