How F1 legend Enzo Ferrari bedded factory workers, had secret love child & pushed drivers to brink
THE creator of the world’s most desired sports cars was a daring racer who lived his life on the edge – in the bedroom and the boardroom.
Now the story of how Enzo Ferrari pushed himself, his loved ones and his drivers to their limits is being told in a new biopic starring Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz.
The film, titled Ferrari, received a seven-minute standing ovation following its world premiere at last week’s Venice Film Festival.
The tale of how Enzo, the son of a metal shop owner, survived World War One and built the first Ferrari after his factory was flattened during the Second World War would be enough for one movie in itself.
But the high octane film, which opens in the UK on Boxing Day, focuses on an even more turbulent period.
In 1957, with his company on the verge of going bust, Enzo bet that he could win the 1,000-mile Mille Miglia road race through Italy.
It was a highly dangerous challenge which resulted in the deaths of two of his drivers and nine spectators.
At the same time he was struggling to save his marriage following the death of his son and amid a long running affair with the mother of a secret love-child.
The genius behind the Prancing Horse branding, who died at the age of 90 in 1988, was not content with just one mistress.
Not only did the insatiable businessman have three serious relationships on the go at once, Enzo also had a reputation for bedding the female staff working at his factory in Modena.
There is already talk of Oscar nominations for Penelope, who plays Enzo’s wife Laura, while Shailene Woodley is praised for her performance as mistress Lina Lardi.
It was this personal drama that attracted Adam Driver to the role.
He says: “This version of Ferrari, whose internal engine was very much driven by grief, and the difference in his relationship with Laura versus Lina Lardi, all seemed like a subject I didn’t know much about and seemed daunting and exciting.”
Enzo first tasted the thrill of fast cars and fumes at the age of ten when his dad Alfredo took him to see a race in Bologna.
From that moment on he was a devoted petrol-head, filled with the dream of getting behind the wheel himself.
That hope, as for so many young men in Europe, was almost taken from him by the outbreak of war in 1914.
He suffered from the serious lung condition pleurisy while working with mules as part of Italy’s mountain regiment three years into the conflict.
Discharged from the military on health grounds, Enzo set about making a name for himself as a driver at fledgling sports car firm Alfa Romeo.
He won the first of 11 Grand Prix in 1923, but the death of his friend and teammate Antonio Ascari on the track two years later left Enzo fearful of pushing his car to its limits.
The birth of his first son Dino in 1932 convinced him to transfer his talents to the safety of design and management.
Having set up his own manufacturer called Auto Avio Costruzioni eight years later, he was soon told to produce aircraft engines for Italy’s fascist then-ruler Benito Mussolini and his factory became a target for Allied bombers.
Not wishing to be associated with the stain of the despised regime, Enzo changed the firm’s name to Ferrari at the end of the war, and in 1947 a gleaming red 125 model rolled off the production line.
He was a tough task master whose motto was “the best Ferrari that has ever been built is the next” and worked all week long, wearing his trademark shades even in his office.
It was a distraction from his personal turmoil.
‘Beyond reasonable limits’
In his memoirs Enzo said: “One must keep working continuously — otherwise one thinks of death.’’
His son Dino died aged 24 in 1956 after a long battle with a severe type of muscular dystrophy, his dad and brother were killed by the Italian flu epidemic in 1916, and eight of his drivers were killed in his cars between 1955 and 1971.
Adam explains: “He is absolutely instinctive, he’s impulsive, he’s making decisions in a vacuum because he’s used to doing them alone.
“He’s built a way of coping with that, of death, and especially with people that he’s cared for, not only by his son, but team-mates who have died because of the metal that he’s made.”
The demise of so many of his daring drivers was not down to mechanical failure, but often due to the demanding races Ferrari competed in.
The most notorious of all was the Mille Miglia, which saw 56 people die in its 30-year history.
It was so dangerous that the dashing Spanish aristocrat Alfonso de Portago, who had flown a plane under London’s Tower Bridge for a bet, was wary about competing on the twisting roads.
He was right to be worried.
Shortly after stopping to share a kiss with his film star girlfriend Linda Christian, his third-placed Ferrari 335 S blew a tire and swathed through the crowd.
It was a moment of pure horror.
Five of the nine spectators killed were children; Alfonso, 28, was scythed in half and his American co-driver Edmund Nelson also died.
The photo of Linda and Alfonso was dubbed the Kiss Of Death and Enzo was charged with manslaughter.
Even though he was eventually cleared of responsibility for the fatal crash, critics have claimed that the Ferrari boss overstretched his team.
The late British Formula One driver Tony Brooks, who raced for Ferrari, said in a 2004 documentary: “He would expect a driver to go beyond reasonable limits.”
Enzo pitted his drivers against each other, including Italian Luigi Musso, who was a fierce rival of his English team-mates Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins, the latter played by Jack O’Connell in the movie.
Musso, 33, died after going flat out on a bend while pursuing Hawthorn in the French Grand Prix in July 1958 and a month later Collins, 26, was killed when his Ferrari struck a tree during the German Grand Prix.
Most disturbingly, Enzo pursued Luigi’s young girlfriend Fiamma Breschi following his driver’s fatal crash.
Fiamma revealed in 2004: “He started to desire me. At first he hinted at it, and later he made it very clear. He told me that he couldn’t imagine his life without me.
“I refused him, but he kept writing to me about a passion that he said was literally consuming him. This lasted for years.”
She was, though, only one of many women in Enzo’s colourful life.
He married Laura in 1923, had a son Piero with his mistress Lina in 1945, and kept them both in his life.
There were other short-lived affairs in the province of Modena, which Enzo rarely left.
Enzo once said: “I am convinced that when a man tells a woman he loves her, he only means that he desires her.”
But even after his wife died in 1978 Enzo went to visit her grave every morning, which was alongside that of his son and parents.
Devoted Lina and Piero were by his bedside when he died.
Piero, 78, was given a ten per cent share of the Ferrari company and has been vice chairman of the firm ever since his father’s death.
He is now a billionaire thanks to massive demand for the glamorous sports cars, whose starting price is £166,000.
Classic Ferraris are even more sought after, partly because Enzo would let them rot at the back of his factory once they had been replaced by a newer model.
A 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO fetched over £50million at auction five years ago.
Ironically, though, Enzo drove a modest Fiat to work.
His interest was not in creating desirable machines for the public, but in being first past the chequered flag.
As he once said: “Racing cars are neither beautiful nor ugly. They become beautiful when they win.”