Enzo Ferrari

Enzo Anselmo Giuseppe Maria Ferrari (; 20 February 1898 – 14 August 1988) was an Italian motor racing driver and entrepreneur, the founder of the Scuderia Ferrari Grand Prix motor racing team, and subsequently of the Ferrari automobile marque. He was widely known as Il Commendatore or Il Drake. In his final years he was often referred to as L'Ingegnere ("The Engineer") or Il Grande Vecchio ("The Grand Old Man"). Early life Enzo Ferrari was said to have been born on 18 February 1898 in Modena, Italy and that his birth was recorded on 20 February because a heavy snowstorm had prevented his father from reporting the birth at the local registry office; in reality, his birth certificate states he was born on 20 February 1898, while the birth's registration took place on 24 February 1898 and was reported by the midwife, whose name was Jacqueline D'Amico. He was the younger of two children to Alfredo Ferrari and Adalgisa Bisbini, after his elder sibling Alfredo Junior (Dino). Alfredo Senior was the son of a grocer from Carpi, and started a workshop fabricating metal parts at the family home. Enzo grew up with little formal education. At the age of 10 he witnessed Felice Nazzaro's win at the 1908 Circuito di Bologna, an event that inspired him to become a racing driver. During World War I he served in the 3rd Mountain Artillery Regiment of the Italian Army. His father Alfredo, and his older brother, Alfredo Jr., died in 1916 as a result of a widespread Italian flu outbreak. Ferrari became severely sick himself during the 1918 flu pandemic and was consequently discharged from the Italian service. Racing career Following the collapse of this family's carpentry business, Ferrari searched for a job in the car industry. He unsuccessfully volunteered his services to Fiat in Turin, eventually settling for a job as test-driver for C.M.N. (Costruzioni Meccaniche Nazionali), a car manufacturer in Milan which rebuilt used truck bodies into small passenger cars. He was later promoted to race car driver and made his competitive debut in the 1919 Parma-Poggio di Berceto hillclimb race, where he finished fourth in the three-litre category at the wheel of a 2.3-litre 4-cylinder C.M.N. 15/20. On 23 November of the same year, he took part in the Targa Florio but had to retire after his car's fuel tank developed a leak. Due to the large number of retirements, he finished 9th.