Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Art & History

There is one direct link between Alfa Romeo and Ferrari, its name is Enzo Anselmo Ferrari. Born on the 18th of February 1898, he joined Alfa Romeo in the early 1920s to become one of their many race drivers. In the beginning he participated in local events, but thanks to his positive results; later also competed in more prestigious races.

Nevertheless, his real talent had been the management. Thanks to this, he founded in ’29 the Scuderia Ferrari, which became the official Alfa Romeo racing team. Until 1932 Enzo continued as race driver and after this, he concentrated on being the team manager. In ’37 Alfa Romeo reduced his position to sports director, what means practically that his possibility to take decisions had been drastically limited. For Enzo this was not tolerable and as consequence he left the company in ’39. Apart from this, the ways of both manufactures still crossed many times, as key employees changed from one company to the other or as both used the same coach-builders to design their fast and elegant creations. Even technology transfer happened up to today.

Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, Art & History” is not just another publication, but tells the history of these two iconic Italian car manufactures, from one of their first creations in 1911 until today. The author uses official die-cast model cars. You will not only find texts and boxes of technical specifications, but images celebrating the unique design of the vehicles, which reflect their engineers’ visions and eras.

More than ordinary automobiles, even more than sports cars; both, Alfa Romeo and Ferrari produced design objects for the global pop culture, sometimes reflecting the actual zeitgeist, other times being ahead of it and sometimes even creating the fashion. As each of the more than 370 presented cars is unique, they all have their own story. This is not limited to Alfa Romeo and Ferrari, but also relates to other companies as Fiat, Lancia, Lamborghini, General Motors and Ford. Famous design studios included Pininfarina, Zagato and Bertone. To have a complete picture, besides presenting production cars, the book also includes the racing machines and rare show cars.