EP16: Designing Emotion, Formula 1 & Ferrari

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[00:00:00] John Summers is the motoring historian. He was a company car thrashing, technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept sports bike rider. Hailing from California, he collects cars and bikes built with plenty of cheap and fast, and not much reliable. On his show, he gets together with various co hosts to talk about new and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.

Good day. Good morning. Good afternoon. It’s John Summers, the motoring historian, um, and in a pivot to an altogether more serious style, instead of prattling endlessly about random automotive topics in this episode, I’m going to focus on Ferrari. Um, the movie’s coming out. Um, what the movies be now on the movie came out two or three weeks ago, but I’ve not [00:01:00] yet seen it.

So I’m still in the pre movie world and I guess that’s important to me because I feel like in the past when movies have come out, they’ve really defined how people see that particular figure from from history. Um, I guess another example of it might be the Ford versus Ferrari movie, which feels like that’s now the sort of real history of, of, of what happened.

And I’m always put in mind of, um, you know, the Oliver Stone movie, which, um, with, you know, JFK and the grassy knoll and the, the story of the bullet that changes direction. Well, my understanding is it was completely made up. You know, it was made up by all of a stone to make for a good story. It doesn’t have any basis in, in fact, and, and, um, I guess I’m uncomfortable therefore with movie adaptations, much as I love the way that a modern movie adaptation can make the story really, really come alive.

I mean, [00:02:00] this movie features my favorite Ferrari, the three 15 or three, three, five S um, I think it’s the pinnacle sports car. I think. Is the pinnacle road car. Um, I have no problem understanding why, with the exception of the Yulun Hau Coupe, these big capacity V12 Ferrari open road race cars that were built for the Mille Miglia that were built for Le Mans, I have no problem with understanding why, why these cars are worth 10, 15, 20 million.

They’re, they’re the peak of, of automobility. So look, I, I said, I wasn’t going to digress or I’ve tried not to digress, but I’ve, I have done straight away there, haven’t I? Um, and my, my first point was, you know, I, I, I love the, the mark of Ferrari. I was, um, initially, uh, a little, you know, resistant. I think there’s part of me that always wants to, to be a little bit, uh, contrary.

And if everyone else is saying how great [00:03:00] Ferrari is, I, I naturally want to look at Maserati or, or. Or Lamborghini, but, but let’s, you know, let’s call a spade a spade, you know, there’s a reason why the crypto bros have Lamborghinis, not Ferraris as their, their, their dream cars, because Lamborghini connotes obscene about.

of, of wealth, doesn’t it? Ferrari doesn’t Ferrari. We track back to the racing and to history and it has something, it has something more for people. Now, Maserati has that as well, but with, but with less success. And that’s why this recent incarnation of Maserati is far more of a sort of luxury brand than, than the race.

And the racing brand, the, the, for our, the, the Maserati and then, and then Oscar once were, um, so I, I was, you know, I always felt like if you were going to go to a dinner party and try and impress people with your key fob, I always felt like a Maserati one was the best way to do it. But nowadays that would just say [00:04:00] I’m driving a Fiat or Chrysler SUV.

Wouldn’t it? So I’m, you know, I’m not sure about that anymore, but this is a, uh, Uh, yet another look, look digression. The point is that I arrived at Ferrari in, in a slightly reluctant way. And when people say to me, you know, but these Ferraris, they have live axles. They don’t have any of the purity or of a Lotus or something like that.

I, I, I see that, but I like pasta with very good sauce and a nice red wine. And that is what Ferrari offer more and better than any other. Uh, motoring, um, experience Italian or, or, or otherwise. So I lived in Italy for a little bit. Um, and I visited Maranello when Michael clinched either his, I think it was his sixth world championship when, when I was there, it might’ve been sixth or seventh, but I guess it was a time when, um, Maranello was laid out in a different way.

And, and [00:05:00] there was, uh, an area which is now a factory area. Uh, Uh, years ago, that was, was an open field and, and they would put up a big screen. And I guess somebody told me about it at the hotel that I was staying at. And I got talking to an Australian cycling guy. And when I told him I was interested in cars, he was like, Oh, there’s their screen in the race at the track tomorrow.

And I was like, Oh, wow. I’d been intending to just lie in my car. Hotel room and watch the race on TV. But because it was Japan, like the, he could clinch the championship. Michael could have clinched the championship in Japan. Um, so Suzuka, so when you’re in Europe, that’s a race that takes place like in the small hours.

So it was quite exciting. You know, we like, I went out to the Aussie guy. I wasn’t interested in looking at the racing. So I went out there on my own. It’s a bit weird. You like park up a rental car and there are other people around, but it’s all dark and it’s a bit weird. And I didn’t really know where I was going, but anyway, there was the And, and there was the race and, and [00:06:00] Michael didn’t race very well.

I remember, but the, the atmosphere was more, you know, music festival than, than it was. Uh, so I, I’ve, I’ve been with the Tifosi if, if you, uh, if, if you will. Um, Right, it’s advertising voiceover John interrupting with, with another pivot from, uh, the way that these, uh, pods have, have gone before, in that I have a sponsor, so let me mention them, we’re 12 seconds into the commercial spot, and I’ve not mentioned the brand name, it is Auxito.

Global suppliers for automotive led lights. Anyway, long and short is, uh, one day about 10 years ago, I visited Montgomery for a conference in Las Vegas. I was driving home in the old bullet, a one bullet Mustang. I was, instead of going on the freeway, I decided I’d cut across death Valley. So I did death Valley at night.

And, and I guess, you know, the roads are long and straight, and I was [00:07:00] using some of that. The Mustang speed and the fact that the road was quite a way. I ran off the road into the desert because the car was going faster than the throw of the headlights. And when I, um, there was a bit of dust anyway, long and short was I swore after digging myself out of that hole and reversing back onto the road in the, in the small hours there, I swore that never again would I drive a car that I knew had Substandard lights.

Um, so I’ve looked around for a way to upgrade it and then I was watching Furious Driving on YouTube and there he is putting LED lamps in his Mazda Unis Roadster. So I thought, all right, sauce for the goose, sauce for the For the gander and, uh, bought myself some, well, lo and behold, they’ve given me a coupon code.

So if you want to go and buy them, you can get them at, uh, well, you, you pay the normal rate, but I get some [00:08:00] of your money. So that’s outstanding for me. So if you’re going to buy led lights, look, so, so what I thought I would do was I thought this would be the beginning of a little featurette where I talk about how good, bad, or indifferent these auxito lights are.

I’ve yet to. So, you know, more to come. Enough of advertising John, now the Ferrari movie. Yeah, so, um, my initial sense with the movie was that it was going to be based around when I realized the movie was set in 1957. I realized it. I felt like it was going to be based around Ferrari’s own movie. Yeah. Yeah.

Memoirs, not his biography, his autobiography, which there’s a rather lame o English translation of the title, which is My Terrible Joys, which isn’t anywhere near as poetic as, as it is in Italian. And my Italian is not really that good, but even I can, I can see that [00:09:00] it’s just, and the whole book is one of those experiences where you wish you could read it in Italian because you feel like it would have, have more, have more, There.

So this, this, these memoirs that Ferrari wrote 60 years ago in, in, in, in the early 60s, they’re, um, my terrible joys. I recommend it to, to, to anybody who really wants to understand who Ferrari really was. And I’ll quote from it and, and talk more, um, later. So as I say, I thought the movie was going to be based on that.

Turns out no, um, turns out instead, um, They’re going to base it on this sort of, on the book that Brock Yates wrote about Ferrari, which I understand for Americans is, is the gateway. And I understand given Brock Yates, um, position as, uh, you know, amongst American journalists, I understand why a movie funded in LA would, would want to focus on the Brock Yates [00:10:00] version, but I just want to flag for enthusiasts out there.

This is. A very American lens and it’s Brock Yates lens that we’re seeing this this movie with and and you know Those of you that listen to my pod avidly and I don’t think there are any of you judging by the figures But but you know notionally somebody who might have listened to an earlier episode. I told a rambling story about when My son and I met Derek Hill, um, at the start of the tour to get to tour to elegance one pebble beach week on the Thursday morning at the start.

We got talking. We had the same shoes. You know, it was just a just just a random thing. And he and I, he told me at that time he was doing the movie. Um, and, uh, and was involved in, in, in the movie. And, and, you know, that again, speaks to the fact that it has this, yes, super valid perspective because who could be more valid than the son of, you know, Phil Hill, uh, the first.

You know, [00:11:00] the, the only American born formula one world champion for Ferrari, you know, there’s an authenticity there. Um, but at the same time, it is an American lens, not an Italian lens. That was the, uh, the, the thought that I had, you know, Brock Yates and Derek Hill and Patrick Dempsey making it rather than, you know, um, I don’t know who the Italians would be.

You did it. I’m not up on Italian journalists, but yeah, I think you, you understand the, uh, the, the point that I’m trying to. That I’m trying to make here. So, um, much of what, um, I’ve said here then is drawn from my terrible joys and, and it’s also drawn from an attempt over the years, over the decades, as I’ve got older to, to really empathize with Ferrari, because at first I talk about how mysterious he is and he’s got these sunglasses and he’s kind of halfway between a man and Darth Vader.

And really, he’s not that complicated. It’s not that hard. You know, it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, at first you’re [00:12:00] like, why would the guy never go to a motor race? Why wouldn’t he go and watch? I mean, James Mangold moves him totally unrealistically in Ford versus Ferrari to the pits to witness his own, you know, humiliation, of course.

That’s why he didn’t go. And, and if you look deeply into Ferrari’s history, if you look at, there was an Italian Grand Prix at Monza in the early thirties where he lost two or three drivers. In one meeting, you know, in the, in the one meeting drivers dead, um, you need to think about that and, and why that might have meant that he wouldn’t have wanted to actually be at Monza in case something like that happened.

You know, happened again. Um, and of course, this is the, the part of the appeal of Ferrari. It’s like Bond. There’s this really, really dark side that goes on and, and, and now, you [00:13:00] know, the guy died in 1988. So, so now anybody under the age of, of, um. Anybody under the age of 40 doesn’t even remember a time when he was alive.

This new Ferrari as a luxury brand is something completely different. And I’m going to talk about that a little bit more in a minute. But, um, for my own, um, you know, attempt to, uh, create a, uh, A better understanding of who Ferrari was. Um, you’re probably aware the sort of background story is that the Ferrari had this this bad marriage, but Italian divorce laws, he had a son with with with his wife, so he didn’t want to leave her.

Couldn’t leave her even if he wanted to. During the war, he had an affair with a woman that worked in his factory, Lena Lardy was her name, um, and that affair led to a child who, um, is now the only surviving [00:14:00] Ferrari heir. Now, for most of his life, his name is, um, Piero Ladi Ferrari, most of his life, he wasn’t really recognized as, as the, the true air, certainly in, in Ferrari’s within Ferrari’s lifetime, because of, you know, just attitudes to children being born out of wedlock in, in Catholic countries.

Totally out of order now you stop and think about it. But anyway, right. Um, the way that this translated to me is, is the on a visit to Italy. Can’t remember where, I can’t remember exactly what I was doing. I remember I was driving a white van at the time and I made a point of not just eating in the Cavalino restaurant across the road from, from the factory, but I made a point of driving from.

The factory gates to where Lena Lardi lived because I’d read that Ferrari used to [00:15:00] have lunch with her. You know, he would see her at lunchtime, um, you know, and see his son as well. If you, if you think of, uh, if you, if you think of, and so you imagine in the fifties when, when the boy is, uh, is, is growing out of this, you know, the boy’s probably born in 45, something like that.

Say, um, I don’t know. You can look that up on Wikipedia, can’t you? But anyway, um, for me, the, the drive, this is the, my passion, my, you know, my passion for Ferrari, um, the drive from the factory up to Lina Ladi’s village is exactly the kind of road that it’s awesome to drive a car like a Ferrari on. Um, you know, there’s bends, but there’s long straights, and there’s beautiful scenery, and there’s all different kinds of characters, and then characteristic of road surfaces, all that, all that kind of thing.

There is only, you know, one, you know, one road. He must [00:16:00] have driven that road. to see Lena those, those, those years ago. Um, the village itself is, is high on a hill. It has a beautiful view. Um, the whole experience is, is one of those experiences where people say, Oh, don’t meet your heroes. You know, don’t drive your hero, somebody.

Um, I’ve, I’ve never found that to be true and never did I find that to be more magic, more of the magic that you, you know, what is this thing that makes Ferrari special? I’m telling you, it’s magic. It was, I, I never felt it more than that drive from the factory up to the village. And then from that, I can’t remember what the village is called.

Google it, you know, it’s around the week. It’s on, you know, if you Google Lena Lardy, where she was from, you can, you know, you can do exactly the same archeology car key or whatever you want to bloody call it, you can do the same thing as, as I did, the road is, is a good [00:17:00] road, um, And I often think of Ferrari driving down the hill leaning on the car in the extreme frustration of these two Women and two relationships and I thought of that before the movie so I i’m open to the idea of the movie Um emphasizing that.

Um, I also think that you can underestimate the fact that how you know more isn’t more When you’ve got women who you’re in relationships with, more is less, you have less chance of preserving the either relationship, you have less chance of actually spending quality time with either of them. There’s just no sort of contentment.

I’ve not watched the movie, I’ve not read about fries, personal relationships. I’m just like, I just feel like that’s pretty obvious from the You know, from the outside looking in and, and, and I don’t think it’s hard to believe that the guy spent a lot of time at the factory and had the kind of approach that he had [00:18:00] because of what was happening domestically.

So, uh, I, I’m really optimistic that the mute, that the movie’s gonna, um, tell a story of somebody who, um, who I recognize from my own reading and imagination. If that doesn’t. If that, if that makes sense, probably, um, so I’ve not read the Brock Yates book, um, at the time of recording this, I read the first chapter of it and I would urge anybody to, to read that foreword, um, it’s Luigi Kineti, um, again, Wikipedia if you don’t know who he is, it’s Kineti in a big Renault 25.

Bye. Maranello to fly back to New York and it’s really, uh, it’s, it’s a, it’s another one of these, you know, I just talked about Lena Ladi’s village. It’s a, it’s another one of these pinch [00:19:00] myself because this sort of feels really weird. faintly supernatural. It feels magical. It feels, you know, Ferrari famously wanted to be a journalist.

You know, he wanted to be a sports writer. He wanted to be a racing driver or he wanted to be an opera singer. And I feel like he accomplished all of those things. The opera stuff is, is the tragedy, is the sense of fate, is the sense of something more than, you know, something spiritual. Even and that opening, uh, forward or chapter one or whatever with, with Kinetti, um, in the South of France and his big Renault is, uh, is, is all of that.

So, so yeah, so I encourage you to get hold of, uh, Brock Yates book, um, whether or not you’ve, uh, you, you’ve seen the movie. Um, so part one is pre movie for me, part two, I’m going to do another like opinions thought after [00:20:00] I’ve, you know, afterwards, why, why the devil not? Um,

I guess the, the, the next thing that I wanted to think about was why does it matter? And, and I think that the answer to that is that in the years since Ferrari himself has died, everyone wants a slice of what Ferrari represents. It’s winning. It’s success. It’s the best. If you ask people that that’s what they’ll say.

And I feel like that’s borne out in people’s actions because if you own a Ferrari, you don’t need a Ferrari key form. You don’t need a Ferrari jacket. You don’t need Ferrari shoes if you actually own one. So the people buying all of the Trinkets and I’m not knocking them for that. You know, I’ve done that myself, you know, my son has a cool Ferrari t shirt.

Um, but those [00:21:00] Everyone wants a slice when you buy the clothes you are saying I want a slice of this coolness Even if I can’t own the car And that’s fine, right? It’s worked for Harley, why shouldn’t it work for, why shouldn’t it work for, for Ferrari as, as well? Before I do this, but like, you know, nine out of the top 10 most valuable cars ever sold have been Ferraris, right?

So apart from the Eula Now Coupe, which is a 50s sports racing car, So, similar to the Ferraris, right? They have these massive values, um, or Ferraris, well, well, so this leads me to believe that in the centuries to come, you know, this is going to be the Caravaggio, this is going to be the El Greco, this is going to be, you know, in the year 2525, this is going to be the car brand, right?

That people look back on and they’re going to look back on the artisan and the craft and the whole like wow one [00:22:00] minute. It was all horses and carts and the next minute people had actually harnessed, you know, things together and created. I mean, it’s going to be, they’re going to be like a symbol of the industrial revolution, I believe for future generations.

And I think, you know, the names that I jotted down in my, uh, in my notes here were Stratafarius, Chesterfield, Picasso. It’s like this sort of, you know, it, they’re going to be there. Um, the great Ferraris will be already are great pieces of truly pieces of architecture, pieces of art, pieces of moving sculpture, um, should have used this sort of turn of phrase when I was talking about the movie, but before, but, but.

You know, I’m, I’m jumping around and badly organized. It’s me, right? Whatever. Um, you know, I I’ve, I’ve created in the, in my notes here, this [00:23:00] sort of German style compound noun that the, I feel like this biopic is, is at the point in his life when life, death, love, sex, and cars were all like commingled together or came together in, in, in one place in this operatic way.

Tragedy of, of, you know, the, the melee melee air in 1957. Um, So I do some work for Stanford. Um, when Stanford approached me and said, would I be interested in doing a lecture for, for a course that was called designing emotion for reactive car interfaces? I scratched my chin for a little bit and thought, what?

Machine what car cars are designed what car or motorcycle what creates is going to create the [00:24:00] most, you know, reactive emotion and and it’s, it’s Ferrari who comes to mind for that, isn’t it? It’s absolutely for Ferrari. Um, uh, so I want to frame my thoughts today around that presentation and even just rehash that that presentation.

So to begin, let’s talk a little bit about my thoughts on, on my terrible joys, because I feel like you can’t understand what Brock Yates wrote without going to the primary source, what Ferrari himself wrote and thought. And I’m going to continually, uh, come back to that. And, and Throughout Ferrari’s, uh, storytelling without throughout storytelling about Ferrari, there is this sense of mythmaking.

There is this sense that it’s a fable and, and [00:25:00] it’s important to note that this begins with the whole way that Ferrari was himself from the glasses to the writing in. Purple ink. So, you know, when he marked a document, it was very clear that it was, it was Ferrari that, that was, uh, that, that, that was writing, um, in my terrible joys, there’s an early scene where he, he, he, he, there’s this fully, you know, Opera, um, fully operatic tragedy where he has is a family of four.

He’s the, the youngest son, the, the, the war comes and, and in the war, his, his father and his elder brother both die. And he himself is, is nearly killed by a disease, but he recovers and when he’s discharged from the army, he’s given a letter to take [00:26:00] to the boss of Fiat in Turin. And he takes the letter and the boss of Fiat sees him in a nice office and says, dude, we can’t hire everybody.

Sorry. And, and Ferrari leaves and tells a story of walking in a park in, in Turin and wiping the snow off a bench and sitting down and, and weeping. And no doubt it happened. But. That was a man in his early 20s and the man writing about it was in his early 60s and was a successful industrialist who was writing for who, well, we, you know, the book itself talks about, you know, his motivations for writing, but he’s, um, I have no doubt that the park bench really took place, but the way in which it’s framed, this is, [00:27:00] is, uh, has the feeling of, of, of opera for me.

So this is Ferrari’s low point. And then he talks about, um, his first, Grand Prix win when, uh, some Frenchman, I can’t remember the racing driver’s name, Wimil maybe, maybe Wimil, I don’t know. Um, maybe I’ve mispronounced the name. I, I’m struggling with French pronunciation, don’t, don’t I? But anyway, long and short is, is, you know, after the first victory, he comes, Ferrari comes and he sits on the same park bench and, and now, you know, he feels, he feels different.

Um, his date of birth, Is mysterious, right? And it’s because there was a snowstorm and, and, you know, that for after he was born, they were snowed in for a few days before he was a before anybody was able to go in and register the birth. So, so even, even that has the feel of, of, uh, almost, um, Yeah, it [00:28:00] has the feel of fable, it has the feel of myth making, it has the feel of something more than human, he doesn’t have a normal date of birth like you or I, he has this, now maybe lots of people born in 1898 might have had that, but the fact that Ferrari himself in My Terrible Joys alludes to this snowstorm, it’s, you know, the myth The origin of the smoke and mirrors was the old man Enzo himself.

Now I have a postcard I bought at the Ferrari birthplace, and I’m not going to attempt the Italian, but the translation is, I am one who has dreamed of what it is to be Ferrari. I am one who has dreamed of what it is to be Ferrari. In other words, this Ferrari is an imagination, is an imaginative construct that I’ve built for myself [00:29:00] from those fucking lows of that park bench in Turin, when you were sitting there thinking, what the devil.

Am I gonna do what? What let’s, you know, what did he do? He hung around coffee shops and got to be mates with, uh, a, a dude called Ugo Ce, who worked for Alpha Rome, Mayo, and he got a test driving job for a company called CMN. And, and, you know, just, uh, the enthusiasm and the passion. Began to pick up but I just love the fact that it was at the coffee shop in in in Turin I have on a trip some years ago I did sit around in a few coffee shops in in Turin in the area where where Ferrari met Sivocci in in that period And uh, yeah, it was uh an interesting experience just because italian society is is interesting to watch It wasn’t it wasn’t like I had any revelation into Ferrari.

It was just an interesting. Uh [00:30:00] Experience for me, um, The racing career ends. He’s invited to the French Grand Prix in 1924, but something happens and he doesn’t race. Now I had read one account that says nervous breakdown. Ferrari himself glosses over it in my terrible joys. I was sick, something like that.

I can’t remember what it is. It’s clearly, it’s just downplayed. If you’re not reading very carefully, the end of his own racing career is sort of drifted over. Because that’s obviously not how he sees himself now. Now he’s the racing coach. Builder and the, you know, the puppeteer of racing drivers, isn’t he?

Um, so that whole end of his racing career, me personally, I want to do more research into that. Um, my other thought from the early part of my terrible joys, which is, um, shocking and a bit disappointing and speaks to, you know, the darkness of, of, of the character is this falling out the, the Ferrari had when he was at Alfa Romeo, um, with this [00:31:00] Spanish guy, Wilfredo Ricart, Ricart, don’t know how to pronounce it.

I’ve only ever seen the name written down. Um, I, I just feel that the, you know, so in My Terrible Joys, he criticizes it. The Alfa Romeo 512, which is a 158, but it’s rear engined. And of course we know that the 158 and 159, these are hugely successful racing cars in the post war period, dominant racing cars in the post war period.

Um, one wonders if the 512, uh, had been properly developed, if perhaps that might have been, you know, Ferrari might have, it might have taken Ferrari a lot longer than 1951. Um had alpha actually developed that car properly. So I guess that showed me Um a blind side right arguably ferrari’s blind side in this relationship that he had with with reichard[00:32:00]

I guess, um when you read my terrible joys, um, there is a sense that this is like a rambling personal You know, anecdote, right? More like the kind of thing that I’m doing now. And you do find yourself thinking, well, can I have some You know, it, it, it’s very clearly not a biography, right? That you don’t get, there’s no like, table of results.

There’s not like other motoring books, you know, it’s not like other motoring biographies in, in, in the least bit. [00:33:00] It, it’s this, um, selective memoirs, right? So, so he, he, so Ferrari talks about this dialogue in solitude yet. This is he’s putting it down in a book, right? So there’s this sense that there’s almost something therapeutic about what he’s doing.

Um, and this is the only thing he wrote, right? There isn’t anything else. There’s no other, there was no, you know, he never went back later in life. He never had, and there must have been loads of people who wanted to do biographies of him. He never went back and did anything else. All he did was this thing early in, in, in the sixties and, and, you know, You know, I, I’ve written here that, that in, in.

you know, the adjectives I’ve used, uh, in my notes here were raw, close to the bone and authentic. And, and that’s kind of surprising. It’s, and as I say, so in that sense, it’s almost like a therapy session. [00:34:00] Um, and again, right. I, this is my, do we need the lens of Brock Yates or, or can we drink straight from the spigot?

And, and I think we can drink straight from the, the, the spigot. Um, The first paragraph is the business success and the dream of being a racing car constructor and a successful one at that fulfilled. The second paragraph is this crushing pain at the loss of his son, his legitimate son Dino. He never mentions the illegitimate son throughout the book, right?

Again, right? I, you’re, you’re conscious that although it’s raw and honest and authentic, it’s not the whole story. It’s, you know, yeah, it’s, I guess that the social mores about what [00:35:00] it’s acceptable to talk about in a book or a memoir. What isn’t acceptable to talk about those things have shifted and changed.

And, um, in Catholic countries in the late 20th century, you could not acknowledge illegitimate children. As your own. Um, and I think it’s unfair to judge for Ari for not doing that. Just as it’s unfair to judge him as being a, you know, fascist collaborator because you know, he made ball bearings in the second world war for you know, the the.

The Italian, well, first for the fascist cause and then I think for the Germans. I’m not, again, I’m not sure about that. It’s, you know, he is a guy who did what he needed to, to, to get on down, down the road. And I’m not going to, uh, I’m certainly not gonna, gonna judge him [00:36:00] for that. But look, right early in the book, reflecting on the very peak of his professional success, reflecting on the period, the fifties, the early sixties, that will absolutely cement the legend of Ferrari, that will create all the brand equity that’s being mined today by these overpriced, fast luxury trinkets, both, you know, cars and handbags and shoes.

He writes, Have I done anything really worthwhile, or even enough to make me satisfied?

On the memoirs, he says, they are written from the heart. Of that, I can assure you. From the outside looking in, the two women, the two families, the sheer, like, stress. The fact that in [00:37:00] 1958, He lost four drivers, 57, 58, four of his Formula One drivers were killed. Um, there was the upset of the Mille Miglia in 57.

Um, that led to the Pope threatening to excommunicate him. So that had moved completely out of the realms of motor racing and into the realms of. Of the public and, and, and within that, of course, there must have been, you know, there must have been public hatred for him on the street people in, in his day to day social life.

It must have been extremely hard in that period after, you know, in, in late 50, uh, in late 57. Um, I think the, the other thing to, to think about is that he has built. all of this stuff and he has a son, [00:38:00] that son cannot inherit. He cannot acknowledge the son and the son cannot inherit. And, and that’s must have, uh, been a very, very hard, I think this is a good metaphor, isn’t it?

Cross to bear, right? It was a, a difficult cross to bear and that’s, uh, I think applicable, uh, uh, metaphor. Um, and I guess, you know, As a British motor racing fan, I had encountered some of this side of Ferrari before, because when, when you read about Formula 1 history, um, a lot of the British writers or English speaking writers, they might be New Zealanders or Australian, but a lot of the English language writers will talk about, um, Ferrari having a special relationship with Peter Collins.

When, uh, so this, so, and the, the, the feeling is that Collins became a sort of surrogate [00:39:00] son for, for Ferrari with, and that thing only, only sort of soured off a little bit when, uh, when Collins fell in love and got married, how dare he. limiting Ferrari’s ability to, to manipulate him in, in, in the same way.

And I guess, you know, my, my thought on that is, is that Colin seems to have been very easygoing, likeable kind of guy. And if you put that in contrast with Mike Hawthorne, who was so committed to just beer and. Fuck you, living like I want to live, that there was no way that, I mean, when Ferrari met Hawthorne to sign him, they went to the Gavallino restaurant, and, and Hawthorne admits to ordering the most expensive whiskey, because he could, right?

And I’m just, you’re just like the worst kind of Englishman abroad. Right. Really the, the, the very, the very worst. Can you possibly, the contrast with Sterling Moths is incredible, right? Can you, you can’t even imagine Sterling Moths [00:40:00] ordering, I’m not the Sterling Moths ever sat in the Cavalier, you know, with, with, uh, Ferrari.

Well, maybe he did, I don’t know, but you cannot imagine him looking at the whiskey and deliberately ordering the most expensive one. All right, without further ado, let’s go through this designing emotion. Presentation that I did. This is a few years old now. So what I wanted to do first with, with this presentation that was thinking about, um, Ferrari was position Ferrari, um.

As I position Ferrari in the context of Formula One and Grand Prix, because the course that I’d done and the work I’d done in the past had been largely about Formula One and Formula One is a good conduit for people who maybe aren’t into cars generally, or who see Ferrari as a luxury brand. Formula One’s a good [00:41:00] way to make money.

People realize that there’s, um, more to this luxury brand than there are perhaps to, to other luxury brands as a level of engineering integrity there, which, so I wanted to begin with this idea that the formula one is the most watched sport in the world. When there’s not an event like the Olympics or the soccer world cup or something like that taking place.

And although for, uh, in the, at the time when I put this presentation together, those numbers were actually declining since then, thanks to Formula One drive to survive the Netflix show, that that’s that those figures of, of turned around and Formula One remains, uh, you know, has a unique global reach.

That’s the, the reality of it for, for brands. Those juices. No other environment that has this kind of global traveling circus, high technology, glamor, theater. [00:42:00] You know, when, when formula one came to Vegas, that really seemed to be the, uh, the, the, the right home for it. And we’re talking 200 or 300 million people watching.

That’s the, the raw, the raw numbers. Um, it’s high tech, but it’s gladiatorial at the same time. So, you know, we’re, you know, wheel to wheel racing is something that, that we can all, uh, understand, you know, from the traffic light Grand Prix to the, to the slot cars and the PlayStation, we can all understand that, but when it’s on this, when it’s real cars and they’re worth millions of dollars and it’s on the sunset strip or it’s around the Harbor side at Monaco, you know, this has all.

Awesome 21st century gladiatorial feel yet the machines that we’re using are these uber high tech, you know, missiles that are crafted of the, uh, you know, that are packed with the latest and greatest [00:43:00] technology and thoughts and, and, and innovation. So, so this is exciting. I mean, it’s an individual sport in the, obviously when we’re wheel to wheel like that, it’s about the drivers, but it’s also a team sport and really more than I think people realize in terms of, of, um, not just at the track, you know, building the car, but also back at the factory, designing it and testing it and, you know, deeper than that, um, the relationships that, you know, You know, McLaren aren’t building their own engines, are they?

They’re outsourcing that to Mercedes Benz or to Honda or to a large OEM carmaker. carmaker, um, is, is part of the team, you know, as, as well. So, um, in, in lots of ways it’s, yeah, team and individual. The individual is the tip of the iceberg, but the icebergs, uh, the icebergs there. Um, Formula one, particularly motoration [00:44:00] generally, but formula one particularly is contemporary and old fashioned at the same time.

Right. And that we’ve got the latest and greatest technology and brands and all of that. Yet the rules and the way of, of being these. These are often, you know, 50 or, or a hundred years old. And the quote that I used in the presentation was, was the, the Formula One represented a pure engineering challenge.

It represented a prototype and iterate in a hyper competitive, on a hyper competitive international stage with giant budgets, that’s what I believe. I’ve said there, so, you know, um, I, in, in order to frame this stuff, you know, we all have pictures and sound, don’t we? And, and, and, uh, I deliberately, uh, I would always use pieces of, of, of video Now in this podcast, um, video’s not gonna work very well, is it?

But, but this is a piece of [00:45:00] film which I mostly used because of the sound. This is, uh, 19, Bossy 92.

So my challenge with the modern Ferrari is, is the way that they’ve sort of evolved from this pure racing animal to, to be in, uh, You know, [00:46:00] well, I did a flight from the East coast and, uh, many years ago now, and I happened to sit next to somebody who was, uh, a marketing manager. And we were talking about how she was buying a new car.

And at the time she was really impressed because, uh, I was able to guess based upon what she told me she was driving at the moment, based upon the, the Sources that she’d used. I could guess quite accurately that the car that she was going to buy was the then new Lexus RX 450 H. So it was the first hybrid SUV that, that Lexus, that Lexus did.

This must be 10 off. 10 plus years ago at the moment. And they said, and then she said to me, you know, she was aspiring to, to, uh, uh, Tesla and I was still in that place with, with Tesla’s where I didn’t really think they were cars and, and, um, let alone as [00:47:00] I come to terms with the fact that we’re no proper instruments or anything like that.

And you had to do everything through the, through the touch screen. Like that was, was, uh, So we, we butted heads over Tesla and she said to me, well, what would, what would you like? What would you go? And I said, Ferrari. And she said, well, you know, that feels like. You know, it’s a car for, for golf club poses.

And I’m like, wow, is that how the brand has, has evolved? And then, um, I, I had this slide here, which if I’ve done the video properly, you’ll be able to see. And if I haven’t, or if you’re listening, you won’t be able to see, but it’s a Ferrari California or a Portofino, whatever the entry level one, and it’s a convertible and you can fit the golf clubs in the trunk, there’s like a special hat.

like ski hatch kind of affair to allow you to fit the golf clubs in the truck. And I guess this is absolutely not the kind of Ferrari [00:48:00] owner or driver which I wanted to be. The kind of Ferrari owner or driver that I wanted to be is summed up by this, uh, this Letter that was written to the magazine Motorsport in April of 1972.

Sir, I cannot resist Mr. J. H. Thomas invitation to be classed as a quote, public spirited and knowledgeable member of the Ferraristi. I bought my 330 GT four years ago when it was already three years old and had done 24, 000 miles. It had been beautifully kept. I purchased it in Italy as, living abroad, I needed left hand drive and, incidentally, avoided the crushing English purchase tax.

This amounts to 2, 000 on a new Ferrari, which is, of course, reflected in the used market price. [00:49:00] The car has now done well over 40, 000 miles, which puts me into the category of Mr. Thomas’s inquiries. The old joke that one drives this type of car with a mechanic permanently in the passenger seat proved to be just that.

Parts renewed during my ownership have been points, condensers, a hose, a brake servo unit, steering pins and bushes, a dip switch assembly, and the routine brake pads. Girling, plugs and oil filters. The only serious mechanical trouble occurred last summer when the head gaskets had to be replaced. An expensive job.

The silencers have needed welding and the door bases had to be treated for rust, though these were the only places so affected. The present set of very broad, high speed Cinturatos have done 13, 500 miles and still have plenty of wear in them. Which is just as well, since the last time I was in England, they cost me [00:50:00] 20 each.

In my view, for a car of this age, the above list is not scandalous. But spares are expensive. At least, they seem so to me, although not knowing the equivalent prices for English cars, I have no yardstick. I recall grunting sourly when charged 28 for a new brake servo and 10 for fitting, whereupon said brightly, Well, sir, if you will run a Ferrari.

Spares are readily available for old Ferraris as the design of the car, and that includes the impressively elegant body by Pininfarina, has undergone no radical changes in many years. Naturally, one cannot slip into a corner garage for one, but when I took my car to Maranello Concessionaires on the Egham Bypass for attention to the steering and brakes, they had the bits in stock.

All the bits in stock. Petrol consumption is heavy, Especially [00:51:00] if full advantage is taken of that flashing performance. But what do you expect with 12 cylinders and three yawning double bore webbers? Oil consumption on my car is negligible. But periodic oil changes of 18 pints at a time fray the wallet at the edges.

Cool as the proverbial cucumber at autoroute touring at well over 100 miles an hour, it suffers from overheating in prolonged traffic dawdling, although it is perfectly tractable, despite the poor steering lock often found on this type of car. Initially, mine used to oil a plug or two, an ailment which gives the Ferraristi the chance to use the throwaway line, there I was cruising along at a ton, only on 10.

To cruise this, I To cure this, I experimented with one or two well known makes of plug, including the one recommended by Modena, to no avail, until [00:52:00] a letter from KLG put me on the right track, and I haven’t had a misfire since. Ferraris seem to have a very individual reaction to plugs. Another Ferrari owner I know swears his will not run properly except on a certain Japanese plug.

Despite the special plug spanner supplied in the toolkit, changing plugs requires a certain dexterity. If Mr. Thomas has read this far without being depressed and daunted, Let me assure him that if he still intends a Ferrari, he is in for a rare driving experience that is almost sensual in its appeal and may spoil him for other marks for life.

I have not had such a thrill on years, look, I have not had such a thrill on wheels since I straddled my first motorcycle, a DR Douglas, at the age of 14, and that, alas, was many years ago. I Even after four years of ownership, it [00:53:00] still gives me rare pleasure to hear the distinctive mechanical sound of that V12 when it breaks into life.

If I seem unduly impressed by the Commandatore’s product, allow me to add that I did not graduate to it from some small box, but a Maserati 3500 GT. That I bought, used and ran for four years as my policy has always been, on limited funds, to buy a used quality car rather than a mass produced new one. I get more fun out of my motoring that way.

I hope Mr. Thomas joins the club and I wish him luck. R. Hudson Smith, Antibes, France. Published in Motorsport. April 1972 and that was always the kind of Ferrari owner. I wanted to be. That’s my kind of Ferrari owner.

So the next part of my presentation covered something [00:54:00] that we’ve talked about already, really, which is these 3 ambitions Ferrari had to be a racing driver, to be an opera singer, to be a sports journalist and and how we built it. Really achieved all of those things. Um, he refers to the passing of his brother as he was taken by one of those bouts of flu, which doctors can cure in a few hours today.

And, and I think there you have a sniff of, uh, the bitterness of Ferrari in, in the sixties, looking back 40 years, uh, how his life was, um, during the first world war. And I’ll also talk about the park bench in, in Turin. Now, the next thing I wanted to talk about was Francesco Baracca and, and the origin of, of the, the prancing horse badge.

Um, so the yellow. [00:55:00] Of the badges is Modena. It’s the modernese city color. Um, the we know the flag appears on on the badge as well. And we know the flag appears on the badge, both in shield form, you know, if we think of it on the side of pre war Alfa Romeo’s or we think of the badge on, you know, a fifties Ferrari Testarossa, it’s a shield, isn’t it?

Whereas if we think of the badge on a You know, on Magnum’s Ferrari 308, it’s square, but in each case, it’s on the Modena yellow, and it has the Ferrari, it has the Italian flag on it. And I think that’s interesting. Um, you know, the, the Triumph badge doesn’t have the British flag on it. Uh, you know, the Rolls Royce logo didn’t have the British flag on it.

The Renault diamond doesn’t have anything to do with, um, you know, the French tricolor. Um, this speaks to what Ferrari was doing in that post war period, that he wasn’t just building his factory. He was building. [00:56:00] Italy, um, very much in the same way as, you know, when Toyota decided to pivot from making sewing machines under license to making cars, uh, the Japanese government renamed the city that they were based in.

Toyota in, in honor of that. I always think it’s a bit like Stalingrad, which is faintly macabre, isn’t it? But, uh, that, that’s the, uh, the kind of, of nation building. I feel like Ferrari was, was, was, was involved in. So the, the, the story that he tells in My Terrible Joys is that in the twenties, um, the mother of, of Baraka.

Baraka was an air race in the First World War. An ace is somebody who’s shot down five of the planes. Um, Baraka, um, is, is, is killed in the war. Um, his mother says, you know, you, uh, Ferrari, you personify after a plane crash. A race, a minor race in, in Italy after a win. She says, you personify the, [00:57:00] uh, you know, the spirit of my son.

Um, and I’d be honored if you carry his, his logo with him. Now what’s interesting about this is that the logo doesn’t actually appear. On the cars for some years later, so according to Ferrari’s version of events, she talked to him in the twenties, but he didn’t put it on a car for some 7 or 8 years later.

Now, that’s why I like this picture, right? Because in the picture, we can see Baraka standing by his plane. I’m afraid I don’t know what it is. I’m not going to take it. If I had to guess, spat. It’s a spat, but I don’t know whether it is. But the, the point is that in the picture, and it’s quite a well known picture of him, there is a prancing horse on the side of the plane.

But we can see that the horse is on this white background, the white background, which is maybe not part of, of the plane. Now what. Um, a story I’ve heard from, uh, uh, [00:58:00] let’s credit where credit is due. Fred Kern, when I did a lot of work as a docent for the Blackhawk museum, easily the most well informed docent that we had over at Don Williams, his Blackhawk museum was Fred Kern.

He was weird. He was kooky, but my word, the knowledge that the guy had was just. Um, his feeling is he’s will always say this. He would always introduce the topic by saying that there are two cars with a black prancing horse on the badge Ferrari. But the other is Porsche. Porsche badge is of the city crest of Stuttgart.

And if you look at the prancing horse on the Porsche badge, it’s a lot closer to Baracus. prancing horse than maybe even [00:59:00] Ferrari’s later stylized prancing horse. Now here’s an interesting thing that I learned quite recently. In the first world war, in order to prove a kill, you might shoot the other guy down, then land in the field next to him, And take part of the insignia of his plane as proof.

Indeed, when you are, the photograph is taken of you, Francesco Baracca, Air Ace, you might display that trophy on the side of your plane. And Fred Kern believed, he’s gone now sadly, believed that the prancing horse that we see here was taken from a fighter from Stuttgart’s plane. Plain. And Baraka took it and, and really this was not Baraka’s symbol at all.

Fred thinks Ferrari in the 30s saw this picture like the prancing horse and [01:00:00] decided that he would use the symbol there. I, I really don’t know. I just love the stories. Um, Students who I, I did the presentation for, um, were fascinated by the evolution of, of, of the brand, um, that, that the racing cars have the shield with the S and the F and that the road cars have have the other.

I guess there’s a, there’s a spirit of the age thing there isn’t that fascinated by, by, by. On the loo with nothing better to do? Surf on over to Summers and Sons Used Car Trading, conveniently available on eBay. Pick up one of our carefully curated and freshly prepared Hot Wheels, Matchbox, or Corgi diecast models.

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Replete with the patina that you would expect. Named a man from summers and sun. It’s a sit at a thousand bucks. We look forward to your bids. Thank you for listening. Now we will return to our regular scheduled podcast. So the next thing I wanted to think about was how important the circumstances of Ferrari’s hometown were.

And so he himself will will say that none of this would have been possible without the tradesman of Modena. Um, so it’s, it’s that. But, but there’s a broader context that Ferrari’s born into, which, uh, makes him the, the person that he is. So, so, um, you know, Italy had a [01:02:00] fascist government Mussolini came along in 1921, um, in, in lots of ways, his brand of fascism was far more, uh, he’s far more pure fascist and far better thought out and far more well established than, than, you know, what was going on in Germany in the, in the 1930s.

And, and, and for, um, Both Italian and German fascists, the, the, the notion of modernity and speed and mechanical perfection, um, was, was really important. And, and so, um, You know, for my designing emotion presentation here, if you’re looking at the slideshow, you can see that there’s this fabulous sort of piece of futurist modernist art with this, like, blocky man speeding along in his blocky, uh, futurist cubist motorcycle.

Um, similarly, this other slide here of, uh. of this racing car, um, which is done with all of these sort of organic, sweeping, [01:03:00] contrasting shapes. Really incredible, um, pieces of, of modernist art. After the war, after the Second World War, Ferrari set up on his own and, and in My Terrible Joys, he talks about wanting to create cars bearing my own name.

And, and this is, is, uh, you know, these, Deeply, uh, earthy, I think is the wrong term, but more, um, visceral, um, ways of, of, uh, yeah, of personifying, um, the, the automobiles. So, um, you know, he, he talks about, um. In an interview that he did late in life, um, Ferrari says that for me, uh, the racing [01:04:00] car is like a son and, and.

Yeah, I don’t feel like I can add anything to that. I feel like all of that talk about Ferrari being enigmatic, it’s solid. I hope he’s not enigmatic at all. He just told you how it is for me. The racing car is like a son. The Ferrari brand, as we know, it begins when Ferrari himself was in his forties in middle age, the factory itself.

At Maranello is a Phoenix rising from the flames because he couldn’t be based in Modena because of wartime bombing even out at Maranello that factory is bombed right at the end of the war and and and so there is this sense that the Phoenix rises. Um, Yeah, the Phoenix rises in that factory in, in, in Modena, um,

the V12 engine is very much associated with who Ferrari [01:05:00] is and, and this, this begins in the first world war and Ferrari is involved in moving around in the factory that the, uh, distributes and, and builds the, um, Packard. V12 aero engines that are being, that are being made under license in Northern Italy at the time.

And, and, uh, Ferrari says in, in this, in one of these interviews, I think you can still find knocking around on, on YouTube that I, I fell in love with the V12 and have never got divorced.

So the real pivot point for the Formula One team was at Silverstone at the 1951 British Grand Prix. And, and this is where, um, Gonzalez, uh, Argentinian fellow in the four and a half litre Ferrari is able to overhaul and pass the Alpha drivers in their one and a half litre supercharged [01:06:00] Alpha 158s and 159s and when, when Ferrari wins, he famously says, I have killed my mother.

Um, for the presentation, I use this because of course, Alfa Romeo was the team that he worked with, you know, before the war, but how melodramatic again, right? All of this, all this talk about mothers and sons and they’re not to him. They’re not cars. Can you ever imagine Porsche or Hushka von Hanstein or somebody like Walter Rohr or Norbert Singer, Yeah.

Talking saying, Oh, I’ve killed my mother. If you know, when Porsche beat Volkswagen in a race or something like it, it’s just not imaginable. There’s just, there’s just this wonderful quintessential Italian passion, um, in the whole way that Ferrari is. That’s the. That’s where the magic is, right? If, if, uh, now in my image here, we see Ferrari overtaking Alfa Romeo.

We see [01:07:00] Maserati, um, in, in the pits there. I guess de Graff and Reid had a Maserati force a late CLT, um, and wound the supercharger right up and, uh, didn’t expect to make the race, but it was the only way he could stay on pace. And, uh, the motor didn’t make the race. We, we learn a lot about how Ferrari manipulated his drivers and, and it’s hard not to see him as callous when, you know, he hires these young men who are full of hope and enthusiasm and, and they go out and race and they die.

I want to highlight one particular story here, and that story is, is the, the death of Alberta was scurry, so you’re probably aware that the, uh, a scurry in, in the summer of, of, in the spring of 1955 is, is killed in the spring of 1955. Um, he flips the 55 either way, doesn’t matter. 56, it might have been anyway, long and short.

Uh, [01:08:00] it was 56, wasn’t it? Either way, he crashes the car into the harbor at Monaco. In the race, only car ever to go into the harbour, apart from, uh, Pete Aron in Grand Prix. Um, he’s, uh, you know, only, uh, uh, Ascari crashes into the harbour. Um, he’s rescued by divers, um, The following week, Isak Monza, for somebody else’s sports car test, goes out.

Tests and at the corner at Monza, now called Ascari, rolls the car in and he’s killed. Um, the story goes that when they call from Monza to Maranello to tell the old man the score, they say Ascari is mortal. Ascari is dead. And Ferrari [01:09:00] responds, Eh la macchina? And the car?

On the face of it, Super Catalyst, looking deeper, we can see that He’s not going to stop motor racing now. I’m not going to break down in tears. This has happened before. So we just move onward and upward. Keep calm and carry on wartime spirit. That’s the, that’s what I think is, is at work here. Um, the correspondence between Ferrari and, um, Ascari’s wife tells us, sorry, not of, of callousness.

Ferrari was, um, Yeah, Ferrari’s own hero was Alberto Ascari’s father, who was killed at Monza in 1925. So, um, if anybody would feel the [01:10:00] poignancy of Alberto’s passing, it would be, um, Ferrari himself. So the photographs here are not Ascari, they’re taken from the D’Agostini, um, Biography of Farina, um, and it’s, uh, so on, on the left, we have the, the, um, you know, Farina lying by the car and on the right, we have the close up of him and, and his Ascari, uh, and his Castellotti rather standing over and making sure that, that he’s, that he’s okay.

I’ve, I’ve included, I included it, right? Cause here’s a way to illustrate what happened to Ascari, um, without the, the actual. You know, without the macabre ness of actually showing the, uh, exactly what happened. So that was a little bit of, uh, of storytelling on my behalf. So I, I used these couple of quotes, which [01:11:00] I’ll, I’ll read out, um, from My Terrible Joys, which I just, Just kind of eye popping, given the hero worship around Ferrari nowadays.

I am convinced that when a man tells a woman he loves her, he only means that he desires her, and that the only total love in this world is that of a father for his son.

It is the woman who chooses her mate, not vice versa. We think we have wooed and won. Whereas in reality, we’re merely the slaves of our desire, on which the woman has played with consummate skill. Kind of incel, isn’t it? Nowadays we’d call it that, but, you know, it’s, it’s, again, right, it’s this sense of, there’s a bitterness and a darkness, uh, about Ferrari.

It’s quite well known Ferrari sold the [01:12:00] road cars in order to finance racing. Um, I don’t think that’s mythology. I think he had very little interest in the road cars. Um, what he says about Ferrari customers in My Terrible Joys is not that complimentary. Most of them seem to have been more interested in what the car looked like rather than, you know, they didn’t want to know which carburettor jets had been fitted or What the back axle ratio was, they were more concerned about the colors.

And, and, uh, you know, that obviously, you know, meant that Ferrari was less interested in them that he was in, uh, you know, in the guys in, in doing the, uh, in doing the racing. The, uh, the image that I used to, to illustrate for our, um, to, to illustrate, um, for our road cars here is of the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance from 2014 and it’s, uh, John Shirley’s, [01:13:00] uh, Ferrari.

I think it’s a 375 plus. I think that’s what it is, but it’s a special body car. It has what was, uh, Described to me by Mark Osborne at Bonhams. This is where I picked up the phrase from the the perfect storm of provenance. He wasn’t talking about this car, he was talking about another car, but I just love that turn of phrase in that this car was not only a Le Mans winning car that was entered, it was a And presented in the Milli Milia driven by Roberto Rossini, and there’s photographs of him with ink Bergman and the car, you know, at Rome, at the Rome control kind kind of thing.

Um, then after the race, it was sent back to the factory and it had this awesome special body fitted to it, which if you’re not looking at the photo of it, or even if you are, you really need to surf around and, and look a little bit, look, um, and look at the car a little more because it is. Absolutely. The definition of Pebble Beach [01:14:00] elegance, as well as having the racing history, as well as having the celebrity history, as well as being a big capacity sports racing Ferrari is just absolutely the perfect storm of provenance.

The aesthetics are about more than what the car looks like outside. They’re also about what the car looks like inside. And for me, the interior of a 60s Ferrari, especially before they started doing this new fangled Formica, which looks so cheap and nasty now, but then was like premium. And you paid more for the wood and the leather, the wood, the leather.

The shifter, the nardy steering wheel, this is it. This is all you need. The five gauge cluster. This, this is, this is what you need to drive a car. Anything more is superfluous. The [01:15:00] 1963 Ferrari GTO, the world’s most expensive car. It was when I put this presentation together. Numbers two, three, and four. I don’t know about number five, but numbers are GTOs.

They, they remain, you know, in the Eulenhaupt Coupe is not really, you know, there’s not any more of those. There’s not like another one’s going to be sold. So we’re not going to, you know, GTOs, the, the reason that Ferrari GTOs acquired this sort of Mona Lisa kind of status within the classic car world was specifically because of, well, because of a Number of factors, the perfect storm, if you will, 39 built 36 survive.

So that’s really important because it’s enough to make a market, but it’s not so many that anybody can have them. It creates a super exclusive club. If you want to rub shoulders with Rob Walton of Walmart, buy a [01:16:00] Ferrari GTO, do a driving event, there he is. That’s if you, if you know, it, it, it. Owning a car like this, let opens a door into a super exclusive club.

Um, you should never underestimate with collector cars, how important the way they look are. If the shape isn’t elegant, if it, if you can’t sit on the Pebble Beach lawn and look elegant, it’s never really going to be valuable. So Pebble Beach last year, they had Senna’s championship winning. McLaren MP4, McLaren Honda MP4 stroke four.

So for me, as a Senna fan, this is, you know, the ultimate racing car, the ultimate, this is Excalibur, this is the ultimate, you know, so what car on the lawn at Pebble Beach could be better than the car that Senna had used to win his world championship? Well, you know, the judges [01:17:00] judged other cars because.

Fundamentally, uh, 80s or 90s Formula One car is just not that elegant as a car. Despite Senna’s achievements, the machine itself is not that elegant. Similarly, however beautiful a Seata is, it’s never going to win Best in Show because a small car just cannot be as elegant as a big Packard or a Bugatti.

You know, as a bigger car can be as this as John Shirley’s Ferrari. You know that can win in a way that a Seata or an Oscar or something like that never could, even though you can argue that the design is is is as exquisite. Um, so the GTO it has it all right. It’s the right it has those kind of it’s it’s.

It’s, it’s a decent size. The proportions are perfect. It has that race history. Um, each one, I mean, like all [01:18:00] Ferraris of this era, each one’s individual has their own, have their own history. But that history is, is, um, thoroughly recorded. So there’s a sense of, you know, exactly what you’re getting. That’s really what we’re talking about.

Now, I, I put on the slide here usability and it seems absolutely ridiculous for like a 50 million car that you should worry about whether or not it’s usable. But, but what we mean is the, um, I’m Marco Schumacher Formula 1 car, enjoying that car, driving that car means renting a track and having a crew and planning and fiddling and farting around, right?

That’s a lot of hassle. If you think about, What that entails, you know, you can enjoy it without you rent a track or, you know, There’s a very hard thing to enjoy. Whereas the Mercedes Gullwing or Aston Martin [01:19:00] DB5, this is the car, which pretty much can keep up with modern traffic. You have to concentrate.

So you can use it for cars and coffee. You can use it to take your kid to get ice cream, your grandkid to get ice cream. You know, you can actually use them. And, and the Ferrari GTO very much falls into that category that you could actually use it if you did use it, just like with a real, just like with Cobras, if you did use it, people would probably think it was a fake.

People would think it was a fakie do and you could probably just fly under the radar, especially if you had a bit of a scruffy one in a not good color. Um,

the other thing I wanted to say about them and really wanted to underline for for my students, a lot of whom are, uh, you know, design graduates, product Engineers, you know, marketing people, you know, people who are going to create the consumer products for the [01:20:00] next, you know, over the next 5, 10, 20 years, um, was, was how the sheer coolness of Ferrari GTO, just the letters GTO, the sheer Coolness of that, um, was enough for that visionary marketing man, John Z.

DeLorean and his sidekick, Jim Wangus sitting in Detroit to think to themselves, my God, if we can hot rod up this Tempest and give it the same name as a Ferrari, maybe just, maybe we might shift some steel. And of course. We know that the Pontiac GTO, named after the Ferrari GTO, the Pontiac GTO is considered by most people the first muscle car.

So, so, uh, the, the influence, Ferrari’s influence is far broader than you might initially, uh, initially anticipate. [01:21:00] But this car, chassis number oh 6 2 5, I did a, a motoring event, um, in it with, uh, Aland Cadney. Um, and, uh, yeah, it’s the only, uh, vintage Ferrari that I would say I know intimately. Uh, for a week there I was the mechanic.

I checked the oil, I checked the brakes. I, I, uh, and it was, uh, and deca, they drove it. Really hard as well. I’ve, uh, Highway 33, um, just near Santa Barbara, Southern California. He had that car in full on four wheel drifts, like the kind of four wheel drifts that Ari Vartanen would have been, uh, would have been proud of.

Um, I remember watching his foot go from, uh, backwards and forwards from the brake to the throttle. Um, sitting next to him. He had no seatbelts.

Ferrari describes himself as an agitator of many. He does it repeatedly. Um, [01:22:00] that’s important for two reasons, right? It’s that he doesn’t see himself as a great engineer. He doesn’t see himself as a great racing driver. He simply sees himself as somebody who motivates other people to do it. So, so this is his, he’s so, he’s one of these leaders who hires better people than, than him and, and makes them.

Work, work together. But I think this term of agitator is, uh, is interesting because it speaks to the way that he would pit drivers against each other. He speaks to the way that throughout Ferrari’s existence in the classical period, there were two V12 engines, the Colombo and the Lampready, and he would alternately develop one and then the other, depending upon his relationship with the designer of Ferrari.

You know, with first with Columbo, then with, with Lampready, but when he fell out with one, he would go back with the other. And then you would see that engine being developed over ever greater capacities. In fact, I was just talking about the cat [01:23:00] in there in the, uh, um, and that motoring event, that, uh, Mille Miglia North America thing that I, uh, that I did with him.

He told me that you can tell the difference between a Lampradian and a Colombo unit based upon where the spark plugs are. I can’t remember which one has them high and which one has them low, but that’s how you, you tell the difference between them. We talked about how in, after the Mille Miglia in 1957, there was talk of Ferrari being excommunicated.

In June 1988, not long before Ferrari died, the Pope came to Maranello. Um, that papal visit is huge. And it speaks to all of this business of, um, Ferrari not just being a car brand, but being somehow synonymous with or part of what it is to be Italian. In the [01:24:00] newspapers, the Italian newspapers, they call Ferrari La Rossa.

It’s Not Ferraris. The Red. Interesting, interesting, very different from how the Germans see Mercedes or how, um, you know, we Brits saw, um, our brands, Norton or, you know, Velocet or whatever. I was talking about Senna’s. McLaren MP4 stroke four. And how I thought that was like the Excalibur, you know, the, the, the greatest weapon by the used by the greatest driver, if you like, if that, if you think Senna’s the greatest driver, you know, you would be, that’s what it would be that that would be the Excalibur, um, that year in 1988, Senna was at McLaren with Prost and, and the two of them were unbeatable all year, um, except for one race, 16 races.

Between them, they won 15. [01:25:00] The weekend of the Italian Grand Prix at Monza was the weekend after old man Ferrari died. Ferrari dies. Italian Grand Prix is the next race. Just like every other Formula One race of the season, the McLarens just peed off at the front and nobody else was in it. On this occasion, Senna was faster and was doing his usual business of carving through the backmarkers very aggressively.

And as we can see from my slide here, one of these backmarkers, who is a sports car driver by the name of Jean Louis Schlesser, who the young, the younger me felt shouldn’t have even been sitting in a Formula One car in the first place, He didn’t see Senna coming. Whatever, the two came together. And as you can see from the slide here, [01:26:00] Senna got airborne and that was enough to take him out of the race.

And guess what? Ferrari won too. Because they’d been running 3 4. I don’t know what Prost. But the two Ferraris won the race. So you’ve this sense that Ferrari dies. And then against hope, At Monza, the Ferraris come through and, and, and win. So it’s this again, right? Ferrari’s whole life. He made the myths, right?

He was the smoke machine, but my word, there’s some strange coincidences, uh, going on. So what I wanted to wrap up with for my, uh, for my students was, was the thought that, you know, a company like Audi has brand values. Ferrari, Has as a brand has a sense, a deep sense of identity based upon what’s [01:27:00] happened in the past.

And I think that’s really where I should stop.

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