 Great, you were all right with naming the driver: in this 70th year of Ferrari cars it was nice to look back almost exactly one hundred years with the very first photo of Enzo Ferrari at the wheel of a car. And of course even this very first time with a sportscar during a racing event! We like to thank Kees van Stokkum and Adolfo Orsi for their very kind cooperation with PreWarCar. Ferrari engineer and historian Kees van Stokkum sends the words below (plus part II of his research of the early days of Enzo as a business man, see for that under Read More; or first read back Part I). Alfa Romeo guru Adolfo Orsi was granted us the use of the important photo found by him in 1989, which now is on display in the Museo Enzo Ferrari. But let's not forget the quiz is about a car. Sorry it is no Fiat, no SPA, no CMN, no Züst, no Diatto, no.... Only jurymember Fried Stol came up with the correct make Caesar! (UPDATE: monitor blindness made us overlook jury member Kevin Atkinson who had it all right as well. Sorry about that Kevin!) Can't think of a better brand of car to start a brilliant career with. The make Caesar was created by Scacchi who built cars under his own name, also under the name of Storero and Caesar. Interesting is that we see the same radiator with Züst, Fiat and other Italian cars of the era. Was this shape 'en vogue' or did they share components. The make Scacchi/Storero/Caesar was shortlived and taken over by Diatto. Kees van Stokkum liked to add that the factory buildings later on came in the hands of Maserati. It's all in the family... 19th July 1917 Past and future converged in the automobile run from Sestola to Pavullo nel Frignano, in the Apennine mountains (see map below with the important places of Enzo's early days). But nobody, be it organizer, onlooker or casual passer-by could ever have imagined that the serious-looking chauffeur of this Caesar motor car was starting there an unparallelled life in the motoring world. His mount was the past, a car designed and constructed in Chivasso (Turin) by Caesar Scacchi, who had produced some models with a 4-cylinder engine of his own design, between 1911 and 1915, before he had to close down his factory. The driver was looking to the future, his own future, between the wheels of a motor car. His father Alfredo had died, as had his elder brother, and his deeply affected mother was powerless in her attempts to prevent her only remaining son entering motoring competitions. So Enzo Ferrari, 19 years old, entered his Caesar (specific history of his acquisition as yet unknown, but one could already purchase Automobile d’Occasione in Modena in 1911, see the advert below) and noted proudly at the backside of the memorial post card: " Distance 26,475 km, gradients up to 12%, time 36’12”." (Picture kindly courtesy Adolfo Orsi. The Caesar notes are from Marche Italiane Scomparse – Torino, 1972, 1977). |
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