Ferrari by Leonard Setright

This book is part of a series by Ballantine books series on the history of the car. Ferrari was number 5 and published in 1971 with an intro by John Surtees. Most people know the author by the name LJK Setright who was featured in CAR magazine for many years. The book is decidedly English and some of the idioms and references didn't translate to me as an American forty years later. He also has an annoying habit of using foreign phrases in place of English at most inappropriate places, like "...making the FIAT Dino a rare automotive example of legititmation per matrimonium subsequens." Really, what's the point? 

He has divided the history into a few chapter segments: The Slow Forging of Independence, What Makes A Ferrari and Why All The Fuss?, Front Engine Single Seaters, Rear Engine Single Seaters, The Racing Sports Cars and finally Ferraris In The Street. He skips around a bit too much, introducing an idea here and then dropping it to be reintroduced at a later more appropriate time. It took me a while to settle into his groove.

Once involved with the story, he tells it very well and includes some perspectives not covered to any satisfaction by other authors. He talks about the commercialization of Ferrari, how the old man made production work for him while maintaining a rapid R&D department. He also originates or perpetuates some misinformation, such as the old "different oils for transmission and overdrive" dilemma.  I don't know what his engineering credentials are (certainly better than mine), but I questioned some of his views from this perspective, like forged v. billet cranks. There's also some confusing text differentiating models like the 250 Europa (which is referred to as a 250 Export at one point) from the Europa GT. His conversation about suppliers v. in-house manufacturing is interesting.

Overall this is a satisfying overview of the company, written shortly after the FIAT merger and refreshing in having been done "in period". Really, there's the Hans Tanner book and its revisions, the terrific Fitgerald & Merritt book and little else published before this one, so he doesn't have a lot of pre-published sources to pull from, mostly magazine articles (and some of them are great). Originally priced at a dollar, Setright did a very good job telling this story to the general 1970s public, adding some personal anecdotes and views to make this a nice little addition to your library.

Enzo Ferrari by Richard Williams

This is delightful book on the life of Enzo Ferrari. It treats his universe as an evolution rather than being born by some big bang or immaculate conception. You feel like his personal driver(s), chef, accountant and barber have all been referenced for this behind-the-scenes feel of the book. There are the usual suspects, those closest to Ferrari who have for the most part been reverently quiet about their boss, but Williams has dug a bit deeper than other authors. For example, we know that Ferrari was denied a position at FIAT after the war. We (I) didn't know the man who turned him down was named Diego Seria. I'm impressed. 

I like the telling of the early racing days and the time with Alfa. There is even mention of his motorcycle racing team, which was pretty extensive. The Ferrari egg was his racing career. The Scuderia of the 20s and 30s was the larval period, feeding, learning and growing. After leaving Alfa he entered a pupae stage where his metamorphosis took place, and he emerged from the war a new creature, ready to fly.  

There are a lot of books on this subject, even some in Enzo's own words. It's hard to tell where specific information comes from. Yates' book was very well researched and he offered a lot of insight (some of it heavily biased) but history is a tough thing to document accurately. The story of Ford Motor Company's courtship of Enzo Ferrari has been told many times, sometimes by those who were there first hand, yet there are differences in all the stories. In Williams' accounting, using Franco Gozzi as a source, the deal  terminated in an explosion. In Don Frey's (Ford's representative) recollection in Road & Track, he made it sound like negotiations ended quietly with Enzo and Franco walking out for dinner.

One place where biographers seem to agree is a point I'd argue. In most books we're told that the only thing that really mattered to Ferrari was Formula One, and that he never attended races. Both Williams and Yates books treat GT, sports and prototype racing as an aside. Endurance racing is pretty well glossed over in both books. Le Mans is given only a paragraph or two in this book. But Enzo not only created cars for these races, but picked the drivers, manipulated rules and relied on sports car's success to catapult his name to glory. He not only attended all the Mille Miglia races, but stationed himself at a checkpoint giving strategy to the drivers. This is not incidental involvement. In the early days he used GT and prototypes as development for GP cars as often as he used GP cars as a way to improve the sports racers.

This book flows along well. It is written in a conversational style and really feels like the author has an inside track to Enzo's life. His personal and professional life seems to be handled with an even hand. The author shows the rough spots respectfully and the glories without too much applause. It's a good read and I recommend it to anyone interested in a clear and thorough telling of this great story.                   

Enzo Ferrari by Brock Yates

The whole title is Enzo Ferrari - The Man, the Cars, the Races. This is a big book about a big figure in history and must've been a mammoth undertaking to research. I think its a well researched book and Yates has talked to as many people as will talk to him about the subject. I remember when the book came out, Yates was raked across the coals for some of his conclusions, which came across as sacrilegious in places. He made it a point to explain some of his text with a letter to Cavallino (issue 72, p. 4+8), that clarified his role as an objective journalist, not a cheerleader. 

In the foreword of his book he offers "The resulting picture may offend many of his followers who have come to believe that he was a demigod..." The offense of the book is in Yates' projecting an agenda, sometimes rudely, of an opinion he either started with or developed along the way while compiling information in the book. The agenda seems to be three fold. 

One is that most of Ferrari's victories came in the wake of substandard competition, that when faced with first class opposition, he faltered. You win some you loose some, that's sort of the way racing is. But see if this sounds biased, "Ferrari also developed the little 312PBs with 3-liter flat-12s in the early 60s. But by then he was on the verge of leaving sports car competition for good. Had he chosen to stay he would have faced enormous challenges from Porsche and the French areospace firm of Matra." First off, the 312PBs were in the early 70s and second, he completely ignores the fact they went practically undefeated and typically took the first three to five places all year long. This omission had to be intentional considering the comprehensive scope of his research.

The second agenda drives home the notion that Ferrari, the man and/or the company, never invented anything. He writes factually about the evolution of tried and true principles and Ferrari's reluctance to incorporate unproven technology. This is all pretty well known, like the fact that Disney never drew his characters but relied on a crack creative team around him. I think someone took offense to Yates position here, and Ferrari: 50 Years of Innovations in Technology was published in 1997. This book went a bit far the other way but it presents a pretty good case that Ferrari did put a few new cards on the table. But Yates obsessing on the subject is not good journalism. I just turned to a random page here, and he talks about the 250GTO "...when it was introduced on that chill day in 1962, its purpose was simply to win the new Grand Touring Championship and to dispose of the upstart Cobras in the process." This seems like a fair enough introduction to a car that became legend, but he continues, "This it would do in the near term, but by 1964 the lovely coupes from California, in the hands of experts like Dan Gurney, were considerably faster and more than capable of wresting the championship away from the red machines". In the space between sentences he ignores two years of Cobra's development and the FIAs denial of Ferrari's evolution of the GTO. He subsequently claims the GTO's success is based on a lack of competition, which was the same Cobra he is praises in the previous sentence. I just don't like this kind of confusing and weird partiality.

The third thing is that there are times when Yates is just rude. He proposes that Enzo's wife Laura may have been a prostitute, and that syphilis may have been present in the family germ pool. This is all well and good, but he calls Laura a whore on more than one occasion. I'm not sure that, given the same information about Ford or Duesenberg's wife he would have used such harsh terms. This is just disrespectful of Ferrari and makes me believe that Yates is not an unbiased reporter but a guy with an axe to grind.

It's a dark cover on this dark portrait. I'm not apt to recommend this book, especially in light of an excellent volume by Richard Williams that is now available.