01
1929 · Before the road cars
Scuderia Ferrari comes first.
Enzo Ferrari founded Scuderia Ferrari in Modena in 1929, initially racing Alfa Romeo cars. This reverses the usual manufacturer narrative: competition was not created to promote an established road-car company. The racing organisation existed first, and Ferrari-branded road cars came later.
02
1940s · War and industry
Maranello is built before Ferrari car production begins.
After separating from Alfa Romeo, Enzo Ferrari operated Auto Avio Costruzioni. Ferrari’s own historical material records factory buildings being established at Maranello during the war and then converted from machine-tool activity to car production in 1947. The physical site therefore links wartime industry directly to the birth of Ferrari road cars.
The 125 S turns a racing identity into a manufacturer.
The 125 S was the first car to wear the Ferrari badge. Its compact V12 and immediate competition programme created the template for the early company: engineering, road cars and racing were not separate stories but parts of the same organisation.
Road and race cars share the same family tree.
The 250-series period shows how close Ferrari road and competition cars once were. The 250 GTO is the strongest museum object in that story: a homologation-focused GT that belongs simultaneously to road-car, design and racing history.
05
1970s–2026 · Changing answers
Flat-12, V8, V6, turbo, hybrid, electric.
Ferrari’s identity survives repeated technical upheaval. The company moved through mid-engined Dino and V8 cars, flat-12 flagships, turbocharging, composites, electro-hydraulic gearboxes, hybrid energy systems and ultimately a fully electric road-car branch. A Ferrari history page should make those changes visible rather than treating the badge as the only continuity.
