The History of Ferrari

Executive Summary By: William Berg 

When Enzo Ferrari created his company Scuderia Ferrari in Italy in 1929 his intentions was to sponsor amateur race car drivers and invent racing cars, and it would take more than 15 years before Ferrari began to create their own road cars in 1946. Ferrari is still devoted to the creation of racing cars and high performance sports cars and do not create other types of cars. Scuderia Ferrari is still the widespread name for Gestione Sportiva, the part of the Ferrari company that works with racing. Scuderia is an Italian word and means "stable", but Scuderia Ferrari is sometime also translated as Team Ferrari.

During the early years, Scuderia Ferrari sponsored race car drivers that were driving Alfa Romeo cars. Scuderia Ferrari would prepare Alfa Romeo cars before the race, and in 1938 Enzo Ferrari became officially employed by Alfa Romeo's racing department. Two years later Enzo Ferrari found out that Alfa Romeo was planning to absorb Scuderia Ferrari, a plan which Enzo Ferrari strongly opposed. Enzo Ferrari did however create a race car during this restricted period. After the end of World War II, Enzo Ferrari rebuilt his factory and now the Ferrari factory was capable of construction road cars as well.

Ferrari constructed its first road car in 1947. Enzo Ferrari was still more interested in race cars and the Ferrari road cars was merely a way for him to fund his work with the Scuderia Ferrari. His distaste for the road car customers became famous and he even accused them of buying Ferrari cars only as status symbols. In November 1961 a dispute between Enzo Ferrari and his sales manager, Girolamo Gardini, turned into a crisis. Enzo Ferrari responded to the threat by throwing out Girolamo Gardini, and several employees who agreed with Girolamo Gardini were also ousted. ATS even managed to take over Scuderia Serenissima, a very successful racing team, from Ferrari.

Today, FIAT controls 56 percent of the Ferrari stocks. Maranello is still the home town for Ferrari.