How Enzo Ferrari put an end to his former employer’s era of grand prix supremacy
In 1938, Alfa Romeo’s ‘voiturette’ grand prix racer in effect cost Enzo Ferrari his job. Over a decade later, after he’d founded his own company, his past continued to bedevil him…
“Colombo! I’m tired of making machine tools. I want to go back to making race cars.”
Whether or not Enzo Ferrari really summoned his old colleague Gioacchino Colombo to his Modena workshop in July 1945 and uttered these words no longer matters. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend – and this exchange is a pillar of the myth of the Ferrari marque’s creation.
In the mid-1930s, Ferrari was operating Alfa Romeo’s works racing team, albeit under the Scuderia Ferrari title, while Colombo was an assistant to the eminent Hungarian-born engineer Vittorio Jano, architect of Alfa’s greatest grand prix cars.
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