Enzo Ferrari, every mention
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every year anyone David Rosenthal 209Ben Gilbert 40Doug DeMuro 2
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Enzo Ferrari comes up
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- ▶ 2:07:19 Ben Gilbert And we see this in Ferrari with Enzo.
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- ▶ 6:14 David Rosenthal In the medieval Italian town of Modna with the birth of our hero Enzo Anselmo Giuseppe Maria Ferrari.
- ▶ 6:26 David Rosenthal Better known, of course, either by the name of the company he would found that bears his last name, Ferrari, or to his hundreds of millions of fans around the world simply as Enzo.
- ▶ 6:39 David Rosenthal So Enzo
- ▶ 7:01 David Rosenthal And Enzo and his father are often at odds growing up, but, uh, part of his dad does rub off on him in this sort of entrepreneurial influence.
- ▶ 7:11 David Rosenthal His dad, uh, says something to him which sticks with Enzo for the rest of his life.
- ▶ 7:28 David Rosenthal Much of this history, this whole episode, comes from the fantastic, really definitive biography of Enzo called Enzo Ferrari, written by Luca Del Monte, who worked at Ferrari and Maserati for many years, and then after he retired, dedicated…
- ▶ 7:57 David Rosenthal For Enzo's older brother, who is named after his father, he's also named Alfredo, nicknamed Dino, to tell them apart, he, Dino, becomes like the golden child.
- ▶ 8:15 David Rosenthal Enzo, on the other hand, as the younger brother, he just takes right after all the sort of less savory parts of mom and dad.
- ▶ 8:35 David Rosenthal Enzo can just kind of knock about town.
- ▶ 8:45 Ben Gilbert A very different Enzo Ferrari.
- ▶ 8:50 David Rosenthal So, there's one thing, though, that really captivates Enzo's spirit.
- ▶ 9:00 David Rosenthal And one blissful night when Enzo is a teenager, he declares to his best friend his true intention in life.
- ▶ 9:11 David Rosenthal And that dream does indeed come true, but probably not in any way that Enzo expected that night.
- ▶ 9:20 David Rosenthal Because very shortly thereafter, World War I breaks out, and two tragedies happen to Enzo in quick succession.
- ▶ 9:47 David Rosenthal So Enzo is left alone with his mother that he needs to support.
- ▶ 9:52 David Rosenthal The family business is gone, and because Enzo has never applied himself, he has no discernible skills or ability to continue it
- ▶ 10:08 David Rosenthal Before Enzo can stop to really think, he too gets drafted into the army, where he also comes down with pneumonia and nearly dies, but he survives.
- ▶ 10:38 David Rosenthal Right there about Enzo's life.
- ▶ 12:05 David Rosenthal So back to Enzo here in 1918.
- ▶ 12:08 David Rosenthal Fiat, of course, rejects his job application because, again, he has no discernible skills, but Enzo is persistent.
- ▶ 13:07 David Rosenthal And this is the group of people that ultimately, once Ferrari gets founded, become Enzo's core client base.
- ▶ 13:15 David Rosenthal They're these kind of like hustlers and dreamers who managed to glom on somewhere in the car industry and leverage that into entering races.
- ▶ 13:32 David Rosenthal So Enzo enters into this world, and he does pretty well.
- ▶ 14:05 David Rosenthal So they scoop up this young, hotshot, talented driver Enzo to come and race for them.
- ▶ 14:11 David Rosenthal Now, this is a huge coup for Enzo.
- ▶ 14:39 David Rosenthal So at age 22, in 1920, Enzo starts his first company.
- ▶ 15:13 David Rosenthal That the carmaker would deliver, and then the clients would go to a coachmaker, like this one that Enzo is starting up, and have them build the body to their taste and specifications that would go on top of, you know, the mechanics of the…
- ▶ 15:58 David Rosenthal So Enzo's, admittedly, pretty half-baked plan here is that thanks to his sure-to-come, you know, new fame and fortune as an Alfa Romeo race car driver,
- ▶ 16:30 David Rosenthal It's a failure, and within two years, Enzo is bankrupt.
- ▶ 16:35 David Rosenthal Perhaps relatedly, Enzo's sort of metal as a professional race car driver also proves to be good, but he's not great.
- ▶ 17:25 David Rosenthal And Enzo watches them both die during races at the wheel.
- ▶ 17:29 David Rosenthal The first of which Enzo was the first person to find him and he actually literally died in Enzo's arms.
- ▶ 17:34 David Rosenthal And so after all these experiences, Enzo just, he can't push himself to do the same thing over and over like they did.
- ▶ 18:18 David Rosenthal So in 1924, Enzo makes the decision to quit racing, cast off the coach building business and instead open a Alfa Romeo dealership in Modena.
- ▶ 18:50 David Rosenthal Now, toward the end of his racing career, Enzo had also gotten more involved in the actual management of the team and gotten to know some of the managers of Alfa Romeo, the company itself.
- ▶ 19:21 David Rosenthal And so Enzo's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
- ▶ 19:51 David Rosenthal And all the races that you don't want to run, you bless me, your dealer, Enzo Ferrari, as the official racing agent of Alfa Romeo, and I'll put together my own private team, I'll hire the drivers, I'll hire the mechanics, I'll cover the…
- ▶ 20:15 David Rosenthal And for Enzo, what better marketing activity could you imagine
- ▶ 21:00 David Rosenthal Oh, Enzo, as we shall see, is a natural born marketer.
- ▶ 21:09 David Rosenthal The Scuderia Ferrari is very much intended to be a junior partner to Alfa Romeo, or at least Alfa intends it that way, but Enzo does in the back of his mind have broader ambitions.
- ▶ 21:52 David Rosenthal And Enzo's always got this in the back of his mind, and he's got some examples out there.
- ▶ 22:27 David Rosenthal So, Forenzo, in the back of his mind, he's like, okay, this is my opportunity to build my own team, hire my own engineers and mechanics,
- ▶ 25:45 David Rosenthal So, back when Enzo was a
- ▶ 26:24 David Rosenthal Now he's like a national hero, and everybody in Italy knows about Count Baraka and his exploits during World War I, and his parents are fans of Enzo.
- ▶ 26:33 David Rosenthal And so one night after the war, the countess tells Enzo, why don't you paint the black horse on your car?
- ▶ 26:42 David Rosenthal And to symbolize this gift, she gives Enzo
- ▶ 26:46 David Rosenthal A photo of her son in front of his plane before he was killed with the horse and with an inscription from her below it that Enzo should use this symbol.
- ▶ 27:00 David Rosenthal Enzo is launching his, his Scuderia, his stables, you know, his horses, and he knows that this is the moment to put the gift to use as the Scuderia's logo.
- ▶ 27:15 David Rosenthal Everybody in Italy knows him and knows the symbol, and Enzo has had it bestowed upon him, not just with
- ▶ 27:28 David Rosenthal So Enzo takes the prancing horse.
- ▶ 27:44 David Rosenthal The prancing horse reflects both the Scuderia and links Enzo and the team to this national hero.
- ▶ 28:06 David Rosenthal So in our research, I spoke to Luca di Montezemolo, the legendary Ferrari chairman who would ultimately succeed Enzo and really, in many ways, be his heir, as we will tell in this story.
- ▶ 28:26 David Rosenthal And I asked Montezemolo, you know, you knew Enzo probably as deeply and as well as just about anybody who's still alive today.
- ▶ 28:35 David Rosenthal And there's this kind of popular legend that Enzo was just a racer.
- ▶ 28:53 Ben Gilbert it's such a crazy story, because, you know, Enzo really just wanted to race cars, and he built this car company, but really that was just sort of to finance the racing, and he doesn't even care about those road cars.
- ▶ 29:13 David Rosenthal Enzo was a natural born
- ▶ 29:29 David Rosenthal Same as Enzo.
- ▶ 29:30 David Rosenthal Enzo is not an engineer.
- ▶ 29:43 David Rosenthal Enzo would
- ▶ 29:56 David Rosenthal And that perfectly described Enzo.
- ▶ 30:01 David Rosenthal So if you think about it, what is Enzo doing here with the brand that he's building?
- ▶ 30:21 David Rosenthal But come on, Enzo is the one who embraced it and imbued this Rosso Corsa with so much more than just the national racing color of Italy.
- ▶ 31:07 David Rosenthal After a couple years, in 1933, the golden opportunity arrives for Enzo.
- ▶ 31:29 David Rosenthal So Enzo acquires, quote unquote, the entire Alfa operation, engineers, mechanics, everything,
- ▶ 32:34 David Rosenthal So Enzo and Ferrari are like sent out there, you know, by Alfa and the Italians to compete, but it's a fool's errand.
- ▶ 33:22 David Rosenthal During this period, Enzo gets into a fight with Alfa Romeo management and manages to get himself fired.
- ▶ 34:11 David Rosenthal So, speaking of which, during the war, Enzo creates a new company to feed the Italian war effort that he names Auto Avio Construccione.
- ▶ 35:00 David Rosenthal They're making machine tools in the workshops and the essentially factory that Enzo has created there in Modena.
- ▶ 35:08 David Rosenthal Throughout the war effort that they make, Enzo has them stamp the prancing horse and the word Scuderia Ferrari Modena, clearly signaling his intentions after the war of, uh, you know, what, what he's gonna do.
- ▶ 35:24 David Rosenthal So, anyway, Enzo and his factory are pretty good at making these machine tools, and they become part of the war effort.
- ▶ 35:32 David Rosenthal So, as the war wears on and the Allies, you know, push into Europe, Enzo and the government start
- ▶ 36:14 David Rosenthal After the war, that leaves Enzo kinda at a crossroads.
- ▶ 36:36 David Rosenthal And then Enzo gets a visit from an old racing pal.
- ▶ 36:55 David Rosenthal So Luigi and Enzo met way back when Enzo joined the Alfa Romeo racing team as a driver, and Luigi was a mechanic on the team, who also then became a driver, and he ends up in New York.
- ▶ 37:09 David Rosenthal And when the war is over, Luigi goes back to Italy to visit Enzo, and he tells him about America.
- ▶ 37:15 David Rosenthal So this is a quote here from Brock Yates's biography of Enzo.
- ▶ 37:47 David Rosenthal He knew they would pay a king's ransom for Enzo's elite machines, and he, Luigi Canetti, meant to exploit that naive colonial lust.
- ▶ 38:03 David Rosenthal Enzo...
- ▶ 38:05 David Rosenthal Now, legends would say later, and Luigi, I think, would probably perpetuate this himself, that Luigi is the one who convinced Enzo to abandon the machine tools business and focus only on cars again after World War II.
- ▶ 38:21 David Rosenthal Enzo was planning to anyway.
- ▶ 38:34 David Rosenthal But it is true, Luigi definitely convinced Enzo about America, and America was critical for Ferrari.
- ▶ 39:12 David Rosenthal And boy, does Enzo know it.
- ▶ 39:24 David Rosenthal Persona of Enzo Ferrari, you know, the dark sunglasses.
- ▶ 39:51 David Rosenthal Machine tool business is out the window, and Enzo is back in cars.
- ▶ 40:30 Ben Gilbert Enzo Ferrari, to this point in history, has not sold a car yet.
- ▶ 40:47 Ben Gilbert Yes, it's a racing team, but it is a car company who sells cars to consumers, and by age 49, Enzo had never done that.
- ▶ 41:03 David Rosenthal Until 1948, when they introduce the Ferrari one 66 Barchetta at the Turin Motor Show, and Luca Del Monte in his biography writes, for Enzo Ferrari, the one 66 MM Barchetta was a declaration of intent, a sports car with a sensual shape, as…
- ▶ 41:51 Ben Gilbert Enzo is really figuring out how to create desire here.
- ▶ 44:07 David Rosenthal So then, the next year, Luigi Canetti, he's a real believer in the potential of these machines that Enzo is building to make a lot of money and generate a lot of desire.
- ▶ 44:35 David Rosenthal And the car that he takes, Enzo doesn't think the one 66 is ready for Le Mans.
- ▶ 45:12 David Rosenthal I mean, startup, everybody knows the heritage of Enzo Ferrari and who he is, but here's a Ferrari winning.
- ▶ 45:19 David Rosenthal And it's like the perfect illustration of the business model and Enzo's entrepreneurial genius.
- ▶ 45:49 Ben Gilbert I mean, this is famously Enzo Ferrari's reputation is he was an engine guy.
- ▶ 46:19 David Rosenthal But we know where Enzo's heart always was.
- ▶ 46:27 Ben Gilbert This is very, very different today, but in the early days, I mean, we're gonna talk about Formula One here shortly, but in those early days of F-One, other teams figured out, hey, you should probably move the engine to be a mid-engine,…
- ▶ 47:23 David Rosenthal Enzo knew exactly
- ▶ 47:26 Ben Gilbert He even, there's funny entries in the historical record here where in the same month that Enzo is out there talking about how the engine belongs in the front of the car, in Marinello there are teams who are constructing next year's…
- ▶ 47:44 David Rosenthal Very Enzo.
- ▶ 50:01 David Rosenthal Enzo and his team are the same people making the same cars.
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