Ferrari Borrowed Its Most Famous Symbol
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Car
Ferrari Enzo Ferrari
The Ferrari Enzo is a very fast and expensive sports car made by the famous Italian company Ferrari. It was built to showcase the latest technology and design in cars, and many people admire it for its speed and style. It's often talked about because it's a dream car for many enthusiasts.
Concept
post-war Italy
Post-war Italy is the time after World War II when Italy was rebuilding and changing. It was important for the car industry, leading to the creation of famous brands like Ferrari.
Concept
racing history
Racing history is about the important events and people in car racing over time. Enzo Ferrari played a big role in making Ferrari one of the best racing teams ever.
Concept
Ford versus Ferrari
'Ford versus Ferrari' is a famous competition between two car companies, Ford from America and Ferrari from Italy. It became well-known because of a big race in the 1960s where Ford tried to beat Ferrari, and it was made into a movie.
Concept
circuito de Bologna
The circuito de Bologna is a famous race track in Italy where car races took place. It was important for car racing history and inspired many drivers.
Car
Lancia Zeta
The Lancia Zeta is a type of van made by the Lancia company. It's used for carrying things or people and is known for being useful and practical.
Concept
coach builders
Coach builders are people or companies that make special bodies for cars. They take the basic frame of a vehicle and create a unique outer design, often for luxury or custom cars.
Concept
torpedo-bodied cars
Torpedo-bodied cars are a type of car design that looks smooth and rounded, like a torpedo. They were popular in the early 1900s because they looked nice and helped the car move through the air better.
Company
CMN
CMN is a company that used to make tractors but started making cars after the war. They used old engines from another car brand to build new vehicles.
Brand
Isotta Fraschini
Isotta Fraschini is a brand that made luxury cars in Italy a long time ago. Their engines were so good that other companies used them to build new cars.
Car
Ferrari
Ferrari is a famous car brand from Italy that makes fast and expensive sports cars. They are also known for their success in car racing.
Term
Targa Florio
The Targa Florio is a famous car race that takes place on narrow, twisty roads in Sicily. It's known for being very difficult and has a long history in motorsport.
Term
fuel tank
The fuel tank is where the car's fuel is stored. If it leaks, the car can run out of fuel or become dangerous.
Concept
prancing horse
The prancing horse is the logo of Ferrari, a famous car brand. It symbolizes speed and racing success.
Concept
Copa Acerbo
Copa Acerbo was a famous car race in Italy. It was important in the early days of racing and had many well-known drivers competing in it.
Concept
Grand Prix
Grand Prix is a term used for important car races. These races are usually very competitive and feature some of the best drivers and cars in the world.
Car
Ferrari Dino Ferrari
The Ferrari Dino 208 GT4 is a sporty car made by Ferrari in the 1970s, named after Enzo Ferrari's son. It has a smaller engine than most Ferraris, which makes it different and special. People talk about it because it's a unique part of Ferrari's history.
Brand
Alfa Romeo
Alfa Romeo is a famous Italian car brand that makes sporty cars. Enzo Ferrari worked there before he started his own racing team.
Car
Ferrari Scuderia Ferrari
The Ferrari Scuderia Spider 16M is a special version of a Ferrari sports car that can be driven with the top down. It was made to celebrate Ferrari's success in racing and is known for being very fast and exciting to drive. Car lovers talk about it because it's rare and has a strong connection to racing.
Car
Alfa Romeo Tipo P3
The Alfa Romeo Tipo P3 is a race car from the 1930s that was very successful in competitions. It was known for being well-designed and fast.
Car
Ferrari AAC Tipo 815
The Ferrari AAC Tipo 815 was a race car made by Ferrari in 1940. It had a special engine and was built for racing, but it didn't finish the race it entered.
Term
Mille Miglia
The Mille Miglia is a famous car race in Italy that is about 1,000 miles long. It was very tough and many cars raced in it.
Concept
Fiorano test track
The Fiorano test track is a special racetrack where Ferrari tests their cars. It's important for making sure their cars perform well before they are sold or used in races.
Car
Volkswagen Corrado
The Volkswagen Corrado is a small, sporty car made by Volkswagen in the late 80s and early 90s. It's known for being fun to drive and has a unique look that many people like. Car enthusiasts often talk about it because it's a classic that still has fans today.
Term
carburetor
A carburetor is a part of an engine that mixes air and fuel together so the engine can run. It's mostly found in older cars now, as newer cars use a different system.
Company
Weber
Weber is a company that makes carburetors, which are parts that help engines mix air and fuel for combustion. They are popular in many performance cars.
Car
Lancia Aprilia
The Lancia Aprilia is a small car made by the Italian company Lancia in the late 1930s. It was designed to be light and easy to handle, making it popular during its time.
Company
Auto Construzioni Ferrari
Auto Construzioni Ferrari is the name of the company founded by Enzo Ferrari after World War II. It was important because it showed that he wanted to get back into making race cars.
Car
Ferrari Tipo 125
The Ferrari Tipo 125 was the first race car made by Ferrari after the war. It had a 1.5-liter engine and was important for the company's comeback in racing.
LIVE
All right, y'all, gather round, because Monae exchanged from sibling rivalries here with an announcement.
This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Google Gemini. Now, listen, the girls over at Google said,
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Spend more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time,
more results now with Indeed sponsored jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75
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slash past gas. Just go to Indeed.com slash past gas right now and support our show by saying you
heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash past gas terms and conditions apply. Hiring,
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to get it in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout terms
and conditions apply. Hey, how you doing? Welcome back to past gas this week. It's part one
of our two-parter on the life of Enzo Ferrari, a very complicated guy, loved racing, duh. Let's
just get into it. Let's just read the dang story. How about that? No more preamble.
Before the red paint, before the prancing horse, before the name Ferrari meant anything at all,
there was just a man, a man with a dream and a chip on his shoulder the size of Modena.
Enzo Ferrari didn't grow up rich or with connections. What he had instead was obsession,
a burning desire to go fast and to win. Winning was at the heart of every decision he made.
Every race was a battle and every loss was personal. In the chaos of post-war Italy,
Enzo Ferrari built something that would come to define excellence. A stubborn kid from outside
Bologna who went from sweeping garage floors to running the most legendary team in racing history.
What Italian car maker gave young Enzo his first shot? How did he prove himself behind the wheel?
And what events led to him retiring from racing? Today on past gas,
we're diving into the early days of the godfather of speed, it's Enzo Ferrari.
That's how it goes, right?
I really think impressions come from the face rather than like that sound, right?
Because you're doing like the Marlin Brando godfather.
Oh, cotton, that's what he did. I think so, cotton balls.
No, just teeth.
Just your teeth? Yeah.
Nice. Well, welcome back to past gas, everybody. My name is Nolan Sykes.
Those voices you heard across from me, it's Bart Bidlingmeyer.
Hi, happy to be here. Thanks for having me. I don't think they heard my voice yet though.
I thought you commented on, you just said cotton balls.
Oh, I did say cotton balls. It was my nickname in high school.
Cotton balls and I was Cotton Eye Joe.
And that's Cotton Eye Joe Weber. Hello, everybody.
Hey, how's it going? I'm doing great, actually.
Good.
I'm feeling good.
Good, good.
I actually got sleep last night.
I've been sleeping terribly recently.
I've been like waking up, like sure you wake up in the middle of the night, that happens,
but then like kind of, God, I can't sleep.
And then I kind of, you know, move around and then I'm like,
why can't I get back to sleep?
But I'm then like, oh, but I did just have a dream.
I must have fallen asleep for a minute.
You know, like it's just, but I don't feel like I'd slept, you know?
Yeah. Yeah.
That's the worst.
So we're coming full circle here today. We started past gas with the story.
I feel like I'm hunched over with the story of Enzo Ferrari versus Ford, Ford versus Ferrari.
That was the first like four episode arc here on the show.
And now we are covering Enzo Ferrari's life in more detail on this episode in these,
this two-part episode.
This is a two-part episode to round out season one of past gas.
That's right.
320 episodes.
Insane with no break, basically.
And we're going to, you know, have a nice little holiday.
We're in a regroup and we're coming back in 2026 with such a cool season arc, JDM,
golden era arc.
It's going to be really cool.
Yeah. So very excited for that.
So we thought it'd be appropriate to kind of come full circle here and talk about
one of the most influential legendary figures in car history here.
Before we start, I just really want to thank everyone who listened over the years.
It's been cool to see how people respond to this kind of stuff.
And what started as an experiment kind of grew into this bigger,
actually huge thing that just kept on going.
And we wouldn't have kept doing it if you guys didn't comment and
DM us and respond and come to our live show.
Our one live show that somehow took years to produce.
But yeah, thank you guys from the bottom of our hearts.
It's been really fun and we're really excited for the next chapter.
And we hope that you stay tuned.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, it was so fun, so amazing just adding on to what Joe just said.
When we're shooting big trip going across the country,
you know, we ran into people who worked a ton of different kinds of jobs from
trucking to running like a gun shop to, you know, working in warehouses, all that kind of stuff,
like just such a wide spectrum of people who listened to the show all the way through
on their on their work day.
And this means so much.
And, you know, I'm just looking forward to the next stage of the show.
I will say that podcast fans are way cooler to talk to.
I'm only talking for my own reasons.
Podcast fans are like, oh, yeah, you know, a little site like a specific thing that we talked
about in a random episode.
It's always a great conversation.
And I feel like podcast people really pay attention.
For sure.
Absolutely.
So we thank you.
And with that, shall we do it?
Yeah, let's let's shout.
Let's talk about Enzo Ferrari.
Enzo and Selmo Giuseppe Maria Ferrari was born on February 18th, 1898 in Modena, Italy.
Did you say Maria or Mario?
Maria, you know, is I didn't know that.
Although some initial records said otherwise, a blizzard had swept across northern Italy that
week, isolating towns and freezing railways.
The storm was so severe that his father and the midwife couldn't even report his
birth until days later.
Did you know that the top of Italy is the latitudinal equivalent of parts of Canada?
Really?
Yeah.
And the bottom of it is like just around New York City ish.
Wow.
That's way higher than I thought.
Man, once this Gulfstream starts messing up a little bit, Europe's going to be kind of
f***ed, isn't it?
So in the confusion, officials recorded his birthday as February 20th,
even though he was born two days earlier.
I see.
Yeah.
Enzo Ferrari didn't come from a family.
Why didn't they just record that?
I don't know.
You didn't believe him.
Yeah.
Enzo Ferrari didn't come from a family of nobility or wealth.
His father, Alfredo, ran a metalworking shop out of the basement of their home.
It was modest work.
At the turn of the 20th century, Italy's economy offered little in the way of
upward mobility.
If Enzo had followed the path in front of him, he might have lived out his
days as a blacksmith, hammering steel like his dad before him.
Or a fettuccine minor.
But even as a boy.
Is that where they get that?
Yeah.
Deep in the mountains of Sicily.
But even as a boy, Enzo wanted more.
His childhood dreams took strange shapes.
First, he wanted to be like a foozily.
First, he wanted to be an opera singer, then a sports writer.
It was only after a life-changing experience that he realized he was meant to be
a racecar driver.
That moment came in 1908 when Enzo was just 10 years old.
His father took him to see Felice Nazzaro compete in the circuito de Bologna.
Nazzaro was already a legend.
He was a charismatic, fearless, and elegant driver behind the wheel.
That day, he drove to victory in front of a roaring crowd.
Throughout this race.
By elegant, they meant he like wore a, he wore like a scarf.
Yeah.
A rim with dark glasses, big dark glasses.
Then he waved like this.
Yeah.
Throughout the race, as the cars approached the circuit's most dangerous corners,
Enzo noticed that the race organizers had taken a peculiar safety measure.
They had flooded the ground alongside the road to a depth of one foot for nearly 40 yards.
The idea was simple.
If a car veered off the course, the water would slow it down, protecting the spectators.
This minor detail meant to preserve life revealed something profound to young Enzo,
the planning and foresight that went into it all, the risk and the reverence for danger.
That day, Enzo Ferrari discovered something that would live inside him forever.
A tapeworm.
With just one encounter with the world of racing, he was hooked, much like a hookworm.
Yeah.
It's funny that a safety feature was the thing that got him like, oh, maybe just to think about it.
Yeah, it made him think.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's crazy though.
Someone told me, because I didn't really care about sports when I was a kid.
And this kid, that was like an amazing athlete, but didn't really want to play sports that
much.
But his dad was like forcing him to be a quarterback and play baseball and stuff.
He was like, yeah, I don't really like sports, but I'll find one thing to focus on
that I think is impressive.
And now I'll get kind of open the door for the sport.
And I started thinking about sports in that way.
I was like, well, it is really hard to do a pick and roll.
That's kind of what I feel for Enzo, because I do that with sports.
I would ask, I was going to ask what you think the most hardest thing to do in sports is.
Definitely hit, I mean, this is my bias showing, but hit a baseball with a bat.
Hit a round ball with a round bat and be able to place it where you want.
I think that's been, it's a huge discussion on Instagram right now.
If you listen to the podcast, all the smoke with Matt Barnes, and they have all these sport
stars on, and most of them agree that hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports.
Yeah. So I guess it's not that bad that I was terrible at baseball when I was a kid.
Huh? Dad?
Dad? Give him a, give him slack, Scott.
Give me some slack.
He actually had to stop coaching me in baseball because he was,
he was taking it too seriously.
You came in hit balls for our practice and you were doing good.
Thanks, man.
Yeah. Yeah.
You had fun and then you were like, I did.
I'm going to come back.
And then that was six years ago.
Yeah, that was, that was on Burbank.
I know.
So far away.
I do remember the other time we were hitting balls on West LA in the old office.
With red pad.
Like through my shoulder out.
Oh man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I do like baseball.
Bar was in our league.
Yeah.
That's actually where we cut our teeth together.
We are, and also tore the hamstring.
Do you remember I had a wrap in my car?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I wonder if Mark's behind the board going, I don't know, no one was hitting.
Wait a minute.
Can we utilize this guy?
Okay, anyway.
In the early 20th century, Italy's political unrest and economic strain found itself being
compounded by war, first against the Ottoman Empire, then against Austria-Hungary in the
First World War.
Like so many young men of his generation, Enzo Ferrari enlisted without hesitation.
He joined Italy's Third Mountain Artillery Regiment, a unit tasked with defending the
rugged terrain of Northern Italy.
Isn't like the Alps up there too?
Yeah.
There's Italian Alps.
Isn't them Alps up there?
There's the Dolomites on the west side, and I think the Alps that border up with Switzerland.
Okay.
War hardened Enzo, but even more than the combat, it was the loss of those close to him that
would prove to be more defining.
In 1916, while Enzo was still a teenager, the Spanish flu swept across Europe like
wildfire.
It took his father first.
Then it took his older brother, his only sibling, Alfredo Jr.
Enzo was left alone, young, and grief-stricken.
Amid the chaos and devastation of those brutal years, Enzo Ferrari found an anchor in the bond
he shared with a mentor and friend, one Francesco Baracca.
A national hero and one of Italy's most revered fighter pilots, Baracca embodied the traits
Enzo admired most.
He was courageous, well-disciplined, and always carried with him an unshakable sense
of purpose.
But it wasn't just Baracca's prowess in the skies that left the lasting impression.
Around his neck, he wore a necklace crafted by his mother, adorned with the image of a horse
reared up on its hind legs.
He's actually the reason that machine guns on planes sound like Baracca.
That was dumb.
Enzo saw in that emblem a kind of spiritual defiance.
It would leave a mark on him far deeper than the battlefield ever could.
Its significance would only strengthen with the passing of Francesco Baracca in 1918.
His plane was shot down by an Austrian fighter.
The necklace was never recovered.
Enzo fell gravely ill in the final months of the war,
his body wrecked by the same virus that had taken his family.
Doctors feared he wouldn't make it.
But somehow, whether by strength, luck, or sheer refusal, Enzo pulled through.
He emerged from the war gaunt, wounded, and haunted, and yet he was alive.
He had no family left, no obvious future.
But he did have one thing.
A desire to do something with his life that would bring him joy.
He turned to the only thing that made sense in the aftermath of death, movement.
The automobile industry in post-World War I Italy was still fledgling,
but it offered him something no other line of work could, speed, precision, and control.
In the roar of an engine, he found the chaos of his mind quieted.
In the act of assembling metal into machinery, he rediscovered his purpose.
He threw himself into cars with obsessive focus, not only repairing them,
but envisioning a future where he was behind the wheel.
I'm just realizing how history keeps repeating itself, where this is early on in the auto industry,
but young guys coming back from war, this is their therapy,
and then they end up making some of the coolest machines and doing some of the daring
shit that gives them the adrenaline they had during the war.
And then that repeats with World War II, and every country you see that,
like the Bosozoku, the Hell's Angels, all that shit is tied to PTSD, basically.
Because guys will do anything but go to therapy.
Driving? That's my therapy. Actually, no, I started going to therapy,
and it's been quite helpful.
Therapy? That's my therapy.
It's a good bumper sticker.
Therapy's my driving.
I don't drive. I don't drive. I take taxis.
Bart walked here.
After being discharged from the army, Enzo carried with him a letter of recommendation
from his colonel. It was addressed to Fiat, the powerhouse of Italy's early auto industry,
over in Turin. For Enzo, this was the golden ticket. He saw it as proof that his service and
his resilience might earn him a place in something bigger. Enzo traveled to Fiat headquarters,
full of hope, ready to prove himself. There he met with the head engineer,
one Diego Soria. But the meeting was brief. Soria explained that hundreds of ex-servicemen
just like Enzo were applying, Fiat couldn't possibly hire them all. There was just
no place for Enzo. And like that, the door was closed.
That's such a shitty thing to say to somebody. It's like, we can't hire y'all. It's like,
I don't care. Just hire me. Like, what do you mean? I know you can't hire everybody.
You can hire me.
It's a compelling case.
You just stare at them too and they'll crumble.
Okay.
With no job and no family to fall back on, Enzo spent the winter of 1918 broke, cold,
and utterly alone. He wandered the streets of Turin in the snow, aimless. Most days he would
sit quietly in Valentino Park watching strangers pass by. He cried there, sometimes from the cold,
sometimes from hunger, and sometimes from the weight of everything he had lost. Good lord.
He's pretty young at this point. And yeah, he's a little young to be a pigeon guy.
A pigeon guy.
You just sit in the park and feed the pigeons.
Sometimes you got to do what you got to do.
In the wake of personal tragedy and wartime failure, Enzo Ferrari found luck in a not-so-glamorous gig.
His first real job came through a man named Giovanni, who dealt in stripped-down,
secondhand light trucks like the Lancia Zeta. Giovanni's operation was simple.
Remove the bodies, keep the chassis, and sell them to coach builders.
Enzo became a link in the chain. He tested and retested these frames before delivering them to
Corazza Ria Italo Argentina in Milan. There, these skeletal remains were reborn into something
beautiful. Torpedo-bodied cars, streamlined and striking, coveted by the era's upper crust.
It's kind of got the torpedo shape, but it's got big running boards on the bottom.
It's your classic early 1920s look.
Because, again, they're working with truck frames.
It wasn't glamorous work, but for Enzo, it was something to keep his hands and his mind busy.
Testing the chassis meant understanding feel, balance, and strength.
It was his first real taste of what machines were capable of when pushed, refined, and perfected.
When he wasn't working, Enzo could be found lingering at the bar del Nord near Porta Nueva
in Turin. There, among coffee cups and cigarette smoke, he mingled with the fringes of Italy's
racing and engineering scene. One key figure he met was one Romolo Bonaccini, a well-regarded
mechanic and former flight engineer who had worked with Brock Papa, one of Italy's
pioneering aviators. Bonaccini took an interest in the young Ferrari. He mentored him,
not just in mechanics, but in philosophy, in how to think like an engineer and a competitor.
Later in life, Enzo would say that what Bonaccini taught him was more important than
any formal schooling he might have missed. As the money left to him after his father's
passing began to dry up, Enzo needed something more substantial. Salvation came in the form
of a new friend, one Ugo Savocci. Ugo was a former cyclist who had transitioned in a motor racing
and testing. The two met at Bar Vittorio Emanuele, a kind of sporting fraternity for young men with
a taste for automobiles and machinery. Ugo Savocci convinced Enzo to leave Turin and come to Milan,
where he was working as chief test driver for a company called CMN, or Constozione Mechanice
Nazionale. CMN had once made four-wheel drive tractors for artillery used during the war,
but with peacetime they pivoted to cars, repurposing surplus three-liter four-cylinder monoblock engines
from Isota Frascini into new chassis. Enzo decided to take the leap. At CMN, Ferrari finally got his
foot in the door. His first job was as a test driver, putting the resurrected vehicles
through their paces. In addition to testing cars, Enzo
rode along with CMN motorcycles during races, carrying fuel and tools to support the riders.
This made him a presence in the racing world even before he had the chance to compete himself,
but that chance would come soon. In 1919, at the age of just 21,
Enzo Ferrari officially entered the world of competition. His first race was the
Parmopoggio di Bocceto hill climb and narrow and winding ascent through the Apennine countryside.
It was the perfect arena for a raw but determined young driver. He didn't win,
but he made an impression by finishing fourth, which gained attention from more
experienced racers and team directors. Later that year he entered the legendary Targa Florio,
who was a brutal, unforgiving race through the mountainous terrain of Sicily.
Enzo's car developed a leaking fuel tank midway through the race,
a problem that would have ended the race for many, but he pressed on and still managed
to finish ninth in a field of professionals. After several seasons of racing and working
alongside Hugo Savucci, the two made the leap together to Alfa Romeo, which was a team on the
rise. Enzo became a full-time driver for Alfa, assigned car number 14. His first major victory
came in 1923 at the Savio circuit in Ravenna, a winding track where he first encountered
one Count Enrico Baraka, father of Francesco, the fallen fighter pilot whose leaping horse
had once captivated Enzo during the war. It was here that the Count offered him permission
to adopt the symbol himself. And so, the prancing horse would rise again.
We'll be right back after these messages.
All right y'all, gather round because Monae exchanged from sibling rivalries here
with an announcement. This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Google Gemini.
Now listen, the girls over at Google said, Monae, tell the children, so I'm telling you.
US college students get Google Gemini's pro plan free for one year. Use the best model in the
world for multimodal understanding. So whether you're uploading a video to get feedback on your
presentation, uploading a photo of your homework to ask for help, or transcribing notes from
a lecture you missed, Gemini 3 Pro can help. And baby, if I had this in college, oh, she would
have been unstoppable. Picture it. Monae exchanged in the library, uploading a picture of my music
theory homework like, Gemini, please help Adiva out. Or recording my rehearsal videos for feedback
instead of crying at the practice room for three hours. This would have been life-changing.
Now back to the goods. Sign up to get more access to Google's most accurate model,
Gemini 3 Pro, unlimited image uploads, pro-level image editing, higher limits in notebook LM,
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at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Now back to the show. Enzo racked up a string of victories
between 1923 and 1924, including wins at the Copa Acerbo in Pascara and races in Ravenna
and Policine. He would go on to place in 11 of the 41 Grand Prix races he entered.
By the mid-1920s, his name was well known throughout Italy's motorsport scene. But with the success
came more loss. In 1923, during practice for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, Hugo Savocci lost
control of his car in a treacherous bend and crashed and died. That same stretch of track
would later claim the life of another Italian legend, one Antonio Ascari, and eventually
become known as the Ascari Bend years later. Hugo's car bore no number that day, but superstitious
drivers believing that that contributed to his fate. I wonder why he didn't have a number.
I don't know. I mean, Italians are very superstitious, like Ascari,
like they assign so much meaning to him and his son's death. They did die on the same day,
like 30 some odd years apart. But one of them was not using his lucky helmet when he died.
That's right. I think that was his son, wasn't it?
The one that goes into the bay at Monaco. He had a different color helmet or something.
Then he didn't wear a helmet when he hopped in for like one lap around Monza and he died.
But yeah, there's a lot of superstition. Interesting.
Wear your helmet. Enzo never forgot the silence that followed the crash.
The weight of it all began to dull the thrill of victory. Enzo loved racing,
but he loved it less than the people it kept taking from him. And so he made a private bow.
If he ever had a son, he would stop racing. That day came in 1932 with the birth of Alfredo
Dino Ferrari. Enzo kept his promise. He stepped away from racing and transitioned
into a managerial role at Alfa Romeo. Alfa's Giorgio Romini, head of sales and racing,
had previously encouraged Enzo to build his own team within the brand.
The result was Scuderia Ferrari, a semi-independent racing division formed in 1929.
Under Enzo's behind the scenes leadership, Scuderia Ferrari became a powerhouse.
They recruited top drivers and elite technicians, many of whom Enzo had convinced to
defect from Fiat after Fiat shuttered its own racing program.
So they're almost going to be 100 years old. Scuderia Ferrari.
That'll be fun. That'll be fun, too. Can you just mark it off in your account?
Yeah. With Alfa's Tipo P3 cars and a deep roster of talent deeper than the Dodgers.
Ferrari's team became nearly unbeatable. Baseball, okay.
Ferrari's team became nearly unbeatable in the early 1930s. But away from the track,
a different kind of conflict was brewing. Enzo clashed with Hugo Gabbardo, the new general
manager of Alfa Romeo. Hugo must have been like, there must have been like a show on it.
There must have been like a game of thrones on it at that time.
That had a character in Hugo. Yeah, like everybody's name in a kid, Hugo.
The two disagreed on the direction of development, structure and the philosophical
heart of racing. And eventually that tension boiled over.
In 1939, Enzo was forced out. A clause in his contract barred him from building or competing
with any race car bearing his name for at least four years. That September, he founded
Auto Avio Construzioni in his hometown of Modena. On paper, it was a company that provided
machine tools and aircraft parts. But Enzo had other plans. He was alone again and
removed from Alfa, removed from his drivers, removed from the name he had spent years building.
But he remembered the words of his father, quote, a company is perfect when the number
of partners is uneven and less than three. I love that.
In other words, stay small, stay sharp and trust yourself.
I've also heard the best size for a committee is three people and one's out sick and the
other just didn't show up. It's the most effective committee.
In secret, Ferrari began designing a new car. By 1940, when World War Two is beginning to engulf
the continent, Enzo had produced two prototypes of the AAC Tipo 815 named for their 1.5 liter
eight cylinder engines. They were fielded by Scuderia Ferrari, which was still operational
in a support capacity and even entered into the Milimiglia, a brutal thousand mile
endurance race across northern Italy. The two 815s were driven by Alberto Ascari,
who was Antonio's son, and Littorio Ranjoni. Because of the legal clause still active,
the cars could not bear the Ferrari name. No prancing horse, no yellow shield. Both cars
failed to finish the race. Mechanical issues forced them into early retirement.
They vanished after the event, never to be seen again.
But Enzo didn't mourn them. To him, a car that couldn't race was pointless.
He had no use for romantic relics, no sentimental shrine to past efforts.
What mattered was what came next. By the early 1940s, the roar of race cars had gone quiet.
World War Two swept across Europe, bringing with it not just violence and scarcity,
but a fundamental shift in priorities. Speed, luxury and competition had no place in a world
rationing rubber and steel. Italy, under the rule of Benito Mussolini,
was a nation gripped by ideology and fear. And for those, like Enzo Ferrari,
trying to keep a business alive, compromise became a survival tactic. Now, I don't know if it's
compromise exactly that we're going to be talking about here.
That's a little gentle on him.
That is, yes. Enzo was a registered member of the National Fascist Party.
And publicly, he appeared to align with Mussolini's regime and its utopian vision of
Italian industrial supremacy. And he also spent a lot of time hanging out at the
Fascist Party headquarters. They had this big mansion. This was before World War Two.
He was definitely down to clown. For sure. Yes, so the image is jarring. The Stoic Enzo,
so fiercely independent in racing, marching in lockstep with authoritarian power.
Later, he would claim it was never about belief, but about preservation.
Refuse loyalty to the regime and fascist Italy was to risk imprisonment,
the seizure of property or worse. Whether this was revisionism or truth is difficult to know.
And like many industrialists of that era, Ferrari walked a careful line. But like I said,
did a lot of partying with these guys. Yeah, the pictures don't lie.
Same goes for like burning in Porsche. I mean, Henry Ford. Henry Ford was a huge Hitler fan.
I know. Henry Ford went out of his way to be a fan of Hitler.
Hitler had a portrait of Henry Ford in his office. In a heart frame.
Like Henry Ford was a little locket. Henry Ford was not a good guy.
Smart guy, but not a good guy. Anyway, all these guys. Of course, they'd want,
quote, you know, the utopian vision of Italian industrial supremacy.
All these guys want industrial supremacy. You know, they all think they're smarter
than everybody else. Anyway, in the wars later years, as Northern Italy fell
increasingly under German occupation and later became a hub for anti-fascist resistance,
Enzo began to shift. He quietly opened his doors to socialists. The Socialist Federation's
headquarters in Modena was housed in a building he owned. That's very strange.
Meanwhile, the future of his company had to evolve. In 1943, he moved auto evio
constructionate to Maranello, a sleepy town just outside of Modena,
talked between the Apennine and the Poe Valley. And this was done because of the industrial
decentralization law that was being imposed on factories. He had about 40 workers at Modena,
and this number increased considerably in the course of the war. The plot of land,
once used for growing cherries and seasonal fruit, would later become hallowed ground.
The Fiorano test track, the very heartbeat of Ferrari's racing research and development
in decades to come. But in 1943, it was still farmland. Instead of race cars, Ferrari's workers,
many of them women, were building small four-cylinder engines for training aircraft commissioned
by the Campania Nazionale aeronautica in Rome. The shift in production was necessary, but
it humiliated Enzo. The difference between like a Maraschino cherry and like a Luxardo cherry is
insane, but they're basically the same thing. I thought a Maraschino was just stored in the syrup,
and that's what gave it its flavor. Yeah, but same with a Luxardo cherry. Is it a Luxardo cherry?
Is a Luxardo the really bright one? No, it's the really dark one. Oh yeah, I love those.
They put in fancy cocktails, but they are kind of the same process.
Would it be messed up to buy a whole jar of those just to snack on?
No, no, they're very good. It's $25 for a jar, though. Oh, never mind.
That's too much. Let's talk about pricing.
I was going to say that there are affordable, high-quality Maraschino cherries that aren't like
the bright neon red ones. Oh really? Yeah. I don't trust the ones that are see-through.
Right. The glossy cherries? Well, they put them in lie.
Those cherries, like to preserve them and process them, and then they use a bunch of
red food coloring. It's like that mouse that they found that fell in the vat of degreaser.
Have you seen this? No. You can see through them like a cherry.
Okay, so it just skinned them, right? But I mean, it turned his skin into glass,
or what you know, like you can see through him.
His skin's still on, it didn't come off there, no? No, I don't.
I think it's just like made him clear. I don't think this, I think he has skin,
I think it's just clear skin anyway. It's like...
You mean like he had like realizations about his life that he couldn't have done?
We got to OT level three. We'll be right back after these messages.
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Now back to the show.
As the war raged on, Ferrari's operation in Marinello evolved from a reluctant producer of
training aircraft engines into something more profitable, yet controversial. Through his
colleague Enrico Nardi, Enzo was introduced to one Corrado Gatti, a machine tool dealer
from Turin. Gatti needed someone to replicate a specific type of German-made grinding machine called
the Jung. It's spelled with a J. The Jung. Jung. The Jung. I think it's Jung. It's Jung.
The Jung was used to manufacture ball bearings, which was a key component in almost every wartime
engine and machine. It's all ball bearings these days. Enzo, desperate to keep his factory running,
agreed. Officially he had no license to reproduce the German young designs, but thanks to a legal
loophole, Italian law permitted the replication of foreign machines not yet produced domestically.
How convenient is that? Ferrari's team built replicas so faithful that not even German engineers
could tell the difference. The machines were sold discreetly, often under the table,
and manufactured in secrecy. It's like Haas selling CNC machines to, oh wait,
that was like a third party kind of deal. What happened? Haas was caught selling CNC
machines to Russia? No, multiple times. Anyway. Gene, what are you doing?
I don't really know what the full story on that is. Full disclosure.
These replicas quickly gained a reputation for their reliability and performance,
and so much so in fact that even German clients began placing orders for them.
At one point, a convoy carrying the machines was ambushed by anti-fascist partisans,
and the units were believed to be destroyed. But legend has it that Ferrari recovered the
wreckage, stripped off the identifying plates, replaced them, and sold the same machines back
to the Germans. At night, the partisan fighters... It's like when you sell someone a dog and then
you blow the whistle and they run back to your house. Or it's like if you're buying chairs,
removing parts, and then selling the chairs back, right? Yes.
At night. That'd be huge if that were true. That would be huge if that was true.
That guy at the shirt store is the weirdest actor I've ever seen.
He's about at his limit. I think they do cast intentionally that way. Like the guy with the
dent in his head. This shirt is at its limit. And he appears later. They bring him back.
Yeah, it's great. I haven't watched episode 5 yet.
So at night, these Italian freedom fighters would come to Enzo's factory in Maranello to have weapons
repaired or commissioned. So he was playing both sides.
He was playing both sides. The Stella Aguzza Trey,
a Caltrop device designed to puncture tires and stop enemy vehicles in their tracks,
was one such creation. Enzo's workers would hide among the machines by day,
rifles stashed beneath benches and floorboards. And if the wrong visitor arrived,
they were ready to fight. This shadow life went through 1944 and into 1945.
So it seems more like Enzo's employees were an anti-fascist. And Enzo was...
I don't know. There's shades to this guy. Shades to this guy.
So this is before Mussolini was toppled. Yeah.
He probably saw the tides turning and was like, oh, I better code switch.
The danger wasn't only from the Germans. In 1943, a fascist group placed Enzo Ferrari on a list of
industrialists marked for censure or execution. In northern Italy, such threats were not idle.
Executions of business owners accused of treachery, sabotage, or disloyalty had become common.
By 1945, Hugo Gabado, managing director of Alfa Romeo, was shot dead on his way to work.
Eduardo Weber, inventor of the iconic Weber carburetor, also vanished without a trace.
Are you related to this guy? No. Weber is the third most popular.
Common? Weber is the third most common last name in Germany. It's kind of just like Smith.
Okay. My dad did not like that fact because he thinks that we are special snowflakes.
Ferrari was next. Rumors swirled that a criminal gang masquerading as partisan
fighters had placed a price on his head. You know, there's a Biedlingmeier
bakery in the Alps, a little coffee shop. Oh, you should go there. Yeah. You should.
Enzo responded not with negotiation. He is believed to have met with the coordinator
of his own assassination and bought his life back by raising a large sum to pay off the would-be-hit
men. Smart. At the same time, Enzo began quietly helping others survive. When Dr. Menzotti,
a known fascist leader defected and denounced the Nazi regime, Ferrari personally smuggled
him out of danger. Driving a borrowed 1938 Lancia Aprilia saloon, Enzo carried Menzotti
as he hid under a blanket through roadblocks and checkpoints in the moonlit Italian
countryside, delivering him to a safe house near Ferrara. I love how thorough these checkpoints
were. Yeah. Nothing back here but a blanket, boss. All right, move along.
Still, Enzo's conflicting allegiances made travel dangerous. Fascist,
socialist, nationalist, partisan, his name had been whispered among them all.
Roadblocks sprang up randomly and each one of them held the potential for capture or worse.
Then came November 1944, a series of air raids by the U.S. Army Air Corps struck Northern Italy.
The Maranello factory, being barely a year old, was bombed and was hit again in February of 1945.
Despite the extensive damage, Enzo had planned ahead. The wartime machine tool contracts
had made him wealthy enough to rebuild. In 1945, with the fascist regime collapsed
and the war nearing its end, Ferrari bought out the last of his partners in Scuderia Ferrari.
He renamed the company Auto Construzioni Ferrari, signaling a new era and a return
to his first love, competition. He began to design race cars again. The first creation
of the reborn factory was the 1.5-liter Tipo 125. To mark this new beginning,
Enzo revived a symbol long etched into his heart, the rearing horse worn by his fallen friend,
Francesco Baracca.
The Prancing Horse or Cavalino Rampante
That horse needs to go to the vet.
He's mostly glue.
The Prancing Horse or Cavalino Rampante would go on to become the most iconic badge
in automotive history. It carried with it the memory of fallen friends, the imprint of war,
and the spirit of a man who refused to slow down. Enzo Ferrari tipped out through a literal and
figurative minefield that was World War II and survived. Now, with Italy rebuilding one
block at a time, what was his next move? How did he navigate the post-war malaise to
become one of the most respected car makers of the mid-century? All this and more on next
week's episode. The finale of PASCAS Season 1 is Ferrari R2. Wow.
Wowee. Wow. What a story.
I like that that's PASCAS Season 1, 360 episodes.
Six years long. We made it to syndication.
And we did, I wish.
I got to read more into this about his kind of like, was he really a fascist sympathizer?
Worst case, he is like a card-carrying fascist who supported all this stuff.
Best case is like, oh yeah, he's a guy that just navigated all these alliances and was
still working with all these guys. And I don't know. It's kind of, it's interesting,
because he was made very rich from working with Mussolini's government.
Making military stuff.
But also, he was, like we were saying, is supporting socialists, you know, like,
I think it's certainly in question.
It's really complicated.
He's either a moral relativist, you know, something of a sociopath who's going to do
whatever he has to. I would say he's a sociopath.
Yeah, or it could be that he's just trying to survive. Like, he's either,
you know what I mean, like, and there is a difference there.
In part two, we learn more about his character and how he starts to be manipulative like a
sociopath. So I would imagine that he's just doing everything for self-preservation and kind of just
putting everything in every basket to see, you know, so he doesn't have to lose that.
We did an episode where we talked about all the drivers that died under Ferrari, right?
And he would do this big show. He would do this big show of like, oh,
he'd go into his, you know, his apartment unit that was in his factory,
and you couldn't talk to him because he was so sorrowful, and he would talk to the presses and,
you know, cry in front of people. But it was all kind of an act to, like,
telegraph, you know, like, oh, I've learned my lesson. Like, I'm going to make things safer.
You're saying action speak louder than words.
Yes. Yeah. He understood that, and he really played into that.
Complicated guy, and we're going to learn more about him as Joe mentioned in our next episode.
Stick around for part two. We'll see you next time. I've been Nolan Sykes, Bart Biddlingmeyer
Cross and me, Bids Bartow and Instagram. Go follow Joe at Joji Weber. Yeah.
Big thank you to our crew, Mark, Edgar and Audrey, as always. And thank you for listening.
We'll see you next week. And to our writer, Anthony, who is doing our season one of JDM.
Anthony rules, dude. Yeah. All right. We'll see you next week. Bye.
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About this episode
Enzo Ferrari's journey from a humble upbringing to becoming a legendary figure in motorsport is explored in this episode. It delves into his early life, the impact of World War I, and the personal losses that shaped his relentless drive for speed and success. The episode highlights his initial racing experiences, the formation of Scuderia Ferrari, and the challenges he faced during the rise of fascism in Italy. The narrative sets the stage for understanding how Enzo's complex character and tumultuous times influenced the creation of one of the most iconic automotive brands in history.
Original notes
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This week on Past Gas, we’re diving into Ferrari — and the surprising, emotional origin of its most famous symbol. The Prancing Horse didn’t start with Enzo Ferrari, or even with cars at all. In Part 1 of our two-part season finale, we trace the logo’s roots back to a World War I Italian flying ace, and the chain of events that turned a wartime emblem into the most iconic badge in automotive history. From Alfa Romeo and early racing to Enzo Ferrari’s rise as a team manager, we explore how Ferrari built its identity long before it ever built a road car.
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