Ferrari turns 70: the makings of the sexiest car in history

Ferrari has been making a lot of noise about turning 70 this year: limited-edition cars; two-day cavalcades of classic cars; three-day cavalcades of modern cars; a charity auction (at which a secret buyer bought a limited-edition supercar for US$10 million); weekend-long race meetings; big logos on its F1 drivers’ overalls and its F1 cars.

And now, opening next month at the Design Museum in Kensington in London, what is effectively a “retrospective”, an opportunity granted to few – if any – other creators of automobiles, reports The Daily Telegraph.

Can Ferraris be considered art? “Under the Skin” – a trove of memorabilia mined from collector Ronald Stern’s astonishing possessions, which opens on November 15 – doesn’t explicitly ask we should.

But at its heart are 13 Ferraris – ranging from a 125S 1947 Replica, the first Ferrari, to a 2017 LaFerrari Aperta (identical to the star lot in the charity auction) – static and silent, removed from the context and purpose of their creation. How else are we to regard them, if not as art, given they are incapable of leaving those looking on unmoved and most will regard them as downright beautiful?

In the last 10 years, the classic car market has remodelled itself along the lines of the art market: specialist departments, showrooms in the most expensive parts of town, personality and collection-based “event auctions”. Prices have gone stellar – and Ferrari prices interstellar, increasing five-fold over 10 years and putting the most sought-after models the far side of US$50 million.

Others (notably Aston Martin) have the odd big-ticket item in their back catalogue, but no other maker’s global value comes close to Ferrari’s. Its position is all but unique not just among carmakers, but among all engineering and technology-based operations, and even among manufacturers of luxury goods.

Certainly, there is Rolls-Royce. But Rolls-Royce has never raced its cars and it is racing that created Ferrari. Born in 1898, the son of a railwayman, Enzo Anselmo Ferrari was a talented driver who rapidly recognised the best way to make his very ordinary name famous (it can be translated as “Blacksmith” or just plain “Smith”) was to get other, even faster guys to drive the cars in the race team he ran for Alfa Romeo, and then engineered and built under his own name. Some of the drivers he paid, some paid him, and a business was born.