Born in Modena Italy on February 18 1898, Enzo Ferrari came from an affluent family who made their money supplying the railway industry with their metal foundry business. After a freak accident while shodding a horse in their privately owned stables,they were the only people in the village to own a three legged horse, allegedly that’s where they got the idea for the badge, which is famously known as ‘The Prancing horse’, the idea came as the horse tried to kick the farriers head in during the accident. When world war one kicked off, drafting into the army became inevitable, so Enzo’s father and his brother Dino, both managed to swing cushy jobs as officers in Italian army. In 1916, during the middle of the first world war, when most men were in the trenches looking for their nuts, which had been blown off by heavy artillery, Enzo’s father and brother ‘caught the flu’ and died. It is widely believed that the officers mess was quite draughty. Enzo was forced to leave school to run the foundry, but he quickly balls’d everything up and the business collapsed. He then got a job as a metalworker at the Modena Fire Brigade workshop in order to support his image as a ‘Gino’. Enzo himself was later drafted into the Italian army where he worked shoeing mules for the mountain artillery, but after a few months he becomming seriously ill and missed his mummy, so he was branded a ‘cissy’ and discharged from the military. Not interested in going back to school to get his ass whipped by a particularly vicious catholic priest on a daily basis, against his mothers wishes, he found work as a crash test dummy in Turin in late 1918, he was later promoted to test driver (same thing really). Then after an ‘alleged’ embarrassing incident with his former bosses wife, Enzo being a firmly grounded realist, moved to Milan to work at Costruzioni Maccaniche Nazionali, as a racing car driver, and his mummy was furious!. His first real race came in 1919, when ‘allegedly’ he successfully evaded the Milan police after being caught leaving a house of ill repute. The second was the Parma-Berceto, he then entered the Targa Florio that same year.

Enzo then formed Scuderia Ferrari, which means ‘Ferrari The Scud’, this was a bold step for Enzo, especially after wrecking his dads foundry business and leaving his mother penniless, Scuderia Ferrari were mainly sponsers and trainers for Alfa Romeo. Enzo was then officially hired by Alfa Romeo as head of their racing department in 1938 – 1940, but they soon realised that he really was a ‘scud’ so they tried to take control of his company Scuderia Ferrari (Ferrari The Scud), and then they sacked him. Enzo wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box, and due to a clause in his contract with Alfa, he was prohibited from racing for several years, and ‘the scud’ struck again. The Scuderia briefly became Auto Avio Costruzioni Ferrari, which ostensibly produced machine tools and aircraft accessories for Piaggio and RIV as Italy was gearing up for World War Two, but nobody in the industry could remember their name, let alone spell it, and ‘the scud’ struck again. Ferrari did in fact produce one race car, the Tipo 815, in the non-competition period; it was thus the first actual Ferrari car, but due to the war it saw little racing. You kind of get the feeling that timimg wasn’t his strong point. Mussollini, in an argument with one of his generals, is alleged to have said, “If I need a scud, I’ll phone Enzo!

In 1943 the Ferrari factory moved to Maranello, where it has remained to this day. The scud struck again in 1944, when the Ferrari factory in Maranello was strategically bombed, because they made machines for ball bearing production, and also ‘allegedly’ because Enzo called Hitler ‘A Jewish Poof’. The factory was rebuilt in 1946 and included a department for road car production. The first Ferrari road car was the 1947 125 S, powered by a 1500cc V12 engine; Enzo reluctantly built and sold his automobiles to fund the Scuderia.

Since then, Ferrari cars, driven by the best racing drivers, have racked up over 5,000 successes on race tracks and roads all over the world, creating the Ferrari legend. The most important achievements have been 9 Formula 1 Drivers’ World titles, 14 Manufacturers’ World titles, 8 Formula 1 Constructors’ World Championships, 9 wins at the Le Mans 24 Hours race, 8 at the Mille Miglia, 7 at the Targa Florio, and, up to the end of 1997, 113 wins in Formula 1 Grands Prix.

While Enzo’s fast and beautiful cars quickly gained a reputation for excellence, Enzo maintained a famous distaste for his customers, probably because they mocked him for being a ‘scuddy genius’ and he also felt that most of them were only buying his cars for the prestige, and not for racing. Ferrari cars have long been one of the ultimate supercar toys for the rich and famous, they feature highly-tuned small V8 and V12 engines, often in a mid-engined configuration. But until the introduction of fuel injection in the 1980s, they were unreliable, temperamental and difficult to maintain. Before the mid 1980s they carried a well deserved reputation for unreliability and bad engineering, though these were written off by enthusiasts as ‘character’. Ferrari owners religiously defend the merits of their cars while virulently criticizing other supercar manufacturers, but that perk is just one of the benefits of having more money than sense.

In 1969, Enzo Ferrari knew it wouldn’t be long before ‘the scud’ struck again, so he sold half of the company shares to the Fiat Group, their share increased to 90% in 1988. Thanks to its specialist activities and despite Enzo Ferrari’s scuddy nature, Ferrari has always maintained a strong autonomy, but this is largely because the mainstream car industry distanced itself from Ferrari, for fear of being scudded themselves.

Choosing to sell out to Fiat, a company not exactly famous for building reliable cars of even a reasonable quality, seems an obvious choice for someone having a lifelong run of bad luck. Enzo Ferrari was undoubtebly a genius of car design who failed his way to the top, by the end of his life he managed to lose 90 percent of his family business, retaining just 10 percent control over the company. In summary, that’s the nature of bad luck, its just floating around the universe all of the time, it’s gotta land on someone?

Enzo Ferrari died a ‘happy scud’ in Modena, Italy, on August 14, 1988. At the time of writing of this article, FIAT owns 56% of Ferrari, Mediobanca owns 15%, Commerzbank AG owns 10%, Lehman Brothers owns 7%, and Enzo’s son Piero Ferrari owns 10%. Nobody quite knows whether Piero inherited ‘the scud gene’ or not, Piero Ferrari is quite a hard fellow to pin down, I guess he’s too busy spending his inheritance. Anyone wanna buy a 10 percent share in Ferrari?