Why the iconic brand turns grown men into little boys
It is at once the easiest thing in the world to explain, and yet the most difficult. At every Formula 1 race, the grandstands are awash in a sea of red; half the crowd turns up in Ferrari caps and tees rooting for a team that, even with the best driver in the field, has been steamrollered by a five-year-old upstart. In no other sport does a team that hasn’t won the championship in years, that has no chance of winning, command such slavish devotion. But for millions of fans that hardly matters, red after all is a suitably unsubtle colour.
Me? I have never owned a Ferrari cap. Or T-shirt. The Ferrari stores at airports with their rip-off prices; the Ferrari theme park at Abu Dhabi; Ferrari perfume, for gods sake, it disgusts me. And yet I worship Ferrari. This is a little harder to explain.
As you will rightly point out, cars are inanimate objects. And you might justifiably consider me a tad unbalanced when, over dinner, I recount how I was moved to tears the first time I drove a Ferrari. Very, very few people get to drive Ferraris. I am one of the very, very few. I'd be lying if I said I became a motor-noter to drive Ferraris. Back when I started, I didn’t dare dream of it. A Ferrari was a blood red F40 on my bedroom wall: Something to be ogled while I dreamt of something more attainable. Like a Mercedes. Eleven years later, I have been to Ferrari three times, driven every modern day Ferrari and have been privileged enough to be given the (almost) all-access tour.
It all starts at Milan airport where a rakishly Ray-Banned Italian picks you up in an awkward-looking Lancia Phedra minivan plastered with Ferrari logos and the Italian tricolore and you get cozy in an interior so sumptuous it’s bewildering. The Phedra chauffeurs you to your hotel right across the Ferrari factory gates, which are festooned with evocative Ferrari imagery, and then your afternoon siesta gets repeatedly interrupted by Ferraris being road-tested just outside your bedroom window. It sets the mood for the factory tour, a privilege in itself (you can't just waltz up at Maranello and demand to see a Ferrari being built).
Every tour begins with a million pictures at the main gates, under the giant Ferrari sign with the plumbing for the wind tunnel forming a dramatically techy backdrop. The historic entrance with the old red brick facade still exists, which we shall later exit from, ensconced behind the wheel of a Ferrari.
But first we have to pay attention as we are guided through the engine shop that looks and feels like a green house. The abundant plants—
and trees!—are there to maintain humidity levels optimum for the building of a great engine; a side benefit being ideal conditions for preserving historic cars. The Ferrari museum across the road makes full use of it, parking dozens of historic road and race cars that it doesn’t have space for in the museum itself. Watch the finest V8 and V12 road car engines being hand built and then ogle at Villeneuve's 1980 F1 car: It’s an engineer’s wet dream!
The site is a brilliant amalgam of the old and new. Historic buildings share space with cutting edge edifices designed by such eminences as Norman Foster and… I didn't catch other names as a 599 GTO descended the lifts and our jaws dropped.
Unless you’ve been living in a hole under the North Pole you will know the 599 GTO is The Best Supercar in the World: 670 horses from the mighty V12 engine, 0-100 kmph in 3.35 seconds (real world reference: The biggest engine in the new Audi A6 takes 8 seconds), top speed of 335 kmph (the highest ever for a Ferrari road car) and a name steeped in history, adorning the rump of only the greatest Ferraris. The original Gran Turismo Omologatos—250 GTO and 288 GTO—were homologation specials, built by hand in extremely low numbers so Ferrari could go sports-car-racing.
The 599 GTO will be similarly exclusive, limited to just 599 units, at $426,000 apiece to customers invited by Ferrari to own one. (Do not rush to the phone: All 599 have been spoken for.) Not so similarly, the 599 GTO hasn’t been built to go racing. But it has been developed from a track car: The 599XX.
Racing built the brand, its mystique. Enzo often said his road cars were only a means to fund his racing activities and all those racing cars were developed at Fiorano (and Mugello, another circuit not far away).
(This story appears in the 16 March, 2012 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)