Enzo the driver: determination and destiny

Enzo was not born poor on a snowy day in February 1898. His father had started a mechanical workshop in Modena (that is now home to the Casa Enzo Ferrari Museum) and his mother came from a wealthy family of Marano sul Panaro. The Ferrari family was among the very first in Modena to own a car, a De Dion Bouton.

But in World War I, he lost his father and his brother, becoming the head of the family and forcing him to reinvent his life. He loved cars, as a boy he had watched many local races and then discovered the legendary Indianapolis and a driver with Italian origins, Raffaele – Ralf – De Palma who had won the 500-mile race in 1915. That world attracted him. He moved to Turin hoping to land a job at FIAT. But he was to come away disappointed. He did, however, find the right job: bringing stripped chassis recovered from abandoned remnants of the war which were then renovated by a workshop in Turin ready to be rebodied by the Italo-Argentina coachbuilder in Milan. That’s how he became a driver, even if it wasn’t exactly racing!

Enzo wasn’t afraid of anything, he was enterprising and began to frequent the bars where the drivers met: the Del Nord in Turin and the Vittorio Emanuele in Milan. He took on some secret challenges and then the temptation to start racing became too hard to resist. He decided to go into debt and buy a CRM to debut at the Parma Poggio di Berceto. Fourth in class, eleventh overall. It was the 5th October 1919, he was 21 years old.