The Ferrari prancing horse began on a First World War fighter plane
The black horse on every Ferrari first belonged to Francesco Baracca, an Italian fighter pilot shot down by an Austrian aircraft in 1918. Enzo Ferrari adopted the emblem in his memory, put it on his team's Alfa Romeo racers, and in 1947 it appeared for the first time on a car built by Ferrari itself.
Ferrari was born in Modena on 18 February 1898, though his birth certificate says the 20th. His father, a grocer's son from Carpi who worked with the nearby railways, ran a metal workshop beside the family house, which is now the Enzo Ferrari Museum. Enzo had little schooling and preferred the workshop, dreaming of being an operetta tenor, a sports journalist or a racing driver. Seeing Felice Nazzaro win at the 1908 Circuito di Bologna, aged 10, settled the matter.
Hard years followed. He served in a mountain artillery regiment in the First World War; his father and older brother both died of flu in 1916, and he was discharged after falling badly ill in the 1918 pandemic. Fiat turned him away, so he became a test driver for CMN in Milan, a firm turning old truck bodies into small cars. His 1919 racing debut, a hillclimb from Parma, brought fourth place in his class.
In 1920 he joined Alfa Romeo's racing department, winning his first Grand Prix at Ravenna in 1923 and three races in 1924, his best year. Shaken by the deaths of fellow drivers Ugo Sivocci and Antonio Ascari, he admitted he raced half-heartedly afterwards and grew more interested in running teams. Scuderia Ferrari, founded in 1929, served as Alfa's racing arm with stars such as Tazio Nuvolari. After his son Dino's birth in 1932 he stopped driving, with 11 wins from 41 Grands Prix.
British rivals called him il Drake, after Francis Drake, for what his small outfit achieved against bigger opponents; Italians called him il Commendatore, and later the Engineer, the Wizard and the Patriarch. He summed up his outlook bluntly: second place is the first loser. By his death on 14 August 1988, Ferrari had taken nine Formula One drivers' titles and eight constructors' titles.
Source: Enzo Ferrari
