A Day Trip to Ferrari:
Earlier this week I was in Rome attending the launch of Volkswagen’s new Up! city car and a friend asked me if I’d like to extend my stay to stop by the Ferrari factory in Maranello. I jumped at the chance.
It took us four hours driving a Volkswagen Eos at 85 mph most of the time, as the traffic was surprisingly light. I love driving in Italy with its 130 kph (81 mph) speed limit and numerous tunnels. Italians seem to love tunnels and they certainly provide much more ground for other uses above the autoroutes.
Maranello oozes Ferrari – aside from the factory, museum and test track there are official and unofficial gift stores as well as numerous companies offering test drives. It’s certainly a pilgrimage for Ferrari enthusiasts. The city was buzzing with tourists from around the world.
We became tourists and took a stroll around the museum. It was smaller than I expected and only offers a small sampling of road and race cars. It does have a replica of Enzo Ferrari’s original office and a nicely disassembled F1 car in a pit stop setting. The array of engines and model cars is also impressive.
For lunch we had reserved a table – where else but at the Ristorante il Cavallino, which is across the street from the main factory entrance. It’s quite something to sit there enjoying good food and imagining that over the past four decades so many famous drivers have also tucked into food in that same restaurant.
We then enjoyed a private tour of the factory and saw one of the most modern plants where engine components, such as cylinder heads, are assembled largely by robots. The environmentally friendly factory even has trees growing inside. The final assembly line is also one of the most automated I have seen with each car being carried by an overhead carrier system that lifts the car from each work station as it moves along the assembly line.
Finally we went to the Scuderia Ferrari race garage. Sadly not the one where the F1 race cars are worked on but one adjoining the test track where the transporters reside. There we videotaped an interview for a Peruvian TV station with Luca Baldisserri, who runs the Ferrari Driver Academy. We learned how Ferrari is training young drivers that show promise on simulators and in race cars. They are also trained in numerous other areas of expertise required to be a modern F1 driver, including learning English!
It had been quite a day. Apart from the interview and factory tour, which is generally only available to Ferrari owners and VIP visitors, we were just tourists doing what anyone can do.
There is a local tourist board that helps visitors create their own trips in what it calls Motor Valley. Maranello is in the center of this region that includes the Lamborghini, Maserati and Pagani factories as well as the Imola race track, museums and other areas of interest to car and motorcycle enthusiasts. You can obtain more information, if you want to make a pilgrimage to this fascinating part of the motoring world, by going to www.motorvalley.com. A trip to Maranello should be on everyone’s bucket list.
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- The Greening of Ferrari
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