Death, Life, and Enzo
In 1977, Car magazine interviewed Enzo Ferrari. He was eighty years old, consulting for Ferrari, and his son's death still deeply troubled him. His passion for creating and making is behind almost everything he says, but here, his love has taken an upsetting turn.
Perhaps for good reason.
Two world wars and a child's death explains much.
The interview is as engaging as Enzo Ferrari always was.
Self-taught, and yet as eloquent as any Italian, he sounds like no one but Il Commendatore.
Enzo Ferrari is a big man. Big, fleshy nose. Big, loose mouth. Big, solid body. The next thing that you notice about him is that he bears about as much resemblance to most car makers and the rest of motor racing’s constructors as an ageing lion to a day-long mayfly. And then, quick upon that, there’s the realisation [sic] that he’s a profoundly lonely, solitary, disabused man to whom death is perhaps the most meaningful event in life. And one death, besides his own, has been its dominant theme: that of his beloved son Dino, dead now 25 years. It was for Dino’s birth that Ferrari gave up his career as a racing driver, it was with his death that he became a virtual recluse.
Source: Keith Botsford for Car Magazine