The Ferrari Files

A quarter-century ago Maranello decided to set up its own formal company Archive, bringing together in one place a vast assortment of documents and ‘assets’ that tell the intimate story of one of the world’s most famous corporate names. The fact that so much material was readily available is a testament to how the mind of Enzo Ferrari worked.

From his earliest days making cars and racing them, the company founder was very conscious of the need to record the factory’s day-to-day workings. That far-sightedness means that today’s racing fans can, for example, see images dating back to well before the Prancing Horse symbol became famous around the world.

Housed in a dedicated part of the factory near the famous main entrance gates on Via Abetone Inferiore in Maranello, the ever expanding Archive is nowadays increasingly made up of digital content. But original documentation covers every single model ever to have been produced by the factory, dating right back to that tiny little 125 S, the first ever Maranello-made Ferrari to nudge its way out of those very same main gates back in 1947.

The earliest of the Archive’s images pre-date the factory itself, relating the 1920’s childhood of the founder. Others reveal the establishment of the factory and the public racing circuit used for testing before the Fiorano track was built in the 1970’s. By 2015, some 60,000 images had been collated, along with around 1,000 videos. The Scuderia’s long Formula One history rightly provides enormous amounts of material, and the Challenge Clienti racing series is documented from its beginnings in 1993.

Period brochures, correspondence from Sir Stirling Moss... it's all in the Ferrari Archive

From handcrafted original sketches, to highly detailed full car designs, each production car’s development story is covetously preserved. This includes original technical specifications, and also extends to a wide variety of fascinating background correspondence. Letters, some handwritten, from clients to Enzo Ferrari following on from visits to Maranello, include notes from celebrity owners during the ‘Dolce Vita’ heyday when stars of Hollywood beat a path to Maranello’s door.

In June 1987 an impeccably polite typed letter arrives from Sir Stirling Moss saying he’s “heard on the grapevine” in England that Maranello is planning to produce a limited number of four-wheel-drive GTOs. “I would be most grateful if you could consider selling one to me,” the British racing legend tells Enzo, before reminding the Ferrari owner: “I believe I am still the only driver who ever won a race with a four-wheel-drive vehicle.” Sir Stirling finishes by admitting: “The idea of a Ferrari with the same configuration is most exciting.” Enzo, ever the businessman, brusquely responded that whether Sir Stirling took the car home on a trailer or drove it all the way back to England was “entirely up to you”.

In the same era, Liliana Cavani, the Italian film director, was so taken by an emotional visit to Maranello that her typed thankyou letter proposed making a film about the Ferrari founder, whom she describes as ‘il Grande Saggio’ – the very wise one’. Elsewhere, long-gone engineers, designers, clients, racers, mechanics, and simple fans of Ferrari are all there, speaking still through their archived letters. Mountains of photographs and film footage bring to life the Scuderia’s racing history, from the ‘gentlemen racers’ of the ‘black-and-white’ era through to the professional athlete megastars of modern times.

Archive categories approximate to sections on letters, audio, people&events, communications, after sales, production, innovation, history, design, engines, and research&development. Some 2,000 ‘assets’ from the Archives are currently on display at the Enzo Ferrari Museum in Modena to complement the Supercars exhibition, demonstrating to the general public the founder’s far- sightedness in consciously preserving records from the very earliest days of the Ferrari story.