#396 The Obsession of Enzo Ferrari

27:18I think it's like six or seven years. Eventually, Alfa Romeo buys Enzo out, buys the entire racing team. This renders Enzo an employee, which he would never stay. They then bring in a new team lead. This guy, Enzo, hates. Then the Ferrari name ceases to exist, and they rename the team, the racing team, Alfa Course. So Enzo leaves and starts a new company, AAC, but he has a four -year non -compete agreement. So he cannot race against Alfa Romeo for four years. Now is perfect timing because during this four years, that's the start of World War II. Most of what his company is going to do is actually manufacture things for Italy for the war.

27:56Now, the reason I'm telling you all this backstory, the reason I'm bringing this up is because what we think of as Ferrari today was not founded until 1947. Enzo was almost 50. Enzo was almost 50 years old before he starts the company that he is known all over the world for. and that's still existing and thriving to this day, almost 80 years later. And when I say that he's one of the history's greatest successes, this is what I mean. He's got no resources, yet his goal is still to be the best. It took Ferrari, remember this is after World War II, it took Ferrari nearly two years to build the first car.

28:38In post -war Europe, electricity was a luxury. Fuel and manpower were in short supply. This is what he said. All we wanted to do was build a conventional engine, only one that would be outstanding. This guy has no resources, yet the goal is always the same. The goal is to be the best. Now we get into what I think is a small handful of ideas, principles that he built his career around. Ferrari had two fundamental talents. First, he was, by his own admission, an agitator of men. He was gifted with charisma that effortlessly captured anyone who crossed his path. He could stimulate the energy and creativity of his colleagues like no one else.

29:21He was very demanding, especially when things were going well. He refused to rest on his laurels. He was absolutely dedicated to his work, and he could be ruthless. So this idea of agitator of man is by far my most common reoccurring highlight and idea that I pulled out from all these different books. Ferrari's second talent was that he was an absolute marketing genius. There's a story in the book where a very important and wealthy American client comes and visits the factory. Enzo vets every single customer personally. So at the time, the factory had a parking lot that was filled with unsold Ferraris that the client cannot see.

29:59They are hidden from view. So the American says, Enzo, I would love to buy a Ferrari. And Ferrari replies, yes, of course, but we have so many requests. Yes, I'll do what I can, but I'm afraid that you have to wait several months before you can buy one. Enzo's employee, after the American left, he overheard this and he's asking Enzo about this. Like, I don't understand. We have all these unsold Ferraris. Like, why didn't you just sell them one now? And Enzo said something that was incredible. He says a Ferrari must be desired. It cannot and must not be perceived as something that is immediately available.

30:31Otherwise, the dream is gone. So in order to maintain that exclusivity of his brand, production has always been lower than demand of the market. Let's go back to this idea that repeats over and over again. He is an agitator of men. He says, I have never considered myself a designer or an inventor, but only one who gets things moving and keeps them running. My innate talent was for stirring up men. Another example of being an agitator of men. there's no question that Enzo Ferrari had become a compelling salesman and manipulator. Another example, it is often said that his greatest skill was his ability to recognize talent.

31:10And this is one of the most important things to understand. So he takes the idea that, hey, I'm an agitator of men. I have a great eye for talent. He has this remarkable ability to manage these highly skilled people with giant egos. He has a fundamental understanding of human in psychology and is a great marketer, and then he doesn't do anything else. He just focuses on work and literally nothing else. Also, there's another thing I need to bring up to you. There's always a blueprint. When you read all these biographies of people that achieved great things, what did they do? Before they achieved great things, they studied other people that had previously achieved great things.

31:46Itore Bugatti was Enzo Ferrari's blueprint. The The prototype operation for what Enzo Ferrari envisioned was that of Bugatti. The founder of Bugatti was about 20 years older than Enzo. He actually, interesting enough, he dies the same year that Ferrari was founded. They knew each other. In fact, Enzo referred to Bugatti as a very fine gentleman, which is kind of crazy because Enzo did not believe in handing out compliments. This is a description of Bugatti. this part artist, part engineer, part entrepreneur, part sculptor, had created an automotive fiefdom in a tiny village. I'm reading this to you because this is exactly what Ferrari does.

32:24The Bugatti estate included a small, elegant inn for the entertainment of guests and customers, a stable of thoroughbred horses, and the factory itself. Bugatti was just one of a bevy of colorful eccentrics, playboys, dreamy commoners, and hard -eyed egomaniacs who populated the world of European motorsports in the 1930s. He stood above the rest in terms of lifestyle. A feudal barony had been created around the spidery machines he manufactured in limited quantities and sold only to those he personally deemed worthy. By contrast, Enzo Ferrari was then still a drab, simple journeyman laboring in a small garage in an Italian backwater.

33:08I found a biography of Bugatti from 1960 that was written by his daughter had to be translated from French. It's episode 316. If you have not listened to it yet, Bugatti's life was incredible. And so this is the influence of Bugatti on Ferrari. And so Ferrari had clung to the dream of becoming what he called a grand constructor, the classic manufacturer of complete racing cars and high performance road automobiles for a select clientele of elite enthusiasts. Only a few men in history had achieved such an elevated status. Now, another thing that Enzo Ferrari learned from people that came before him is, hey, you know what the best marketing is?

33:48The best marketing is winning. If we build successful racing cars, then rich men will flock to our door to obtain similar cars. The best marketing is winning. This sounds a lot like Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan said that the marketing he did for his business was done on the court, that if he won championships, people would automatically buy his shoes. People are attracted to winners. So as Ferrari wins more races, as the Ferrari legend and the brand grow, so do the people lining up hoping to buy just a tiny piece of it. And then here's a great quote from Ferrari. He's got this really counterintuitive point about losing.

34:25So somebody is as pathologically competitive as he was. You would expect him to be introduced into a state of rage when he loses. But he actually thought that he learned way more when he was losing than winning. So this is counterintuitive point and why they said usually after a loss, the workshop in the factory was actually kind of calm because they understood what they had to fix. And so Enzo says, there's always something to learn. One never stops learning, particularly when one is losing. When one loses, one knows what has to be done. When one wins, one is never sure. I want to go back to this idea of Enzo being an agitator of men.

35:03There's another thing that he's going to have in common with Michael Jordan. Enzo Ferrari was the consummate manager of men, not docile, soft men, but proud, fiercely competitive, egocentric men whose livelihood and their very reason for living depended on this most demanding and unforgiving of sports. I am shocked at how many other people that worked with Ferrari, worked for Ferrari in all these different books. Remember, I'm pulling from four different books. They were afraid of him. If you watch this documentary on Michael Jordan called The Last Dance, it talked about we were afraid of him and we were his teammates.

35:42They say the exact same thing about Enzo. Another thing they say over and over again when you run into Enzo, that he was a pathological competitor. They called him a man with a diamond hard will to win at all costs. And building race cars and winning, that was his singular focus his entire life. Remember, he was not, he says, or again, I was not driven by money. I'm driven by prestige. It says Enzo Ferrari was born with simple tastes. And even after he became rich and prominent, he retained the ways of a simple, uncluttered man. During the 1930s, when every ounce of his energy and every lira in his pocket was being plowed back into the business, he lived a modest and frugal life.

36:24So he's working seven days a week. He does not travel. He never gets on a plane. He's scared of elevators. He doesn't spend money on anything else but his cars. He said she works all day, and then at night he has, let's say, a rather robust romantic life. Let's just put it that way. If you want to learn more about that, the Enzo Ferrari book by Brock Yates has a lot of detail on his extracurricular nighttime activities. But outside of that, he just had this singular focus. He says Enzo Ferrari was immersed in the life of a full -time racing boss with all of his energies concentrated on the team's competition schedule.

37:00Again, on his relentless focus, he just wants to show up to every race for decades. The source of much of Ferrari's success over the years was not technological brilliance or tactical cleverness, but dogged, gritty, unfailing persistence in competing, a willingness to appear at the line no matter what the odds and run as hard as possible. So he wanted, you know, everybody knows about Formula One. I just did this episode that came out last week about it. Everybody, you know, that's the premier racing series in the world. So Enzo is obviously going to want to take part of that. But he wants to show up at every race in every league, no matter how large or small.

37:37A pathological competitor is how I would describe him. Says over and over again, here's another description of Enzo from people that knew him. Intensely competitive, self -made, utterly single -minded, prepared to work endless hours. You see how I'm repeating this over and over again? He just had a handful of principles he built his entire life around. What made him special is that he started working on this when he was 19 and worked on it until he was 90. Those who knew him best understood that Enzo Ferrari would never retire. There was little else in his life besides automobile racing. It was that simple.

38:08When he was asked how he wanted to be remembered, he replied, as someone who dreamt of becoming Ferrari. He was animated by an extraordinary passion that led him to build a product with no equal. And when you have a singular focus, you tend to have a simple life. He had habits that he rigorously respected. He never boarded a plane. It was said that he was scared of elevators. He didn't like to travel. If you wanted to meet him, you had to come to his office. He wore dark sunglasses so you couldn't look him in the eye. The key factors were Enzo's perseverance, a stubborn faith in himself, and an insatiable thirst for success, not simply in motor racing but in life.

38:45These were all qualities that he would never abandon. They shaped him. I love this line that was in that New Yorker profile. It said, like all masterpieces, it bespeaks the character of its creator. I found a line in one of Enzo's biography that sounds a lot like that. Enzo was without question the central of the whole endeavor, the originator and the brains of the operation, the energy behind the future activity. Now, there are a few times when he is depressed or close to nervous breakdown. Again, until he sells 50 % of the company in 1969 to fiat. Up until that point, he is reinvesting every single dollar.

39:18He is not a wealthy man. And so he's got financial stress. He's got friends dying all around him. He's got drivers dying all around him. He did not live. I'm not trying to paint like a rosy picture for you. You know, he did not live an easy, happy life. And so when he goes through these periods, he would just throw himself completely into his work. He said, work has always been and always would be the best antidote. And one area where Ferrari the brand and Ferrari the man actually deviate is Ferrari the brand talks a lot about their illustrious past, as you could imagine, one of the most successful racing teams of all time.

39:53Ferrari did not talk about the past at all. He believed that each victory or accomplishment was only the starting point for the next. In fact, one of his mottos was my next car is best. He liked to keep his business as simple as possible. There was a time where he was entertaining the idea, and I think this was just a negotiation tactic, where he almost sold Ferrari to Ford, which I don't believe he was actually ever serious about doing so. I think he was just using that to push up a price because he was going to sell to an Italian company. There's just no way. He wanted Fiat. I just don't believe that he was ever going to sell to Ford.

40:30But what's fascinating is during the talks, a bunch of Ford executives in the delegation would come over and they would tour his factory. And this is what they said. The Americans marveled at the fact that each Ferrari was entirely hand -built. They marveled at the rudimentary wind tunnel, at the cleanliness of the production line in the foundry and how lean most departments were, including the press office, which was headed entirely up, which was headed and entirely made up of one guy. Remember at the time, Ford probably has the most advanced factory, certainly most advanced automobile manufacturing factory on the planet.

41:03Something Ferrari would repeat. He believed he possessed just one quality, the stubborn determination to capture the trust of those who work with me. That is a great line. The stubborn determination to capture the trust of those who work with me. He was anti -marriage. He says, I should not have married because a man dominated by a passion such as mine can hardly divide himself in half and be a good husband. If I had listened to my wife, I would have been a clerk in a bus company. Another thing that I absolutely loved about him is the way he would speak about his products, the way he would speak about the process of making his products.

41:36He spoke of his cars as if they were alive. He said, And cars possessed unique behaviors, just like people do. They breathed through their carburetors. They were skinned with metal. There's another funny thing. So sometimes when I'm reading quotes from him and he's talking about Ferrari, you think he might be talking about his company. No, he's talking about himself. He would refer, he'd refer to himself in third person a lot. There is, he's got a way with words. He's obviously a great salesperson. He's a great manipulator of men. There is a showmanship. He understood there's a showmanship to business.

42:07So if you think about, if you listen to the episode you did last week on the geniuses who built Formula One, one of the guys I profiled in there was this guy named Bernie Ecclestone, who made more money off of Formula One than anybody else in his life. He also knew Enzo. Enzo was one of the few racing car team owners that he actually respected. He thought a lot of them were kind of scrubs, except Enzo was a shark. And Bernie Ecclestone changed himself from a used car dealer into a multi -billionaire, right? And he talks about the advice that Enzo gave him. He says something that's very interesting.

42:40Enzo told him one time that the sport is on the table and the business is underneath it. Enzo understood that showmanship is also salesmanship. He believed his cars were the best because they were made by craftsmen with soul in the game. He winds up having this fight when he tells Ford he's not going to sell to him. So he has this war with Henry Ford II. And during the war, Ferrari said that Henry Ford II made ugly little cars in an ugly factory. And then he has this genius idea that I believe is true about what he's about to say here. He believed that his cars could only be made in this region of Italy.

43:17He said that the Madanese held beauty and great esteem. And he has this great way to talk about this. It is my opinion, Ferrari once said, that there are innate gifts that are a peculiarity of certain regions and that transferred into industry. These propensities may at times acquire an exceptional importance. In Modena, where I was born and set up my own works, there is a species of psychosis for racing cars. There is a species of psychosis for racing cars. Enzo worked seven days a week, 12 to 16 hours a day, holidays included. At night, he would return to Modena. He felt extremely emotionally attached to his city.

43:58Except for his daily drives to Marinello, he refused to leave Modena for almost any reason. He did not attend races. Again, just another example of this singular focus. Enzo studied the psychology of winning. He said certain principles were self -evident. Number one, competition is the impetus for innovation. The fiercer the competition, the faster cars will go. Number two, there is in some men a need to achieve greatness. When matched with talent, this necessity can turn humans into demigods. Number three, a man who is willing to die at the wheel is always likely to beat a man in a faster car if he can survive until the end of the race.

44:43So this love of beauty, this craftsmanship that he says is innately modernese, winds up playing very well in America. So one of, I think his most lucrative market was America. So they start importing cars into America. Listen to this description. Nothing like a Ferrari had ever graced American roads. They were cars built by Italian artisans.

45:12I hope they use that description as a copy for an ad. That's excellent.

45:23Again, I bring this up over and over again, because I really do believe this is the mentality that a lot of history's greatest founders share. No rearview mirror, no resting on laurels, no sleeping on winds, make something great, and then do it again. The only thing that's going to take these kind of people out of the game is death. You see it over and over and over again, these biographies. When asked about the root of his mania, his obsession with victory, Ferrari said, everything that I've done, I did because I couldn't do anything less. One day, I want to build a car that's faster than all of them, and then I want to die.

46:01He was 60 when he said this. And this is what I meant earlier when the way he describes his products is the way you would describe your lover. This is what he says. This kind of love, which I can describe in an almost sensual or sexual way within my subconsciousness, is probably the main reason why for so many years I no longer went to see my cars race.

46:33He uses that same kind of language when he's describing the process of creating his products. In the first act of his labor, the maker conceives what his creature is to be. He dreams of it, and he sees it in detail, and he lays down the plan of work which he entrusts to a band of helpers who share his passion. A racing car, in fact, does not necessarily come into being as a creation of a superior mind, but it is always the compendium of the common, unflagging and enthralling work of a team fired by a common enthusiasm. And so this kind of language and this kind of opening up, it is only reserved for his products.

47:13In fact, somebody who worked for him for a long time once described his temperament as closed like a walnut. There's a line that Ferrari wrote in his autobiography that I think is tied to this. He says the facial expression, smile or frown or whatever it might be, is merely a form of defense and should be taken only as such. there is something that Ferrari has in common with John D. Rockefeller is Rockefeller had a mask so people could work with Rockefeller for decades and they'd never heard him raise his voice or say an unkind word and I think only that's another person I probably read a couple hundred thousand pages on and there's only one time where he let it slip his entire career where he was induced into a state of rage in front in front of somebody else and the person working with him talks about his like almost like a demon came out of him and you could see the rage on his face and immediately when rockefeller realizes that he let his self -control slip he just brought it back inside and his face goes back to normal he had a mask he had unbelievable control over what he was feeling inside and not letting it out enzo was like that back when enzo used to watch races on television his own cars right he stopped doing that after a while a friend who would watch races with enzo would said that he never moved.

48:29He didn't have any reaction whatsoever, whether they won or they lost. They said he sat there like a stone. Another friend of his said Ferrari has no other satisfaction. His very life is that creature of his La Ferrari. And then to give you a sense of how difficult and domineering this person was, this is one of his drivers who won championships for him, describing Enzo. Enzo Ferrari's expectation of performance exerted a strong force that radiated throughout the organization, and the drivers were not exempt from it. Rather than the race being a culmination of a team effort to win, there was a feeling instead as if you, the driver, had been reluctantly entrusted with this gem of a machine, this fruit of genius, and hopefully your natural foolishness would not destroy it.

49:22When one of us did win, I sensed a certain reluctance on Ferrari's part to share the laurels with the driver, to pat him on the back and thank him for a job well done. It was more like Ferrari felt the victory was his. He had not only managed to build a car that was better than all the others, but a car that was also good enough to foil even his driver's natural destructiveness. There was no separation between Enzo Ferrari the man and Ferrari the company. I would say that Ferrari is just Enzo with 10 ,000 lives. The key to the Ferrari legend, the X factor which makes its road cars such objects of desire and seats in its race cars so coveted, is the presence of the creator etched into the DNA.

50:07Enzo's personality, his hopes and dreams inhabit every car which rolls out of the factory gates. Enzo's cars were so directly an extension of his own being to admit fault in them was to admit fault in himself. And again, he was the protector of the brand. He understood how valuable this mystique, the fact that you couldn't read his emotions, you couldn't even see his eyes. He vetted each potential buyer personally. he put up he made it very hard to buy his products and what happens because he understood human psychology this kind of gatekeeping all it does is make people want it more when he sets up all these barriers what happens the wealthy and the famous all over the world americans europeans asians they flock to his door so one example of the fact that the most famous and successful people in the world were customers of his were customers of ferrari so the heir to the fiat empire, this guy named Gianni Anginelli.

51:05There's a documentary on Gianni. Part of the documentary is the fact that Gianni just drove his Ferrari everywhere throughout Italy as if he was in a Formula One race. At the time, Gianni is one of the most famous and wealthiest people in Italy. Everybody knows his love of Ferrari. And so then they start loving Ferrari. Then they try to buy a Ferrari. Then they see all these barriers to entry and it only makes them want it more. There's a great line that it says associations with famous rogues did Ferrari's profile no harm at all. So let me give you an example. This is the wildlife. I found him in the new book.

51:41This guy named Porofio Rubirosa. Perhaps the most prolific Ferrari purchaser of the 1950s was Rubirosa, a polo player and racing driver who many believe to have been involved in political blackmail operations, including assassinations on behalf of a Dominican dictator. He dated a string of stars, including Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, Joan Crawford, Ava Gardner, and Zaza Gabor. Ruby Rosa died after wrapping his Ferrari around a tree, having spent the evening celebrating a polo victory. He was 56 years old. Associations with famous rogues did Ferrari's profile no harm at all. And so even that, when a fatal accident of somebody famous driving a Ferrari, you think that would harm the brand.

52:24It didn't. It caused more people to want Ferraris. Let's go back to the fact that Enzo was ruthless. He believed that his cars were the stars and those who designed and raced them were expendable. Once engineers had given their best and began to fail, he would replace them immediately. Drivers came and went without sentiment. Over time, that wound up being a massive mistake. I think the best founders avoid this. So the best founders actually want to be told the truth, that they understand that you need unfiltered information from the front lines. The problem is the way Enzo organized his company, it made it easier for other people to manipulate him.

53:02So Enzo's policy of ruling his empire from the center, of relying on trusted lieutenants to feed him information, left him open to manipulation and meant he lost touch with what was really happening at the cutting edge. in Formula One. Remember, he's been dominating for a long time. So rival British teams that Enzo initially dismissed start outperforming him. So they're actually innovating. So if you listened to the episode last week, the very first person I profile is this guy named Colin Chapman. He's one of these British innovators that is going to outcompete Enzo. And one of the innovations that Chapman did was he relocated the engine to the rear of the chassis for better balance, following more modern aerospace construction practice to save weight.

53:41The British teams left Ferrari standing. Innovative, low -weight, high -strength chassis design and low -profile aerodynamics would define the competitive order of this era. Colin Chapman was the person responsible for this. He was the mad scientist of F1. If you haven't, make sure you listen to episode 395 to learn more about Chapman. Now, I mentioned this earlier, but in 1969, when Enzo was 71, Fiat buys 50 % of Ferrari. And then at the time, a journalist describes how this ties to, Remember, Fiat slammed the door in Enzo's face 50 years earlier. It says half a century is long. And Enzo has spent it working hard, depriving himself of holidays and amusement.

54:21He has built an empire that is worth a few billion lira. Through motor racing, he became rich, where others lost everything. So what Fiat does, they grant him this wish. He's going to sell 50 % of the company, but he retains control over all racing activities. Fiat's investment also helped stabilize Ferrari's finances. Because remember, at this time, Enzo was always reinvesting everything back into the business. It also enabled Enzo to provide his son Dino Dice, which was the son he had with his wife. He also has a bunch of mistresses, and he had one, what they call illegitimate son, Piero or Pietro.

55:00That son was given 10 % of Ferrari, which, if I'm not mistaken, he still owns to this day, which makes him a multibillionaire. And then as part of the deal, Enzo's other 50 % ownership or his 40 % ownership would revert to fiat upon his death. And so at the time of the deal, they're looking back. It says Ferrari had represented Italy for almost five decades and had always done so on his own and on his own terms. It was said that there's two religions in Italy, the Catholic Church and Ferrari. But even at this time, Ferrari is not looking back. No rear view mirror, no looking back for Enzo. Enzo said, I don't like monuments.

55:37The focus is always on the next race. And even in his 80s, he works until he's 90. He dies at 90. In his waning years, Enzo continued to come to work until he was no longer strong enough to stand. And even before he died, he still talked about the fact that this passion that he, the spark of passion that he had when he first went to that first race with his father when he was 10, it's still there. It says after almost eight decades lived with rare intensity, he could profess that his love for the automobile and for motor racing began early in his youth, quote, had not suffered from the insults of time.

56:11He continues, the secret of this total faithfulness, which I believe difficult to find in other types of relationships, springs from the possibility to do year after year new experiments to find new solutions to build new automobiles. Again, that word, total, whole, entire, full, unquestioned. His business was the very essence of his being. The fast cars, the Grand Prix victories, the factory itself were all secondary to what they stood for, the towering ego of the man whose name they carried. When Enzo Ferrari died at 90 years old, writers around the world groped for words to express what Enzo Ferrari had meant.

56:56Many tried to describe him as an automotive pioneer, which he was not. Others called him a great racing driver and engineer, which he was not. He was, however, exactly what he had repeatedly said he was, an agitator of men. And he remained true to his credo to the day he died. Enzo Ferrari, the last of the great automotive titans, was gone. Never to be replaced.