Maranello Stories

This is the best stories I’ve heard about Enzo Ferrari. In the mid eighties the office come gate house at the front of the factory was having a new roof. During the renovation a hand full of bullets from a British spitfire where found embedded in the rafters. The Factory was used to produce water pumps, and had been acttacked by the RAF during the War. Brit Harvey Postlethwaite was the F1 designer when the building work was taking place, Enzo walked into Poswthwaites office and slammed the spitfire bullets on his desk saying in English.
‘I think these belong to you’.
We where in Maranello to film when I was told this story, we had drivern down in a Red jaguar XKR. The press fleet at Jaguar was run by a brummie woman who acted and sounded like my mum, she knew we where going to Ferrari so she’d choose the colour of the XK wisely.
We parked at the main gate when we arrived, the new Jag created quite a stir. Eddie Irvine had just signed to drive for Jaguar. A mini bus full of F1 mechanics crowded round the Jag asking lots of questions. I joked we where here to deliver Mr Ivines new company car.
The hole of Maranello is infused with the spirit of Ferrari, the local priest is rumoured to ring the church bells ever time the team wins a Grand Prix.
All day we could hear the F1 cars lapping the Fiorano test track, even up in the hills above the town. We had to return to the factory when the light was so low we had to stop filming, but still you could hear the F1 cars doing lap after lap. I asked if the circuit was lit.
‘The drivers know there way round’ I was told.
On another visit we interview Irvine at Fiorano, he took us into Enzos old farm house which had been converted into apartments for the drivers. When the PR people where out of the way Irvine showed us his bedroom. Over the bed was a huge portrait of Schumacher, also on the bedside table was a bust of the great German. Irvine pointed to the painting and said,
‘That’s in case I forget who I’m working for’.
Schumacher is rumored to have had certain corners of the Fiorano circuit reprofiled so his lap times could not be compared with those of his predecessors.
I don’t think Schumacher ever understood the history and the passion of Ferrari and this is why he can never be considered one of the great drivers of all time.
I was standing on the inside of Le Source at Spa when Kimi Raikennan got past Schmacher on the way out of the corner. The Belgium Grand Prix was almost a home race for Schumacher, but the mainly German crowd cheered Kimi on all the way.

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Alec Issigonis- The man who destroyed the British Car Industry

Issigonis is lauded as the greatest British engineer of the 20th century; Remembered for the Mini, but also responsible for the Land Crab. I also think he contributed to the demise of a large part of the British car industry.
Issigonis was always an outsider; He was an anglophile of Greece dissent living in what amounted to occupied Turkey. The Greeks and the Turks never got on, around the time of the First World War the territory was retaken by the Turks, Issigonis held British citizenship, His family became refugees, finally arriving penniless in London.
Over the next decade he built himself a carrier as an engineer with a reputation as an original thinker, much later coining the nickname Arrogonis, because of his reputation for disregarding the opinions of his peers. This arrogance was to prove his down fall and the car industry he took with him.
For the duration of his life he lived the life of a confirmed bachelor with his mother. His uncertain sexuality was not a social problem in the semi gentrified country house circles he aspired to, but it did distance him from ‘the man in the street’ the British public who where meant to be buying his cars. They would get the cars Issigonis said they would get and they should be grateful.
Issigonis undoubted genius was in the packaging within small vehicles, starting with the Morris Minor and culminating in the Mini. His revolutionary ideas for a front wheel drive layout with a transverse engine which would free up interior space, was to become the blue print for all mass produced cars up till the present day. The Mini was not the first to us any of these new ideas, but it was the first to integrate the layout into one car.
The success of the Mini was to promote Issigonis to a house hold name. In the midst of the swinging sixties Issigonis became friends with minor royals, film stars and musicians, all liked to be seen in the classless Mini.
The popular success of the Mini, gave Issigonis an unassailable position within the British car industry. This new power only fuelled his arrogance. His inability to listen to the opinions of others from marketing, design and cost accounting was inexcusable. There is a story that early in the production of the Mini rival Ford striped down a Mini and worked out that each car was being sold for £40 more than it cost to manufacture. A fact that passed Issigonis bye.
Along with the Morris Minor, Issigonis’s only other commercial success was the 1100,
The engineering was by Issigonis but the attractive body was by Italian Pininfarina. The resulting success sustained the company for many years. The profits being used to pay for the increasingly outmoded working practises of the factory work force.
The demise started when Issigonis designed hideous cars which the British public would not buy. Issigonis never designed an attractive medium or large car. The 1800 nick named Land Crab are amongst the ugliest cars ever made.
As the British public became more prosperous, they aspired to drive a Ford Cortina or Vauxhall Viva, not one of Issigonis hideous Land Crabs. The technical marvels within the Mini design, did not comfortable translate to a larger car, Front wheel drive and a transverse engine where not such an advantage in a medium or large design, And Issigonis utter contempt for styling or marketing was to seal the fait of the company. Meanwhile Ford could not make enough stylish Corintas which came to dominate the sales charts.
It is of course, fatuous to say Issigonis was solely responsible for the failure of the company. It is also wrong to blame bad labour relations alone for the failures (most of which are urban myths). What was to blame was bad management, while the company could sell everything that left the factory gates, they choose not to tackle the under investments and labour problems which characterised there factory’s.
Issigonis was a genius but he only thrived under a strong management who knew how to handle him, promoted and given freedom to indulge his flights of fancy his designs where a disaster.
Instead of this being called-Alec Issigonis- The man who destroyed the British Car Industry, perhaps I should have titled this- Issigonis a floored Genius.