It’s tough to even begin fathoming a world without Ferrari and stupidly fast supercars like the SF90, but did you know that Enzo Ferrari was barred from putting his name on his cars? In fact, the very first cars he produced as a standalone manufacturer legally could not be called Ferraris. The first-ever car designed by Enzo Ferrari and built by a team of his employees was called the Auto Avio Costruzioni 815, which, to be honest, is a crappy name. Imagine buying an Auto Avio Costruzioni 458 Speciale. It just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Related
10 Facts About Ferrari You Probably Didn’t Know
We all know the F40 was the last car Enzo Ferrari signed off, but here are 10 facts you might not know about the Prancing Horse.
The Ferrari Legacy Started With Alfa Romeo
To find out why Enzo Ferrari couldn’t use his own name, we have to go back all the way to 1920. Enzo Ferrari joined Alfa Romeo as a driver, and he was very successful. While Ferrari never competed in Formula 1 (the first F1 world championship only took place in 1950, won by Giuseppe Farina), he was successful in the European Drivers’ Championship (EDC), which was the peak of motor racing before WWII. The EDC ran races all around Europe at events called a Grand Prix, a term that is still used in modern Formula 1. Enzo Ferrari entered 41 Grands Prix and won 11, which makes him more successful than Valtteri Bottas, Gerhard Berger, Mark Webber, Jacky Ickx, and James Hunt.
After the deaths of a few of his friends and the birth of his son, Enzo Ferrari lost the drive needed to compete in top-tier racing. He readily admitted that he wasn’t pushing as hard as he could, so he decided to become a team manager. Enzo founded Scuderia Ferrari in 1929, but he only put it to use in 1932 when he formed his own team with the backing of Alfa Romeo, which purchased an 80% stake in Scuderia Ferrari. While Ferrari’s team raced Alfa Romeos, the famous prancing horse made its debut much earlier than the brand itself. The logo was first displayed on those Alfa Romeo racing cars.
Related
Cars And Manufacturers With A Horse Logo
Can’t we have just one unicorn?
Alfa Romeo Dissolves Scuderia Ferrari
Alfa Romeo agreed to back Scuderia Ferrari for one year but wanted to pull out after the 1933 season due to financial issues. Fortunately, the bosses at Alfa Romeo changed their minds and continued to support Enzo and his team. Unfortunately, the team sucked, even though they had contracted the best drivers. Auto Union, which would become Audi, and Mercedes-Benz had way more money to throw at the sport, and as we know, the more money you have in top-tier racing, the better your cars are. Still, the mere existence of the team continued to drive sales, and in 1937, Alfa Romeo dissolved Scuderia Ferrari and renamed the team Alfa Corse. If you want to win on Sunday and sell on Monday, you want your own name front and center.
Alfa Romeo Gives Enzo The Boot
Ferrari was happy to stay on as Alfa’s sporting director. After all, it’s pretty well known that he only really cared about racing. But being part of a big corporation was not all it promised. After a terrible 1937 season, Ferrari was expecting the backing of Alfa’s managing director, Ugo Gobbato. After all, Scuderia Ferrari had competed in more than 200 races and secured 144 victories and 171 podium finishes. One bad year was not enough to get rid of a man. Ferrari was already busy designing the Alfa Romeo Tipo 158 when Gobbato decided to get rid of him.
The result was savage. Even though Ferrari received a massive settlement, a fleet of trucks arrived at Ferrari’s factory in Modena in January 1938 to remove all of Alfa Romeo’s property. They took everything Ferrari was using to design and build the Tipo 158, including his name. As part of the deal, he was not allowed to use his name for four years, and had to refrain from designing and building cars.
Enzo Ferrari Ignores The Restrictions
As he would prove later on in his life when he pulled a fast one on Ford, Enzo Ferrari was a shrewd businessman. He used his settlement package to start a new business called Auto Avio Costruzioni in 1939. The world was at war, so Ferrari decided to build what was most necessary, which was basically just a bunch of stuff to keep Mussolini’s army on the go. Actually, the fascist government made most factories produce stuff they didn’t want to.
Even with the pressure from Alfa Romeo and Mussolini, Ferrari decided to take on a job that could have landed him in legal trouble, or executed at dawn if Italy’s dictator found out about it. Lotario Rangoni and Alberto Ascari asked Ferrari to build two racing cars for the 1940 Mille Miglia, the final year before the race would be suspended for the duration of WWII.
That’s how the Auto Avio Costruzioni 815 was born, though it was technically a Fiat. Ferrari took a humble Fiat 508 Balilla and turned it into a racing car. To start with, he dumped everything but the chassis and the engine, which was a 1.1-liter four-cylinder. Ferrari then purchased another 508 engine, put them back-to-back, and created a 1.5-liter straight-eight. The process was a bit more complex than that, but you understand the basic concept.
The cars were given the numbers 020 and 021, but both broke down and failed to finish the race. They look cool, however. Only Ascari’s car remains, and it’s currently housed in a private collection, but this is considered the first car ever built by Enzo Ferrari.
Ferrari Waited Longer Than Four Years
As you can imagine, the world was a bit preoccupied between 1939 and 1945. As soon as the coast was clear, Ferrari started working on a V12 engine and created the 125 S. Ferrari was there for the very first Formula 1 race in 1950 and hasn’t left the sport since. It competed in Formula 1, the World Sportscar Championship, Mille Miglia, Targa Florio, and endurance racing, most famously in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which it won again last year after a 50-year wait.
Many people wonder what Enzo Ferrari would think of his company today. We think he would have loved the cars, especially the Ferrari Purosangue. Ferrari stated many times that his customers only wanted front-engine grand tourers, which is exactly what Ferrari’s quasi-SUV is. And he would have loved the money it would make because that’s the only reason he sold road-legal cars.
He needed the money to pay for his racing addiction.
Now, Ferrari is one of the world’s most successful and valuable automakers in existence, and anything bearing Ferrari’s family name turns to gold. But it’s strange to think that once upon a time, he wasn’t even allowed to use that name, and that he was beholden to a brand that today is struggling for relevance. Forza Ferrari.