Enzo Ferrari, the man behind the legend in 20 anecdotes

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As a sign of a life dedicated to speed, Enzo Ferrari was born two days before his official birth. Indeed, a quick look on the Internet is confusing. Some sources indicate February 20, 1898, others February 18. The debate has long been a topic of discussion among Ferrariists, until Enzo Ferrari himself brought everyone into agreement when writing his memoirs " My terrible joys », a reference autobiography published in 1963. « I was born in Modena, officially on February 20, 1898, but in fact it was the 18th: the snow had fallen that month in such a thick layer, my mother told me, that they could not go and register me in the civil registry until two days after my birth. » Enzo Ferrari's parents lived in a modest house on the outskirts of Modena. This city had 60 inhabitants at the time. Means of transport being rudimentary, Enzo Ferrari's father had to walk to the civil registry in Modena once the blizzard subsided.

Long before the painful loss of his beloved son, Dino Ferrari in 1956, the life of the future business leader was marked from his adolescence by mourning, through the disappearance of his father and his older brother, Alfred Ferrari, only a few months apart. Two deaths linked to illnesses which shook him. “ My father had insisted that we continue our engineering studies, despite the vehement protests that I raised by saying that I wanted to start working, he wrote. I often later regretted not having paid more attention to his advice. I found myself entirely alone; and at a turning point in my existence. » It's a little quick to forget the presence of his mother, Adalgisa Ferrari! She lived until she was 93, when she died in 1965, reportedly choking on an egg.. A real death, which will occur fourteen years after a false matricide imagined by the son: “ I killed my mother », designating Alfa Romeo on the evening of the 1951 British Grand Prix (see elsewhere)…

On the school benches, an environment which never had his preference, Enzo Ferrari cherished very specific dreams