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The Ferrari-Alfa Romeo Connection
Costruzioni Meccaniche Nazionali's (CMN) roots were in
the aviation business, but it turned to automobile production at the end of the
war to keep its workforce busy. Enzo Ferrari graduated from tester to racing driver,
and that rekindled his childhood dream of being a top competitor.
Ferrari driving an Alfa Romeo 20/30.
He remained with CMN for a year, then pooled resources with mechanic Guglielmo Carraroli to buy an old Isotta Fraschini Grand Prix car. But it was Ferrari’s piloting of an Alfa Romeo 20/30 to second overall in 1920’s grueling Targa Florio that landed him on the racing-driver map.
“I felt like I was the Lord of the Universe,” he wrote of driving the Alfa. “Still, what mattered to me most was the fact it gained me an official entry into the Alfa circles, made me practically an Alfa team driver like Campari and Baldoni.”
He had indeed reached
the big leagues. Alfa Romeo was only 10 years old at the time, but it was,
along with luxury maker Isotta Fraschini, the biggest fish in
Originally named A.L.F.A. (Anomica Lombardo Fabbrica Automobili), the firm produced sports and racing cars along with airplane engines and large, sturdy automobiles. Thanks to a class win in April 1911, at the 1,500 kilometer, five-stage Modena trials, competition became a core element of the company’s raison d’être.
Alfa’s jump into the
winner’s circle and onto the front pages of
Alfa was relatively flush with cash from wartime munitions and tractor production when Enzo Ferrari entered the fold. Enzo was a proficient driver, not up to the stature of teammates such as Giuseppe Campari, but still good enough to garner press coverage and the occasional victory, the first of which was at Circuito di Savio in 1923.
By then, Alfa was once again in financial difficulty, thanks to the failure of one of its largest creditors and to the era’s chronic labor strife. Intervention by Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, himself an auto enthusiast, helped prevent the firm from going under.
Though Ferrari
continued to race through the 1920s, by the
middle of the decade, he was proving to be a power behind the scenes.
Nicola Romeo sent him to 
Ferrari (in cap) at the 1924 Targa Florio.
By the second half of the decade, Ferrari was examining his driving career. “If you want spectacular results,” he noted in his memoirs, “you have to know how to treat your car badly. Ill-treatment means excessive gearshifts, pushing the car further than the engine will bear, reckless braking, all the things that got in the way of my feeling for the machinery. The fact is I don’t drive simply to get from A to B. I enjoy feeling the car’s reactions, becoming a part of it, forming a single unit. I couldn’t inflict suffering on it.”
He thus diversified
by investing in businesses in the auto industry. He became Alfa Romeo’s dealer
for the
“I found myself overwhelmed by an almost morbid desire to do something for the motor car, for this creature I was so passionately fond of,” he wrote. “So although I was doing well enough to justify pursuing a driving career, I had my sights set on wider, more ambitious horizons.”
Ferrari's ambitions quickly inspired him to form a new company. Read on to learn more.
For more great information on Ferrari, see:
- How Ferrari Works
- Ferrari Cars
- Other Cars With Ferrari Engines
- Ferrari History and Biographies
- Ferrari Pictures
- Ferrari Road Cars
- Ferrari F1
- Ferrari Sports Racing Cars
