Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People
Dirt Nap City is the podcast about history's most interesting dead people. In each episode, Alex and Kelly dive into the life of a famous person that you have heard of, but probably don't know much about. Our stories are about actors, entrepreneurs, politicians, musicians, inventors, explorers and more! We also cover things that used to be popular but have fallen out of favor. Things like pet rocks, drive in theaters, Jolt Cola, and many other trends of yesterday make up our "dead ends". But whether we are talking about interesting historical figures or past trends, the show is funny, light-hearted, entertaining, informative and educational. You will definitely learn something new and probably have some laughs along the way. Everyone will eventually move to Dirt Nap City, so why not go ahead and meet the neighbors?
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Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People
Enzo Ferrari: The Driving Force Behind Ferrari Motorsports
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Dive into the life of Enzo Ferrari, the visionary behind the Ferrari racing legacy, and the Ferrari brand. In this episode, we explore Ferrari's ambition and passion for motorsport. We peel back the layers of the man behind the iconic prancing horse, exploring his relentless ambition, his demanding personality, and the fiery passion that fueled the creation of one of the most coveted automotive brands on the planet.
We trace Enzo's journey from his early fascination with motorsport to his tumultuous time with Alfa Romeo and finally, the establishment of his own Scuderia Ferrari. Hear about the intense rivalries, particularly the legendary battles with Ford at Le Mans, and the tragic losses that shaped his life and the direction of his company.
Beyond the racetrack, we delve into Enzo's complex character. Discover the stories of his unwavering vision, his sometimes ruthless business tactics, and his deeply personal relationships. We examine the culture he fostered within Ferrari – a blend of cutting-edge engineering, fierce competition, and an almost fanatical dedication to winning.
Whether you're a die-hard Tifosi or simply intrigued by tales of ambition and legacy, this episode offers a fascinating glimpse into the life of a true automotive icon.
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Dirt Nap City is the podcast about the most interesting dead people in history.
Subscribe and listen to learn about people you've heard of, but don't know much about.
Someday we'll all live in Dirt Nap City, so you should probably go ahead and meet the neighbors!
Hey Alex, how you doing, man? Hey Kelly, what's up? Well, I'm pretty excited because do you know what episode number this is? I don't. Maybe 30 something? I know it feels like only 30, but this is 99. Oh, 99. 99. And next week is our big hundredth episode celebration. So if you're listening to this um and you want to hear like a great retrospective about Dirt Knap City, you're gonna want to tune in next week for that.
SPEAKER_02Do you um remember the song 99 Luft Balloons?
SPEAKER_01Ah, yeah. 99 Luft Balloons by uh Nena? Nina, yes, I do.
SPEAKER_02And uh it's a it was a real treat when the German version of the song came on. Remember that?
SPEAKER_01Like it was awesome, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because they would always play the American version and they played it a lot, probably too much. But every now and then you'd hear that German version, and it would really like light your fire for a second. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I agree, I agree. And then there's a band, uh Seven Seconds, if you remember them, kind of a punk rock band. Um, they did a cover of that that was really awesome. Oh, I I do remember that, yeah. You know, that song was all about misunderstanding and kind of World War III starting because those balloons uh they thought it was you know back at bass, bugs in the software, send a message, something's out there. Um, the war machine springs to life. It was a great song. Very 80s song. Well, I'm gonna take you back uh a little further than the 80s today to uh Italy.
SPEAKER_02We're gonna travel to Italy. We've gone to Italy before with Casanova, with Marco Polo. That's right. Um Chef Boy RD a little bit.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah. Italy, Italy is uh, you know, it's a grand old country, a beautiful place. Have you ever been to northern Italy? I have not.
SPEAKER_02Where the mountains are?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the the Dolomites, I think they're called Dolomites. Um, I would love to go out there. The Alps kind of borders with Switzerland. It is really beautiful. There's some beautiful lakes, Lake Garda, Como. The person we're talking about actually was born in 1898 in northern Italy. Okay. Um, he had some nicknames. Uh, one was Il Egener, which means the engineer, or Il Cavaller, which means the knight, or Il Mago, which means the wizard. Oh, sure. The wizard, the magician. He was also called Il Il Patriarca, which was the patriarch. Sometimes he was called uh Il Grande Vecho, which was the grand old man. Now these were all later in life. He didn't he wasn't born with these nicknames. When he was born, um, he was just kind of a normal sort of peasant kind of guy. But what he ended up doing was building one of the most recognizable brands in the world. Any any thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_02Well, it sounds like since he was an old, like they were he didn't, he wasn't an it doesn't sound like he was an American immigrant, or they wouldn't be calling him that stuff.
SPEAKER_01So he never came to the US.
SPEAKER_02I could go with uh, oh really? I was gonna say like Ferrari or Lamborghini. Um am I on the right track?
SPEAKER_01Uh we're talking about Enzo Anselmo Giuseppe Maria Ferrari. Ferrari, yeah. He never came to the US, huh? No, no, Enzo Ferrari. He also also never flew in an airplane and he never rode in an uh elevator.
SPEAKER_02Was he scared of elevators? Wouldn't that be funny if Ferrari was scared of elevators?
SPEAKER_01Race car driver, but no, you know. Yeah, I think part of it was the technology at the time, but he kind of ended up not going to a lot of races later in life for a variety of reasons and kind of staying around his home time hometown of uh uh Monza. So yeah, he was born in 1898. What's also curious about his birthday is most things say, and the birth certificate says February 20th, but he was actually born on February 18th. And this had to do with the law at the time when a child was born, they had to report it to the local officials. Well, apparently there was a snowstorm, or some reason it got reported two days later. So the official birth date on his birth certificate said February 20th, but he was actually born on uh February 18th.
SPEAKER_02Well, I was gonna say maybe the uh maybe the birth records place was on the 20th floor and they had to take the stairs.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. It took two days. Um, so he also do you want to guess when he died? Because um you may not know like how long he lived for.
SPEAKER_02If he never flew in an airplane and he was probably a rich guy, and he never came to the US, obviously, um, he probably died pretty young. I'm guessing he probab maybe he died in the forties.
SPEAKER_01He didn't die till 1988. Oh wow. At the age of 90. No, he lived to be 90. Um just didn't feel like uh coming here, huh? Or getting on a plane. You know, as I said, he he was uh from northern Italy, born to Alfredo Ferrari and uh Adalgis uh Bispini. Now I did listen to an audiobook about him, and I gotta tell you, the Italian names are all very musical sounding, they're all very beautiful and and musical sounding. Bissini, Ferrari, um and this was Bisbini, his mother. And he had an older brother named Alfredo Jr., who went by the nickname of Dino, and his older brother actually became an ambulance driver during World War One. He did, he did. Uh Dino, not not not Enzo. Enzo was not the ambulance driver. Enzo ended up going into the military in World War I, but he his job um was to shoe mules. He was a mule shoe.
SPEAKER_02The ironic part about all these ambulance drivers in Dirt Knap City is you don't really need an ambulance in Dirt Knap City. There's no need for the ambulance drivers.
SPEAKER_01Well, unfortunately, in 1916, um his brother died, but he didn't die from driving the ambulance or being shot or anything. He died from uh a flu outbreak. And his father that same year also died. And uh Enzo, who uh was in the military in 1918, also caught a really bad flu and was discharged. That was the year of the Spanish flu that uh was it the pandemic and it spread spread to Italy?
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. I think it started in Spain. Uh, okay.
SPEAKER_01Well, Enzo was uh released from the military due to the flu. He was actually put into a hospital, and it was a pretty um bad place. It was basically where they sent you to die, but somehow he pulled through and got out. He got married in 1923 to Laura Garello, and it turns out after they met and got married, she was a very jealous and suspicious person. And not only that, to make matters worse, Enzo's mother did not like her, and she didn't like Laura. Laura did not like Enzo's mother, and so they were, you know, oil and water, fighting all the time, very, very uh catty towards one another, and it just didn't make for a very good situation for Enzo Ferrari. But I don't know if you knew this. Did you know that uh divorce was not legal in Italy until 1970?
SPEAKER_02Oh, is that a Roman Catholic uh thing? I think the yeah, I think that the uh what was it called? The Vatican II, I think they called when the when the the Pope uh kind of modernized um everything around then and and decided that divorce was gonna be legal.
SPEAKER_01It it was it was uh very looked down upon, of course, but it was also illegal in in uh Italy until 1970. So he stuck with his marriage. He had um you know, he had some affairs on the side, and we'll talk about those a little later. Um, but basically, when he got back from uh serving in World War I, his family's business was kind of in turmoil because his father and his brother had died, and his father and brother had both worked in the business. Um they were they had a machine shop, you know. They they did things like ball bearings and metal pipes and fairings and all that kind of stuff. And this is right around the time when cars were getting really popular. Now, before his father had died, when Enzo was about eight years old, he and his brother had gone to see a race called the Circuit Circuito di Bologna in Bologna, and that was in 1908. And from that point, he had a love with cars and racing. And he was um, as a matter of fact, the reason his brother had become an ambulance driver was because their family had a car and his brother knew how to drive. That was kind of the thing, is is a lot of people didn't know how to drive back then.
SPEAKER_02So remember we were talking when we talked about Henry Ford, we talked about the Model T and how that was pretty much the only car that you found on the road. Was it were there Model T's that people were driving?
SPEAKER_01No, I think these were European cars. Early European, like um, you know, back then there were a few brands that were already um like Fiat was a big brand in uh early in Italy. I don't know what kind of car they were driving right out of the gate, but so Enzo Ferrari decided um kind of when he got out of the military, he was going to do one of three things. He was gonna be a race car driver, or he was gonna be a journalist because he loved journalism, or he was going to be an opera singer because he loved to sing opera. That's so Italian. Kind of a weird mix.
SPEAKER_02That's yeah, but it's pretty much every Italian, that's their three options, I suppose, right? Right, right.
SPEAKER_01So he he went with race car driver or pasta maker. Or pasta, yeah, yeah. Uh put him in campus.
SPEAKER_02I mean Chef Boy RD's case. Thank God Chef Boy Hardy didn't become an opera singer, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that that would have been a missed opportunity and uh and a bad thing all around for us. Well, he he actually um got back from the war and decided because his brother and his um father were dead, he it was his turn to take care of the family, his business was in ruins. So he went to uh actually see if he could get a job at Fiat, because at the time Fiat was the biggest um car manufacturer. I think they were based in Milan or in Turin at the time, one of those two, which was a little ways from where he lived. But he traveled, basically got turned down by Fiat, but ended up getting another job for a company called CMN that made the bodies, like the the kind of chassis and the bodies for small passenger cars. That was his first experience building cars. He was able to actually in 1920 join uh the racing department for Alfa Romeo, and again, because he was a driver, there weren't a lot of people that could drive cars, and so they he wanted to do it. He had already had the passion for it, so he joined the Alfa Romeo uh driving team um in 1920. He won his first Grand Prix in 1923, which was a pretty big deal. Uh, 1924 was actually his pinnacle season as a race car driver where he had three Grand Prix wins, and you know, at the time you you mentioned a couple of these. Can you uh I think you named all these uh or we've talked about them Ferrari, Maserati, Alfa Romeo, Fiat. There was also Lancia, if you heard of Lancia.
SPEAKER_02No.
SPEAKER_01What about Lamborghini? So Lamborghini, funny enough, was founded um in 1948, so a little later than all this was taking place. But you know what they did uh initially? They didn't make uh race cars. Oh, what do they make? So they were called Lamborghini Trattori, and I found this out by watching Clarkson's Farm. I don't know if you ever watched Top Gear or Um The Grand The Grand Tour. Did you ever watch either of those shows? No. Jeremy Clarkson bought a Lamborghini tractor because that's what they made was tractors. They were building tractors for Lamborghini. I mean, you you think that sounds kind of funny, right? Uh, what are you driving? Oh, it's a Lamborghini tractor. They still make tractors, but um supposedly there's a legend that says that um there was a disagreement between uh Fruscio Lamborghini and Enzo Ferrari about the quality of the clutch in a Ferrari, and that's when Lamborghini decided to build sports cars because he thought Lamborghini had poorly made clutches. So he um became a race driver, he was doing okay, his marriage was not doing well because he traveled a lot, he didn't see his wife much. As I said, his wife was very jealous, um, and his wife also didn't get along with his mother, which is never a good thing. Um, and and so kind of but a common theme in this on this show for sure.
SPEAKER_02The wife and the mother. Yeah, the I I think Einstein was the first time we had heard about this.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's right. That's right.
SPEAKER_02It's always it's always a thing. Yeah, it's always a problem.
SPEAKER_01But but not for us, not for you and me, right?
SPEAKER_02No, no, no, no, no. I'm talking about dirt and obsidity people. In order to be great, it's like a prerequisite. You have to drive an ambulance, yeah. You have to be a little off, you have to do bad in school. Yeah, yeah, you have to do bad in school. Um, so bad that your teachers like say how bad you are.
SPEAKER_01Right, they point it out all the time. Yeah, exactly. So, anyway, these are these are some common themes. True, true. And we're gonna really get to that in our hundredth episode. Um he uh decided to retire from being a driver. He was he was an okay driver, but not a great driver, and wanted to form his own driving team, and so he actually was able to form a team of drivers with cars, but it was sponsored by Alfa Romeo. So have you ever heard the name of this? Do you know what his driving racing team is called? Uh it's scuderia Ferrari. No, I haven't heard that. And scuderia is the Italian word for stable, so it was like a stable of drivers that that he led. Um it's been it's still called Scuderia Ferrari. The racing team for Ferrari is still called that. But uh he led that under um Alfa Romeo, and there was some national pride with Italy, right? Because Alfa Romeo was a an Italian company. They really wanted to take on the likes of Mercedes. You know, they they they didn't like the Germans, they wanted in the English, they wanted to be able to, um, you know, McLaren and some other brands, they wanted to be able to beat them.
SPEAKER_02When you say beat them, do you mean in races or like in market share and selling commercial cars?
SPEAKER_01Uh great question. 100% races. As a matter of fact, I was about to ask you, what do you think of when you hear the word Ferrari?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think of luxury fast cars that are very expensive that only a few people can afford. And um, and then I think of rate, yeah, racing.
SPEAKER_01Like but but you think of racing seconds. Racing, maybe yeah, you don't you you think of luxury cars and um like Monaco and you know, yachts and beautiful people. Yeah, that's that's the first thing. Sure. So Enzo Ferrari didn't care about any of that. The only reason that he did build cars was to fund the racing team. All he cared about was racing.
SPEAKER_02Wow, so they weren't trying to get market share or put put a car in every garage. It was not like Henry Ford.
SPEAKER_01No, as a matter of fact, the early days they built less than a hundred cars a year in their factory in the early days. Very, very exclusive. They were expensive, they were handcrafted, they were beautifully made, but they were um a luxury brand selling to princes and actors and actresses and um musicians and politicians. I mean, people would come over to Italy to buy these uh vehicles in the mid-1900s.
SPEAKER_02So they're rare as like a Maybach today, right? Just something that you just don't see on the road, but you hear about them.
SPEAKER_01Some years they for a particular um style of car or a particular model, I guess, they would only make like five. You know, they'd make have like four models. They were only going to do 20 cars and they would make five of each one. So there's cars out there that are very, very rare. Not like Henry Ford at all. No, no, the opposite. He he really wanted to be um known for luxury. He cared a lot about appearances, he cared a lot about style, he cared a lot about the way people thought about them. Um, but apparently he was kind of a son of a gun. You know, he had a little bit of a temper. He was very um, yeah, I think this is kind of stereotypical for Italians, but he had a kind of a passionate um hot head, you know, he'd get a little upset and yell at people, and he was known to um spit or burp, um, just kind of like he didn't care. Like, you know, his is he would just be very crude and disrespectful around people, and and uh that's just how he was. Kind of like you. Just like me, just like me, me and Enzo. World War II broke out, um, and they actually had to shut down the factory because uh the the fascist government of Mussolini took over and made them build war stuff. You know, they're like, hey, you guys have machine machine shop here, you've got to build war stuff. There's a lot of uh speculation about how supportive Ferrari was of the fascist. And at the time, kind of what said is he didn't necessarily want to support them, but he didn't have much choice. Sure. You know, if if you didn't support them, you would be shut down, you could be executed, you could be taken in as a prisoner, and so he he did have some um associations with the fascist party, but it was kind of one of these things where almost everybody in Italy did at that time. You did, or else you got uh you got a thunking. But he also, after the war, was found out to have done some things to kind of support other parties that were subversing the fascist party. He did things like he had delivery trucks where he would deliver that were used to take the race cars to races, and he would um hide things in there and hide dissidents in there and deliver food to people that were under investigation by the fascists and stuff like that. And that all came out after after the war. Well, 1947, 1948, the the war's over. Um he really doubles down on the Ferrari brand. And can you imagine the logo? Can you describe it to me?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I can I was just thinking about that. Um, there's a big F, right? Is it an F? No. Or is it a horse? It's a horse. It's a horse. It's a horse. I'm thinking of the Foo Fighters logo, sorry. Um, it's uh there's a horse. It's like uh um like a Mustang, but it's uh he's like riding, he's on his hind legs, right?
SPEAKER_01No, yes, yes, it's called the prancing horse. Okay, that's the that's the official name of it. Um that actually came from a countess who whose son had been killed in World War I. Her son had a uh necklace or some sort of piece of jewelry that had that horse on it, and she gave it to Enzo as a gift. I guess maybe he sold her a car or something, and he took that horse, he really liked it, and he started in 1932 uh painting it on the side of the scooter um scuderia Ferrari um races.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and there's a horsepower meaning to that. Um yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. The wildness of it, it symbolizes courage, passion, dominance, speed.
SPEAKER_02Wait, if that was in the forties, I'll bet you the Mustang ripped that off then. Oh. Well, a Mustang is a horse, so right. But I mean they might have ripped the whole idea of a horse off. These days I'm not putting anything past Henry Ford. You know, you know how I feel about Henry Ford. You you've heard of Ford vs. Ferrari, right? That movie? Sure. Did you ever see that? I don't remember if I did. Was it a rival between the two companies? Or Between Henry Ford and Enzo Ferrari?
SPEAKER_01Um the two companies, the two companies during on the racetrack. So Ford actually used to so let me go back to the logo real quick. It is the horse, um, and it's over a red color that is representative of speed and of Ferrari. It's kind of it's called Ferrari Red. Um, there's a shield on it that is kind of evolved over time, but there's always been that shield. And then there's a background that's yellow. Uh the horse is black. There's red, it's black, red, and yellow. And the yellow is actually a tribute to um Modena, which is Enzo Ferrari's hometown. That was the color of his hometown. So um, so yeah, it it definitely um is a well-known logo, not as well known as something like Apple or Atari or uh Google or something like that.
SPEAKER_02Maybe not Atari, but no, but not as well known, but now that you describe it, yeah, I can totally picture it. I haven't, you know, there's I haven't seen as many Ferraris in my life as you do. I'm not I'm not in that echelon that that you are. I don't I don't ride with those folks like you do.
SPEAKER_01I have ridden in a couple of Ferraris. Uh have you ever ridden in a Ferrari?
SPEAKER_02I don't even know if I've seen more than like maybe three in my life. I don't live in the same, I don't, I don't travel in the same circles as you, my friend.
SPEAKER_01Someday you will. Someday you will. I don't know. Uh hashtag goals, right? Well, so he he's got he's got his logo, he's got his uh he's got his scuderia, he's got his drivers, and he started to win and he started to have some success. Um so I watch this show. I was never a big fan of Formula One until I started watching Drive to Survive, which is on Netflix. It's a show all about Formula One, and it's really great. I mean, when you understand what's going on in Formula One, it's a lot more interesting than just cars going around a track because there's a lot of technology, they're trying to solve a tech problem. Um, and in 1950 is the first year that Formula One, it was called the Driver's World Championship. And Formula One, the name for that is actually about the rules. So there's a formula that they have to follow with the cars, and it's very specific, and it changes every year. So the car has to have a certain weight, a certain size, a certain compression on the engine, certain amount of you know, um aerodynamic things that they can and can't do on it. Really, really specific. Huge, huge book of rules they have to follow, and that is Formula One. That is what is called Formula One for cars. Um, he joined Formula One in 1950, which is right when it started. As a matter of fact, um, Ferrari is the only company to race in every season of Formula One since its inception. No other company has done that. Others have come and gone. So he's leading his Formula One team. He's becoming a um, you know, sort of a titan in that space. And unfortunately, in 1956, his only son, who was uh named after his brother, Dino, his name was Alfredo as well, but they called him Dino, he died of muscular dystrophy in 1956, and that really was hard on on um Enzo. Enzo was very close with his son. He really, he really loved his son. He even he even said something to the effect one time about um if you tell a woman you love her, it means you want her. The only true uh love is between a man and his son, was something that he said after Dino died. Hit him hard. Well, in 19 so that was 1956 when his son died. 1957, there's this race called the Mile Miglia, and that is a thousand-mile or sixteen hundred kilometer race in Italy, pretty famous. See, before Formula One, a lot of these races were hundreds of miles or a hundred miles or two hundred miles over open roads, like a 14-mile track or uh a you know 300-mile track. Well, the 1957 Mile Miglia, which took place in Italy, had a crash, and unfortunately, the crash was a Ferrari car, a tire blew out, it killed the driver, and at that time they also had a co-driver because it was such a long distance, they would swap out and one would navigate and one would drive. Um, it killed nine spectators, uh, five of which were children. Oh my goodness. At the time when this sort of thing happened, there were actually there's always an investigation, but in Italy, the driver could, or I'm sorry, the manufacturer of the car, the owner of the car, could be held liable. And they did. They threw the book at him in 1957 and said that he uh was charged with manslaughter. Oh my goodness. Uh he was prosecuted. He even had there was even a uh uh article in the Vatican newspaper that compared Enzo Ferrari to Saturn, the god who devoured and killed his children. Because he was killing boys from Italy. That was the point. Was was uh there weren't they weren't safe enough, they were pushing them too hard.
SPEAKER_02Especially after just losing his son, too. Must have been awful.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Car racing, I think, has gotten safer in recent years, but there's been so many really serious accidents, and and this killed, you know, this killed, like I said, uh five children, nine, nine day so 11 people total, including five children, and the driver and the co-driver. So that was a big thing for him. He was Catholic in name only. He didn't really attend church or go to confession or anything like that. But he was pretty, pretty hurt that the Vatican called him out uh for being for killing. And he got to where he didn't want to go to races. He wanted to keep racing, but he didn't want to be there. He didn't want his, he got really kind of um private and shy, didn't want to be out in the open. He was able to continue on. Um, again, throughout the 60s, uh, his team had off and on success and failure. You know, sometimes they'd win, sometimes they'd lose. And then in 1974, a guy named Nicki Lauda, an Austrian driver, joined. Now, have you ever heard of Nicki Lauda? I have, but I don't know anything about I have heard that name though. Well, there's certain drivers like Senna, if you've ever heard of Senna, just heard the name. Yeah. Uh Nicki Lauda, you know, um Lewis Hamilton has been pretty famous recently. Uh Max Venstoppen. Um, these are just like the guys who just win and win. Well, Nicki Lauda was one of those. He's um he won. And in Formula One, the way it works is there's two, there's two cup cups you can win. There's the driver's cup, which is for the most points for a driver, and then there's what's called the constructor's cup. And the constructor's cup is for the team. So ultimately you want to win both, right? You want the driver to win and uh the whole team to win, but one can win without the other winning. You can have, you know, some a driver that's not the fastest in every one, but accumulate the most points throughout the season and still win the constructors' cup, or you can have a driver that wins, but you don't get the most points. Um, Nikki Lauda was killing it, doing great, and won the drivers' champion and the constructor's cup in 1974. And then in 1976, he was in a crash in Nuremberg. It was a really sketchy race uh course already, and a lot of the drivers weren't very excited about racing on it because it had a lot of issues with potholes and like you know, not not enough safety measures. Now they have barriers, they didn't have enough barriers to absorb these crashes. Well, Nicki Lauda was burned extremely badly, uh, pulled from a burning car, and they thought he was actually dead. He had his eyelids were burned off and had to be replaced surgically, burns over his his whole body. Well, um Enzo thinks, well, this guy's done, and starts looking for replacements and trying to find someone to come in. Well, Nicki Laudis said, No, I'm coming back. And Enzo was like, uh, I don't know if you need to do that. And about uh six weeks later, um, he came back and got fourth place in the Italian Grand Prix, which was a big deal for Ferrari because that's their home, six weeks after all this. Um, you know, he had broken bones, he had and and he was in a lot of pain. Apparently, when he put on his his uh his racing suit, you know, kind of blood and stuff oozed through it, even six weeks later, it was still, you know, still a lot of things not there. But he came back and got fourth place, then he went to a race in Japan, the Fuji race, and he lost his nerve because it was raining and decided not to race. Basically, started the race and then didn't finish, which cost them points. Um, and Enzo was not happy about that. But then um, and and said so, you know, he said a driver should it's his job to go, and of course, Lauda had just been through a lot and didn't want it to happen again. He saw the conditions were bad. Um, he ended up winning the drivers championship again in 1977 for Ferrari, and it's said that he did it out of spite. That at that point he didn't feel like um Enzo had treated him very well or supported him during this, uh, tried to replace him, was like you know, already trying to replace him before before he had a chance to come back and do his thing. So this was the kind of person that Enzo was as a as a um owner of the Ferrari Scuderia Ferrari team. He really didn't feel like the drivers were the most important part of the equation. He thought the cars were, and he thought drivers were a dime a dozen and could be replaced, and that's just how he thought it worked for him sometimes, but it didn't always work, and it certainly left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths.
SPEAKER_02It's crazy that the 70s. So Nicki Lauda and Evil Kinevil basically existed at the same time. There's no way they didn't know each other and hang out, they just seemed like they were they were kind of like kindred spirits, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. A couple of wild men that like to go fast and like to do uh crazy stuff. And and both in the hospital a lot. Yes, yes. Well, Nicki Lauda was only there the one time, and then he came back. He actually ended up um not only winning the drivers' championship in 1977 for Ferrari, he won again uh with uh McLaren and won again with another uh team called Brabham, Brabham, B-R-A-B-H-A-M. I don't know how you say that, but he he was a champion, he was a great driver, and and uh Enzo could never really admit that. He thought it was the cars.
SPEAKER_02But I have a feeling I'm going to be thinking about the burned eyelids long after this podcast is over, like that's and then six weeks. I don't even know how how what technology you would replace eyelids with. Especially in the 70s, yeah, right? Yeah. Did did they do it just a bad job or give them some kind of makeshift eyelids? I haven't looked at any pictures of him. I'm not sure you want to. But he hasn't slept in 40 years.
SPEAKER_01Rip Van Winkle. Um, you know, another thing that Enzo Ferrari would do to get his way when when Formula One, there there's a governing board of Formula One. There's a couple actually, and I I don't remember all their names. But when they would send a fine to him, or when they would try to uh get him to change something about his car, he would threaten to quit. He would say, If if you keep doing this to me, I'm gonna quit Formula One. I'm I'm not gonna race anymore. And he threatened, as a matter of fact, one time he even threatened to come to the US and drive an indie, like to drive the Indianapolis 500 in the indie series, which is similar to Formula One but different. They built a car, they sent it over, and it crashed on like the 40th lap. So that was the end of that. But he was always bluffing, he wouldn't actually quit, he just did that to get his way. You know, it was kind of one of these things where he he prom he and he had enough clout in Italy that and and in the racing world that they would sort of kowtow to him when he did that. Kind of like you. Anyway, he um he ended up uh needing more money to keep uh you know, racing cars is very expensive. And one of the problems that he had was he tried to race in a lot of different categories. Um, he raced in, you know, these sort of long off-road, um, I don't know what you even call them, where you know, where you drive a thousand miles across country. Uh you should know what that's called. Like endurance races, yeah. Endurance, yes, thank you. Endurance races. He raced in Formula One, he raced in a lot of just smaller races that were um sponsored and you could get money in different types of cars. He um and all of that was costing him a lot of money, but it was his passion. That's what he wanted to do. He knew it wasn't the most cost effective. Eventually, uh Ford did try to buy Ferrari, Ford made an offer to buy it, and I think it was $18 million at the time, and this was in the in the 60s. Um, he was going to sell to Ford. He thought it was going to be a good deal. His only requirement was that he had 100% control of the racing activities until he died. He wanted, he was fine with Ford taking over the manufacture of the cars, but that deal fell through because Ford basically said, no, you know, if we tell you you can't race in a race, you can't race in a race. He didn't want that. So he ended up selling to Fiat in 1969. When Fiat bought Ferrari, the whole deal was that he sold 50% of the company to Fiat and that he would remain in racing in in control of the racing activities. And then uh when he died in 1988, Fiat's holdings uh became 90%. Now I told you his son uh Dino had died. He had another son named Piero, but that was not his wife's son, it was his mistress's son. He didn't have the Ferrari last name because they couldn't divorce and he couldn't officially give him his last name. But Piero worked there and Laura would come and just you know berate him. You know, you bastard, I can't believe you're you're here, etc. Well, eventually, eventually Laura died. Um Enzo and Piero outlived her. And now I believe that Piero uh was for a little while the head of Ferrari and uh had a 10% ownership stake in it. And he actually did get Ferrari's name after um after Laura died. Uh Ferrari officially adopted him and gave him his last name, even though he was really his son. And Piero Ferrari, I believe, is still alive. You can you can see videos of him talking about his father and stuff like that. But yeah, he was pretty reserved. He didn't like to travel, he didn't like to do interviews. Um, he was usually uh stuck to the races in Italy, like he liked to just go to the races in Italy, he didn't like to go to races outside of Italy, but he did have a literal, like a lady that he had an affair with for years and years. She moved she moved in with him after his wife died, and that was Piero's mother. You know, he he he had a long-term relationship, like a whole other family, basically. Yeah. Well, he did um, you know, he did get a lot of recognition. Eventually, the Vatican forgave him and you know, kind of rescinded their story about calling him Saturn and eating his own children. He was given and and the Pope, uh John Paul II, came to visit him when he was 90, but at that time he was so sick he actually couldn't meet with the Pope. Uh, but the Pope did bless him from afar. He uh was given the Knight of the Grand Cross by Italy, which is the highest um thing you can get in in Italy as a as a private citizen. And he died in 1988 at the age of 90 of leukemia. And he was so secretive that he actually didn't want it to be reported that he had died until the next day. He wanted when he died, he wanted his funeral to take place the next day, and then the day after that to release it to the media. So they had a secret private funeral just for his family on uh August 15th, and then on August 16th, his death was reported. And he died on August 14th. So kind of like his kind of like his birth certificate, his death uh date was also two days late.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, he's always two days late. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. Interesting for a fast fast guy like that. So when you drove when you rode in the Ferrari, um, was it really luxurious or was it just fast?
SPEAKER_01No, it wasn't luxurious. So I've written in two that I can think of right now. One is a friend of mine um named Curtis, who has has a Ferrari, and uh, and then the other one was the founder of a company that I worked for, had gotten really rich and had a Ferrari, and I happened to ride with him one time. Uh they were not super comfortable, you know, the seats weren't plush. Um they were very well appointed, you know, lots of wood and leather and um you know beautiful details on the seats and on the stitching and on the dashboard. Everything looks really nice, but it's all very utilitarian, you know. At least and this was the last time I think was probably 10 years ago, eight years ago, and then the time before that was eight or ten years before that. Um I don't know. I don't know if Ferraris now have big screens in them. I would think they don't. I would think that like kind of a Tesla style screen or a backup camera wouldn't be something they would put in a Ferrari.
SPEAKER_02Do they make only sports cars? Like, do they is there a Ferrari sedan that you can uh buy, or are they only like two seaters?
SPEAKER_01No, the they're all sports cars. I'm pretty sure they do make some that have a back seat, but the backseat is tiny, you know, it's it's pretty useless. Um, and as I said, in the 50s, they were only making less than a hundred cars a year. That was all they made. Uh, you want to get take a guess how many cars they're making per year today? Uh geez, I don't know. A million? 14,000. Still not very many. 14,000 cars a year. Not very many, yeah. And that's why they're so expensive. Or they cost about 200,000. So uh the Ferrari Roma, which is their kind of uh um starter model, is 247,000. Wow. And if you want the that's for the coupe. If you want the spider edition, which has some extra stuff, it's about 280,000. The Portofino uh is around 250,000, and then you get up into their higher-end stuff that are more uh faster, uh, more like stuff that you would take on a racetrack. Um, the Ferrari 812 Competition is 430,000. The Ferrari SF90 uh Stradale Spider is 600,000, the Ferrari Daytona SP3 is 2.2 million, and then there is a rumored Ferrari F80. Um that's not even not even sure that this exists, but this is a rumor uh that is supposed to uh today, this is 2025, that is supposed to cost uh between 3.1 and 3.9 million.
SPEAKER_02But you know what? If you're in traffic, you can still only go about four miles an hour.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. That clutch is gonna go out on you because they have bad clutches.
SPEAKER_02So who if you don't know this, we can cut this out, but who was Testa Rosa?
SPEAKER_01It's actually an interesting answer. So the Ferrari Testa Rosa was not um uh person, but Testa Rosa in Italian means red head. So Testa, I guess, is head and rosa is red, and it had to do with the color of the car, the way it was the way it was painted.
SPEAKER_02If you just drive a Sonda Civic and it's red, you could say it's a Testerosa Civic, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I guess if it's the same red as the Ferrari 1957 World uh Champion car and it's painted in the same way, um or if you just have red hair, you could say you're a Testerosa. He really um had that spirit of um the value of the brand and the the Ferrari fans. So have you heard have you heard of the Ferrari fans? Do you know do you much about uh about them? Where did I put this?
SPEAKER_02The fans like the the the devotees, people that like it.
SPEAKER_01Yes, they have a name. You mean like Swifties or uh Exactly Is it a Italian name? Yeah, so the the supporters of Ferrari are called the Tyfosi, T I F O S I. And it's a word meaning uh typhus patient, um, because they have feverish enthusiasm.
SPEAKER_02Call back to uh typhoid Mary there.
SPEAKER_01Right, right.
SPEAKER_02Not so funny when it was really happening.
SPEAKER_01The the Tiffosi are dedicated to people in Italy. And you're right, Formula One is where you see a lot of them come out. They come out for the especially the Italian races. They come out to support Ferrari. But these are the folks that wear the uh merchandise, that um understand the culture, that watch the races, that ha know the history of Ferrari. They're just they're just really an enthusiastic set of fans, much like Swifties, like you just said. Would you consider yourself one of a food? No, no, not at all. Not at all. I I just was interested because you did Henry Ford, and I thought uh it'd be nice to see another perspective on someone who founded a well-known car company, but it's pretty different, right? I mean the difference between Ford and Ferrari is the owner car companies, and that's about where it stops. And we did Delorean too. Um that's right, that's right. Um that was uh Enzo Ferrari. There is, like I said, there was a um a model that was called the Dino. There is actually a model called the Enzo that that uh came out after his death to honor him. Um they still only make about 14,000 cars a year. And if you ever get a chance to ride one, I would say do it. Just for the fun of it. But uh, as far as buying one for half a million dollars, it's probably not gonna happen. Even even if I had that money to throw around, I don't think that would be how we would spend it. Vroom vroom.
SPEAKER_00Enzo dreamed of ink and news at dawn, a voice so bold, he could sing till the star shone on, or thunder down the track beneath the burning sun, a life of choices where speed always won. He raced the wind, he danced with fire. Through gears and dreams, he climbed high higher. No room for shortcuts, no can refrain. Pasta spilled like poetry on his plate. Never knew a can of irony on his fate. He chased the roar where his stories made Pen and stage left silent in his arcade. He raced the wind, he danced with fire. Through gears and dreams, he climbed high higher. A skader, his heartbeat in his veins. No room for shortcuts, no can refrains. Hear the echoes, the engines wail. Not as a tenor, but a track's tail. Through life's sharp curves, he carved his name. A legend born of fearless flame scripture and the road divine standard entertainment through the light of the world can taste a thousand dreams, but his was draw, no process scheme. He sang in engine notes, he drew the line. The world can taste a thousand dreams, but his was raw, no processed schemes.
