His life is set to be the subject of a blockbuster movie starring Adam Driver that is out on Christmas Day.
But in the case of Enzo Ferrari, the Italian visionary who founded the car company in his name, the drama of real life may well outdo the Hollywood version.
Enzo was obsessed with cars and sex with little time for anything else, a biography released to coincide with the movie reveals.
He had a wife, a mistress, a love child and so many other lovers he mocked one man who boasted of having had 3,000 conquests.
Such was his appetite for sex that he even began a relationship with the widow of one of his drivers – who had perished while driving for Ferrari.
According to a new biography, Enzo Ferrari was a ‘tyrannical bully’ who was obsessed with cars and sex with little time for anything else
Adam Driver is portraying the ‘notably crude ‘ Italian car mogul in blockbuster movie ‘Ferrari’ to be released on Christmas Day
According to ‘Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine’, Enzo was a ‘notably crude man’ who belched, farted and burped in front of guests.
He was a tyrannical bully at work who cared little about his drivers, bragging to one priest after a fatal crash that he had done a ‘good job of faking my sadness’.
After his loathed wife tried to drown herself in a river, Enzo summoned the Ferrari mechanics who saved her to say: ‘If she jumps again, leave her in there!’
‘Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine’ was originally published in 1991 by journalist Brock Yates and his daughter has now put together a new edition
‘Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine’ was originally published in 1991 by motoring journalist Brock Yates who died in 2016 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s.
His daughter Stacy Bradley put together the new edition of the book to tie in with the movie which is set in 1957, a time of business and personal tumult in Enzo’s life.
While Ferrari today is known for its luxury cars and its Formula 1 racing team, its origins go back to the town of Modena in Northern Italy, where Enzo was born in February 1898.
Yates writes that his father Alfredo, a metalworker, was a ‘despot who demanded respect from his children and silence, groveling subservience’ from his wife, Adalgisa Bisbini.
Alfredo treated her as a ‘sexual helpmate modeled on his (own) mother’ so a young Enzo learned that women fell into two categories: chaste housewives or ‘low-life harlots’.
According to the book, this helped to develop in Enzo a ‘greater fixation with sex than any other civilized race’. He became the typical Italian male, as Yates puts it: ‘Haughty, tyrannical, sex-obsessed, posturing padrone’.
Enzo was inspired to become a racing driver at the age of 10 when his father took him to his first race outside Bologna – his other possible careers were sportswriting and opera singing.
He was drafted into the Italian army during WWI and worked as a farrier for the 3rd Alpine Artillery Division until a serious battle with the flu earned him an honorable discharge.
In 1919 Enzo moved to Milan to work as a test driver for Costruzioni Meccaniche Nazionali and made his debut as a racing car driver that year.
After switching to Alfa Romeo, he began rising up the corporate ladder and racing less, although one victory at Ravenna in 1923 proved pivotal to his future.
Enzo was inspired to become a racing driver at the age of 10 when his father took him to his first race outside Bologna
In 1919 Enzo moved to Milan to work as a test driver but then began rising up the corporate ladder
Enzo married Laura Garello and Yates writes that he treated the marriage with ‘shocking insensitivity’. Soon after Enzo began seeking out affairs ‘not so much for pleasure but for gratification of the ego’. She is pictured with British racing driver Tony Brooks
He met the mother of an famed Italian airman, Countess Paolina Baracca, who said that he should put a ‘prancing horse’ on his cars as her son had done the same on his planes.
The son, Francesco Baracca had been shot down after recording 34 German kills in World War I.
The countess said it would bring Enzo luck, and so he put a black horse on his cars, with a gold field to represent Moderna – what would later become the Ferrari symbol.
The same year Enzo married Laura Garello and Yates writes that he treated the marriage with ‘shocking insensitivity’.
Writing later in a memoir, Enzo said: ‘I married young, somewhere around 1920. I cannot remember the exact year as I have mislaid the marriage certificate’.
Writing in the third person, he said: ‘This young man declared that nothing else mattered where there was love. I came to realize that the rest did matter and matter a lot’.
Soon after Enzo began seeking out affairs ‘not so much for pleasure but for gratification of the ego’, Yates writes.
‘Enzo was to remain obsessed with sex for most of his life and it was probably within months that his marriage vows to Laura were shattered’, the book says. Years later, Enzo remarked: ‘A man should always have two wives’.
Despite this he and Garello had their only son, Alfredo, who went by ‘Dino’ in 1932 – Yates writes that Enzo had ‘little choice but to accept’ the arrival of the baby as abortion was difficult to obtain and the ruling Fascists were pressuring Italians to procreate.
Enzo’s resolve was tested the following year on what became known as the Black Day of Monza, after the racetrack where it happened, as Alfa drivers Giuseppe Campari, the most popular driver at that time, and Mario-Umberto Borzacchini were both killed in a horrific crash. A third driver for Bugatti also perished.
From that day on Enzo would draw a ‘thin invisible psychic shield between himself and his drivers’. Former colleagues said he cared more about the mechanics than the men risking their lives on the track.
As he grew in power, Enzo became friends with the ruling Fascist party controlled by Benito Mussolini, who he met in person in 1924 as the dictator made a visit to Modena.
In 1934 Enzo joined the Fascist party because his ‘business demanded it’, the book says.
There is no evidence he was an especially devoted member but the newsletter of his racing team adopted the same bellicose tone as the ruling party.
Enzo’s son Dino died in 1956 at the age of 24 from muscular dystrophy. The death had a ‘supreme influence’ on Enzo and it marked a ‘pivotal change’ in his life
Enzo became a recluse after son Dino’s death. He would visit his son’s grave every morning and his office became a ‘shrine’ to his son with a picture of Dino among the clutter
One issue of La Scuderia Ferrari was filled with ‘Fascist bravado and flattery for Mussolini and his associates’.
Yates writes: ‘If Fascism was in fashion and it meant extra racing success, Enzo Ferrari would be a good Fascist’.
Enzo was fired by Alfa Romeo in 1939 as German car companies like Mercedes-Benz began to make vast leaps in engineering technology which made their racing cars far faster than the Alfa’s antiquated P3 race car.
The advent of World War II put a pause on Enzo’s racing – at 42 he was too old to be drafted – and instead he made grinding machines and machine tools at an auto factory he set up in Modena, including under German occupation.
But he did meet one person who was to have a huge influence on his life, his mistress, Lina Lardi.
She worked at the factory and her ‘riveting good looks’ caught her boss’ attention. She was to provide Enzo with an ’emotional sanctuary’ for the rest of his life – as well as his sole heir.
In 1944 Lardi became pregnant and gave birth the following year to Piero, a child whose existence was hidden from the world for years.
After the war finished, Enzo expanded his auto factory and recruited old friends to form his own car company, Ferrari, with plans to make a 1,500cc engine, which at the time was the new battleground in racing.
The prototype of the Ferrari 125, the first car to bear his name, had its test drive in late 1947 after two torturous years of development.
That year it won the Rome Grand Prix, Enzo’s first victory, followed by the famed 1,000 mile Mille Miglia in Italy the following year and the 24 Hour Le Mans race in 1949.
By the 1951 Grand Prix season, Ferrari’s Tipo 375 Ferrari roared to the company’s first World Championship victory, causing Enzo to ‘cry with joy’.
And by this point Ferrari was winning another race: to sell cars around the world.
The company had built 70,000 road cars which were bought by the rich and famous including the Aga Khan, the Shah of Iran and the Dulles and Du Pont families.
The prototype of the Ferrari 125, the first car to bear his name, had its test drive in late 1947 after two torturous years of development
Ferrari had a relationship with Fiamma Breschi, a glamorous actress who was the widow of one of his drivers, Luigi Musso, who died in a crash. Breschi is pictured with Musso
Six of Ferrari’s drivers were killed behind the wheel between 1955 and 1965 but Enzo showed little sympathy
Yet Enzo remained focused on the two things that only interested him: cars and sex and he ‘prided himself on his conquests’, the book claims.
A person who worked closely with Enzo says: ‘Women were simply objects. They were symbols to be carted off to bed, notches on his belt, that’s all’.
As Enzo described it, he was a ‘slave of desire’.
In his eighties he hosted a group of colleagues from the factory, one of whom boasted about having had at least 3,000 lovers. Enzo sneered: ‘Only three thousand?’
After the deaths of his drivers, Enzo once remarked to a journalist that he could not bear to see the suffering of his beloved cars. Only when prompted by the reporter did he add: ‘The driver too, of course’
Another entanglement was Fiamma Breschi, a glamorous actress who – incredibly – was the widow of one of his drivers, Luigi Musso, who died in a crash.
Yates writes that despite being 60 years old, Enzo ‘added her to his retinue’ and set her up running a business in Bologna and then Florence.
Another conquest was a visitor from Paris who he would see while his wife was away in America.
As a former female friend put it bluntly, Enzo ‘loved the f***’ and picked up young women at the Grand Hotel in Modena.
Yates writes: ‘Many close to him puzzle over which came first – automobiles or sex’.
The next few years were a period of growth and expansion for Ferrari until the death of Dino in 1956 at the age of 24 from muscular dystrophy.
The death had a ‘supreme influence’ on Enzo and it marked a ‘pivotal change’ in his life. Yates writes: ‘From that point on he became more reclusive, more embittered, more cynical, more stoic about the other broken bodies that suddenly seemed part of his daily existence’.
Enzo spent more time grieving Dino than he had with him during his life.
He would visit his son’s grave every morning and all V6 engines and the cars that carried them were called ‘Dinos’. Even his office became a ‘shrine’ to his son with a picture of Dino among the clutter.
Death remained close to Enzo and six of Ferrari’s drivers were killed behind the wheel between 1955 and 1965.
Not that Enzo cared much, and once remarked to a journalist that he could not bear to see the suffering of his beloved cars. Only when prompted by the reporter did he add: ‘The driver too, of course’.
Penelope Cruz plays Enzo’s wife, while Shailene Woodley is his longtime mistress Lina Lardi in the film due out on Christmas Day
Enzo’s mistress Lina Lardi became pregnant and gave birth in 1945 to Piero, a child whose existence was hidden from the world for years
With a death toll of 16 people in three years, including spectators, death hung over Enzo like a ‘winter fog,’ the author writes
Incredibly one of Enzo’s drivers, the American Phil Hill, was sitting there the whole time.
Hill later remarked: ‘Deep down he cares more about the cars than he does about us’.
Among the fatalities during that time period was Eugenio Castellotti who died during a test at a race track in Modena. Enzo dismissed it as a ‘stupid’ accident and said that Castellotti was ‘going through a conflicting time emotionally and his end was brought about by a momentary slowness in reactions’.
For good measure, he added that the dead man was ‘bitter and absent in his manner’.
An even greater tragedy happened in 1957, a period covered by the film about Ferrari’s life, at the Mille Miglia.
The Ferrari driven by Spaniard Alfonso de Portago blew a tire and flew off the road, killing him and his co-driver Edmund Nelson along with nine spectators – five of whom were children.
The horrific crash put an end to the Mille Miglia which was never staged again and led to Enzo being put on trial for manslaughter, though he was cleared.
‘When you drive for Ferrari, you are headed one way only: for that little box under the ground,’ rival driver Harry Schell said in 1959.
Yates points out that despite the mystique around the Ferrari name, the 1950s were largely a failure when it came to the Grand Prix.
Rather than technological achievements, it was Enzo’s ‘dogged, gritty unfailing persistence’ that got them results.
Finally in 1961, Ferrari began to achieve the kind of success that Enzo craved thanks to its Tipo 156 Grand Prix car, a rear-engine machine, something that he had long resisted even though others had found success with such machines.
The year was one of ‘constant triumph’ for Ferrari but the season ended in tragedy at the Italian Grand Prix, which has been dubbed Formula 1’s Darkest Day.
German driver Wolfgang von Trips died as he crashed into a fence and killed 15 spectators and in the wake of the accident Enzo stayed out of the spotlight.
In reality he ‘cared little, if at all’ for von Trips’s death, Yates writes.
Soon after von Trips was laid to rest, Enzo remarked to a priest he knew: ‘I think I did a good job of faking my sadness’.
By then Ferrari had 500 employees and Enzo was a ‘megalomaniac’ at the factory with them. Anyone who was too successful was deemed a threat and was gotten rid of – only Enzo could have the spotlight.
The turmoil led to Enzo discussing a merger with the Ford Motor Company but he backed out at the last minute, unable to hand over control of Ferrari’s racing division.
The $18 million fee, for which Ford would have full rights to Ferrari’s name and trademarks and called the new company Ford-Ferrari, was not enough for Enzo
Yet by 1969 Enzo agreed to sell part of Ferrari to Fiat, a deal that was forced on him due to slumping car sales.
Ferrari’s renaissance began with Niki Lauda who was part of a new breed of drivers who would not be pushed around by the likes of Enzo. In 1975 Lauda won the World Championships in the 312T, a car that was more advanced than anyone else’s in the field
Enzo’s death in 1988 was not made public until he had been buried next to his father in the family crypt
Embarrassingly, Fiat paid $11 million for its 40 percent stake in Ferrari, and Enzo was so desperate he traveled to Turin to sign the paperwork, even though he was known to prefer to stay in Modena.
Enzo kept 49 percent, a friend received one percent and Piero got 10 percent.
Now in her later years, Garello’s behavior had become erratic and she tried to commit suicide by leaping into Modena’s Panaro River. A group of mechanics rescued her and were summoned by Enzo to his office who told them: ‘If she jumps again, leave her in there!’
Ferrari’s renaissance began with Niki Lauda, who was part of a new breed of drivers who would not be pushed around by the likes of Enzo and forced him to make better cars.
In 1975 Lauda won the World Championships in the 312T, a car that was more advanced than anyone else’s in the field
But the following year he was involved in a near-fatal crash, only to recover and race again six weeks later, his head in bandages and his face oozing from his wounds.
Lauda quit Ferrari the next year and was replaced by Gilles Villeneuve who ‘drove like a fiend’ and helped to bring more success.
After Garello’s death Enzo suffered heartbreak when thieves broke into Dino’s crypt and tried to steal his body.
His solace came from his warming relations with Piero, who took on more duties in Ferrari, albeit reluctantly.
In a press release in 1975, Enzo could only stretch to describe his son – who would play a major role in Ferrari’s management after his own death – as ‘a young man intimately related to me’.
Enzo’s death in 1988 was not treated as a period of national mourning in Italy as might have expected.
Instead, as per his wishes, his passing was not made public until he had been buried next to his father in the family crypt.
It was, as Yates writes, a ‘strangely disappointing anticlimax’ to a life that had spanned the entire history of motorsport.