Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow

Enzo Ferrari returns to a dream recalling the values of the past and mphasising the importance for the future of not forgetting that courageous and determined spirit that accompanied him on his adventures as a driver, the founder of a Scuderia, and Car Designer and Builder.

By Antonio Ghini Illustrations by Massimo Grandi

Sigmund Freud maintains that dreams always contain an element of truth, even though sometimes the situations seem far from any reality, as Shakespeare so masterfully described. This is why these two books are at the centre of the unexpected meeting with Enzo Ferrari.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

A journalist, a girl and Enzo Ferrari, all walking together, fully dressed but without getting wet, in a clear, calm sea Enzo proud after transforming his first car into the hypercar that will race at Le Mans in 2023. Then it’s off to the traditional lunch at the Cavallino restaurant... let's join them to understand more.

The coastline is a stony one – large, sharp pebbles that make it difficult to walk on. A few metres away, three people are walking in the water. They are immersed almost up to their waists but still moving quite nimbly. There is a young woman in the group. It’s Menta, the daughter of the last manager of the Cavallino restaurant in Maranello, the one opposite the entrance to the iconic Italian car manufacturer’s Maranello factory. With her is Franco Nugnes, Editor in chief of Motorsport.com Italy, he's talking to a person who’s not too difficult to recognize. He’s speaking to Enzo Ferrari he too immersed in water, albeit a little less than the others due to his height. The Enzo Ferrari here is still somewhat young, from the 1950s, the same person who recently created Ferrari in Maranello.

I find it too difficult to walk on the sharp stones and decide to go down into the water myself: I want to hear what they’re saying. Or rather I want to hear what Ferrari is saying to Nugnes who, ever the serious journalist, is listening to him very attentively. To my surprise, the temperature of the water is perfect, and I don't even feel the slightest discomfort, and the bottom is delightfully soft on my feet. A surprising contrast to the brutal harshness of the shore. I think I’d like a picture of this magical moment: the water is calm, without so much as a single ripple on the surface, the dreamy horizon reddened by the sun that’s setting – or is it rising? – behind thin clouds of absolutely idyllic weather.

There's no one here to take the picture, no one who can capture this urreal but very real situation. Without any effort at all, I reach the three of them. Menta is a little further back, she doesn’t seem interested in what Enzo has to say. “I found the 125, the real one, the one built in Maranello that I drove when it still didn’t have any bodywork,” says Enzo. “It’s quite different to the replica that everyone knows, and I’m putting it back together. I want to take her to Le Mans, I put a spoiler on her and her ‘Ala Spessa’ profile makes her very suitable for the new regulations.” In this magical atmosphere, the car suddenly appears and Ferrari, still waist deep in the welcoming water almost as if it were amniotic liquid, extracts a small Leica camera and takes several pictures of some of the details. Later, when we are sitting at our table in the Cavallino restaurant, his photos will have already been printed and we’ll all understand what he meant when he said he wanted to return to Le Mans. The sharp stones have disappeared and the coast, which is reminiscent of the sleepy and rugged one in Liguria, has become sandy. We leave the water. Now it’s Menta leading the way. In fact, in front of us is the Cavallino restaurant, the one from yesteryear, a little dilapidated, full of trophies and memories, where so much history and so many characters have passed through. They lead us into the private room of “Il Commendatore”, the one with the fireplace and the table that accommodates a maximum of eight people. We are perfectly dry, we sit down and Oscar, one of the trusty waiters who never have to ask what's wanted because they know the tastes of “Il Commendatore”, arrives with a tray of baked lasagne. Magnificent: there are three strips of lasagne in different colours on the tray: green, made with basil pesto, white with bechamel sauce, and red with tomatoes. An Italian flag to enjoy with gusto.

Menta has not sat down with us. As the daughter of the manager, Beppe Neri, who too many at Maranello have forgotten, she says she’s heading back. She will cross the water alone. Nugnes, true to his nature of a cultured, educated and selfless person, offers to carry her on his shoulders to avoid the long crossing. I convince him to stay, I convince him not to interrupt this great opportunity to meet Enzo Ferrari who’s looking towards a tomorrow that isn’t his, but one that appears far more like our own, today. He agrees not to go while Menta, as she leaves, opens the door leading to the large dining hall of the restaurant. This is full of characters from yesterday and today who have given something to Maranello, sometimes with and without luck. I can see there are so many from the number of coffees Mario keeps coming and taking back into the hall. That’s right, because the magical private room now has the back wall open onto the kitchen with the coffee machines where the waiters come and go with fragrant espressos of the finest Italian tradition, almost oblivious to those present.

As I look at the photos of the modified 125, I am struck by the silence that has suddenly engulfed the room as if it were amniotic fluid the the door was opened to allow the other guests to see Enzo Ferrari at the table. Is it him? I turn around. He’s not there anymore. I ask Franco to tell me what just happened, what he saw or understood, how he left, what this Midsummer Night’s Dream meant for that magnificent Prancing Horse that lives in the hearts of so many the world over.

A welcoming water that does not soak like a liquid, that accompanies us through life and three constant references in Enzo’s adventurous story: journalists, women and his beloved cars.

The private room of the Cavallino restaurant, so coveted by those who longed to be invited, Lambrusco, Italian food, the intimate secrets of a man who never said anything by chance.

Surreal but true

Franco Nugnes, the journalist who accompanied Enzo Ferrari into the metaphysical universe of a dream, seeks its meanings between the past and the future. Here they are. By Franco Nugnes

A dream. An impossible meeting, one that was missed because I never had the privilege of meeting Enzo Ferrari in person. For this reason, I rather like the idea of entering the dreamy thoughts of Antonio Ghini, because at least in his subconscious, that event took place.

According to Freud, dreams are nothing more than a representation of one’s unconscious desires. You leave the spacetime dimension and enter a temporary bubble where anything is possible. Including meeting the “Great Old Man” with the same features he had when he fulfill his dream by giving life to Ferrari at the age of 50. I gather the intimacies of King Enzo during a walk in the sea. The scenery is idyllic: the water is crystal clear, calm and clean. This is not by accident, the sea represents the unconscious that can never be probed or fully understood.

Researchers claim that dreams... speak to us through images with universal meaning. Symbols that reveal how man’s eternal patrimony of wisdom is combined with the personal history of those having the dream.

So I must be the element that represents the present, with the many questions and considerations at the centre that arise from the conversations I have with Antonio, every Saturday during the video column on motorsport.com, called, not by chance, “Candido” (“Pure”), while Enzo Ferrari is the genesis of that Ferrari experienced by Antonio for decades.

The past and the present that merge towards the... future. Enzo looks to Le Mans. To the 24 Hours with the 125 fitted out with a spoiler. It is nothing more than a transposition of the Hypercar the Scuderia will take back to the Le Mans marathon in 2023 looking for an outright-win and not settling for success only in the GT class. 40 years will have passed since it last participated. Too many, because for Il Commendatore that was the essence of races, not F1 that subsequently took all the attention.

There is a return to the origins, to the roots. John Elkann interprets the founder’s thoughts and does not betray his mandate. On the shore of the body of water is “the Rossa”, just bigger than a house, while Menta, the young woman who accompanies us, takes us to the entrance.

The house represents our personal sphere. The house is us and everything that happens concerns us. The image conjured up inside is the Cavallino Restaurant. Specifically, Ferrari’s private room, once intimate and exclusive, However, beyond the glass there is no Beppe Neri, the historical owner, instead it would appear we caught a glimpse of Massimo Bottura, the Michelin-starred chef in charge of his brigade. It is clear why Menta, Beppe’s daughter, decides to cross the stretch of sea once again and leave the present to return to a past that’s no longer there. It’s been cancelled. The Cavallino Restaurant has been dismantled and all its memories have gone to auction. It should come as no surprise then to see Ferrari moving like a ghost. His legendary image still echoes in the dream even though he is no longer present. What bothered him? All those people at the door, each one part of the history of the company, intrigued and, perhaps, also intimidated by him “being there” or having found the Cavallino Restaurant renovated to the point where he almost wants to remove the memory?

Which Ferrari will bear witness to his legacy? The one that returns to the 24 Hour Le Mans looking for an outright win or the restaurant revisited by the Ira-nianFrench architect India Mahdavi, to meet the expectations for food that go beyond classic tortellini?

The journalist Franco Nugnes, director of Motorsport.com, who accompanies Ferrari on a nocturnal walk, collecting his thoughts.

Gioachino Colombo's sketches of the mechanical arrangement of the first Ferrari gives a first glimpse of its shape.

The first Ferrari, without the Ferrari name: the 1940 815, designed by Bianchi Anderloni of Touring, introduces the “Ala Spessa” or “Broad Wing” profile.

1947: the 125S hides the typical “Ala Spessa” or “Broad Wing” profile.

How the 550 Alaspessa for Le Mans appears in the dream.

125 S Ala Spessa: the

design of the first Ferrari between past and present

The pursuit to discover the best air penetration for racing cars has gone hand in hand with the development of the automobile. In the pre-war years before the intuition of the effectiveness of downforce-based aerodynamic studies, inspiration from aircraft design concerned studies, inspiration from aircraft design concerned the upper section of the wing, as the underside of the car was flat. The wing profile was therefore a “convex plane” and the shape, given the volume of the car, was defined as the “Ala Spessa” or “Broad Wing”. The first famous example of this solution came from Ettore Bugatti with his Type 32 from 1923, commonly known as the “Tank”. The wing also had the function of making the shape of the car “cleaner”, which included fenders and headlights for cars that were equipped with them.

This shape which was considered ideal had numer-ous developments and the 815, the first Ferrari built without the name in 1940 by Touring was inspired by the wing shape. When designing the first Ferrari, the 1,500cc V12 125, engineer Gioachino Colombo revived the Ala Spessa concept in a model whose bodywork was never signed. The year was 1947. A car that was never meant to be beautiful – some-thing that Touring managed successfully to do with the 166 MM, its evolution that arrived in 1948.

It’s curious to note that in the dream, Enzo Ferrari indicated his 125 “evoluta” for the 2023 Le Mans challenge. Curious because the idea of a contemporary evolution of the 125S that exploited the Ala Spessa principle had already been studied and developed in 2004 by Massimo Grandi, Professor of Car Design at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Florence. Based on the 550 Maranello, Grandi further developed the design of the historic barchetta arriving at the car that closes the sequence of profiles of the 125S. Profiles designed by Grandi during the study phases of a possible evolution. It is clear that, the shape adapted to the mechanics of the 550 Maranello evokes the fascinating and contemporary idea that led to the construction of the first ever Ferrari which, on its second outing, brought its first victory home to Maranello.

The Key - Top of the Classic Car World

is the official magazine of The Classic Car Trust and is published annually.

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Fritz Kaiser Antonio ghini Stefano Beloni

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