Enzo Ferrari he was born on February 20, 1898 in Modena, according to the registry (although he always claimed to be born on the 18th). In another era, in an Italian context that is radically different from the current one. His career in the world of motoring is now considered legendary, and thanks to his small and big manias, behind dark glasses, his figure is still enormously respected today, many years after his death in 1988. In view of his birthday we retrace together some moments of his life and observe different angles of his character through the words of those who really knew him. Because it is also thanks to him that the Prancing Horse is so madly loved all over the world today.
Giuseppe Bussowhose name is and will always be linked to the famous V6 Alfa Romeo, worked at the court of Enzo Ferrari after the conclusion of the Second World War. The technician, who died in 2006, settled in Maranello from June 1946 to the end of 1947. “A capable and obstinate technician“, Enzo Ferrari himself defined it. It was Gioachino Colombo, in the spring of 1946, who proposed to him the management of the Ferrari technical office, already involved in the development of the first car based on his project, the 125 S. At Ferrari, Busso worked on a 1500 cc 12-cylinder single-seater with supercharger and a 6-cylinder sports car. The projects then remained in the drawers of the Ferrari technical office. This is how Busso had described Ferrari, at the end of the nineties, ten years after the death of the owner of the Maranello house.
“Certainly many have seen Enzo Biagi’s broadcast on Ferrari. I have seen in this transmission a Ferrari that I did not like, a Ferrari that, before speaking, reflects a few seconds, then expresses itself as if he were reading something written. This is not my Ferrari, what I remember! A Ferrari so rigid in reasoning, and worried about saying things that may, perhaps, bother. That’s not what I met in ’46 in Maranello. That is a fiery Ferrari, violent, destructive when necessary, but also exalting when things deserved it. I have a literally fond memory of him because what I learned in Maranello and who transformed a pure automobile theorist, like I was before I got there, into a person with a certain practice of solving everyday problems.“.
“I remember Ferrari and the people who worked with me at the time to fine-tune the 125 and get to the end of 1947 with the first major success, which was the Turin Grand Prix. When I imagine my Maranello I see it with Ferrari, Bazzi, Galetto, Barbero. His skills as a connoisseur of men, as a head hunter, are well known. When it came to dealing, he was a master. I think that without Enzo Ferrari there would have been no basis for the development and great successes of Alfa Romeo, at least until ’37. He was a great judge, sometimes ruthless and terrible, when he made up his mind to destroy someone. It cannot be said that he was a great technician, even if he indirectly had a knowledge of the problems, but it can be said that he was a great connoisseur of men, of skills, of the possible contributions that could be asked of a person.“.
“As soon as we met with Ferrari, it seems to me in March 1946, the first thing he said to me was this: “I would like to find an agreement, Busso, that from this moment on, none of us will name Wilfredo Ricart anymore”. I had grown up with Ricart. Gioachino Colombo, when he proposed to Ferrari to take me as a collaborator for the development of the 125, he knew very well that I had the past behind me under the direction of Ricart. If there was one person that Ferrari could not suffer it was Ricart. Especially since he had judged the characteristics of the 158, which, as you know, had been developed in 1937 by Columbus, out of place. The 158, according to the engineer Gobbato, had the defect of not taking into account the developments that could be glimpsed at other brands. The car, which had been presented in Modena in 1937, did not take into account the new guidelines. In those years, in 1934 and 1935, those that immediately preceded the presentation of the 158, Mercedes and Auto Union represented a very advanced level of development. They had independent front and rear suspension, while strangely the 158 repeated a rather old pattern, which was that of Porsche. These contrasts with Gobbato and Ricart took Ferrari to return to Modena in 1939“.
“Still talking about technical and development solutions, later, at the end of 1947, when I left Ferrari and returned to Alfa Romeo, Bazzi arrived in Maranello, who had left Alfa Romeo to return with Ferrari. In the years from mid-1946 to the end of 1947, I had also had the opportunity to meet Nuvolari in Maranello. The latter recounted the great improvements that had been achieved on the Auto Union, on which he had raced, when they had switched from the old Porsche system to the De Dion one. Strangely, Ferrari did not take this opinion into account and the car that was born in 1948, when I had already come away to return to Alfa Romeo, strangely repeated, by Colombo, the old bridge again. This shows in my opinion how Ferrari was not a technician but was above all a great connoisseur of men“.
Cover image: Enzo Ferrari with Achille Varzi in an Alfa Romeo, 1934.
Testimony taken from the Round Table held in Milan on April 18, 1998 to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Enzo Ferrari, coordinated at the time by Alessandro Colombo, personal assistant to Enzo Ferrari in the early 1970s and sports director of Scuderia Ferrari in 1973, immediately after Peter Schetty and before Luca Cordero di Montezemolo. (This article was originally published in August 2012)
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