Enzo Ferrari; Life Lessons from the Master of Speeds.

Whenever we talk of luxury sports cars, the Ferrari car doesn’t miss our lists. In fact, despite being one of the coolest and speed automobiles, it is one of the most expensive vehicles you can come across. It sometimes costs up to over half a million dollars to own one today.
Enzo Ferrari, the man behind the Ferrari brand was born Enzo Anselmo Giuseppe Maria Ferrari on February 18, 1898, in Modena Italy. His life was a colorful one in terms of speed cars, fast life, and innovation. Yet still, it wasn’t perfect as Ferrari’s life was filled with controversies.
He had a legally married wife called Laura Dominica Garello with whom they had a son by the name of Alfredo Ferrari who developed problems with his spinal cord from childhood and would end up dying at the age of 24 at their home.
By the time this was happening, Enzo Ferrari had been having a secret relationship with Lina Lardi and together they had sired Pierro Ferrari who was 11 years old at the time Alfredo died. His family life early on was filled with drama, fights, and conflicts. Nevertheless, he didn’t allow them to affect his focus on what he did best, making the fastest automobiles.
Rise above your challenges
Enzo lost his father to pneumonia while he was relatively young. Within almost the same period, his elder brother Dino died during the first world war while working as an ambulance driver when he became sick and died of typhoid fever.
With such a huge loss, this boy who had abandoned school to focus on matters of racing was thrown into limbo. He had to do menial jobs here and there to survive. Whereas his father had groomed him to take over the family business, his ambition was to be in the racing world and that is what we eventually came to know of him.
Always don’t lose sight of your purpose.
To Enzo Ferrari, motor car racing was his calling so to say. When he moved from one menial job to another, he didn’t lose sight of his purpose. That of becoming one of the greatest names in motor rally championships; a big name in winnings precisely.
When things became tough, he enjoined the army and said he had skills in auto mechanics but because he came from an unknown family, he wouldn’t be allowed into the mechanics division. Instead, he was recruited to take care of the horses.
He left after a while in 1918 after falling ill in a flu pandemic. He then visited the largest automaker in the region, Fiat, for work as an auto mechanic but was turned down. His bitterness for revenge was a sweet one, he would start from wherever he could and make sure his car beat the Fiat and become the best race car there would be. A fete he eventually achieved.
If the path you are treading seems to have reached an end, carve a new one.
Enz0, out of frustration for being rejected by the automobile maker, decided to use a rather different path. He went and made friends with one of the leading race car drivers in his hometown who later recommended him to CMN as a test driver and was hired. After some time, Ferrari was promoted to a race car test driver.
He participated in about 41 Grand Prix races and managed 11 wins. After the death of his close friends in racing competitions, Ferrari retired and participated in racing club activities in partnership with Alfa Romeo; a car manufacturer in Italy at the time.
He then went into the business of supplying car parts for other car factories but in the meantime had managed to build his own two racing cars by the early 1940s. He bought the finished cars and engineered them using the best engineers he could find to be the race car he envisioned. And Ferrari was born.
Don’t look at your academic level or field, just do what you can with what you have in the field in your passion lies.
Enzo Ferrari didn’t have an auto mechanical engineering degree. He simply had a passion for speed cars and decided to get into the race as well with the limitations he had. The difference however was that he didn’t allow the limitations to limit him. He maneuvered around them.
He started where he was, used what he had, and did what he could and when he died at the age of 90 years old, he had become a legend the world over as one of the greatest “engineers” and a father to some of the best cars in the world.
Though the personal cars segment was one he was not interested in, today both in the racing tracks and personal cars segments, Ferarri cars have carved a legendary position one which is not about to go down any time soon. The horse emblem in front of those cars reminds us every single day of the legacy of one man with a passion for speed; Enzo Anselmo Giuseppe Maria Ferrari of Italy, one of the greatest in the 20th century.