Description
Author: Brock Yates, Hardbound, 465 Pages, ISBN: 9780385263191, First Edition, June 1991 **VERY RARE BOOK IN EXCELLENT UNREAD CONDITION**
When Enzo Ferrari died in 1988, the world lost the last great titan of the automobile: an autocratic, fiercely competitive entrepreneur who had—over a seventy-year span—come to dominate the world of high-performance cars and make his name synonymous with speed, class, and wealth.
And yet Ferrari remains an enigmatic figure, a man whose life is the stuff of legend but about whom few facts are known. Was Ferrari the benign perdrone often portrayed by an adoring world press, or a ruthless despot who drove his staff—and his drivers—to the edge of madness?
Ferrari was in fact an extremely complex man, a man who rose from modest origins in Modena, Italy, to create the world's most exotic automobiles, an incredibly powerful business and racing empire, and one of the most successfully marketed images of all time.
Having penetrated Ferrari's elaborately constructed shell by interviewing over one hundred people who worked with him through the years, Brock Yates traces his life in meticulous detail, capturing not only the spirit of this driven man, but also the historical and personal events that
shaped his life: struggles through two world wars, endless love affairs, fiendish political intrigues, repeated financial crises, his obsession with racing, and the death, in 1956, of his only legitimate son, Dino.
This unique and fascinating life is set against the backdrop of the history of high-performance cars and motor sports from World War I to the present.
Portrayed in dramatic detail are the early days of the Bugatti, the Maserati, the Alfa Romeo, and, of course, the Porsche, as well as the great drivers and races, Nuvolari and Fangio and the classic battles of the Grand Prix.
Here, then, is the life of a man who dominated his field more than anyone of our century A man who was, truly, larger than life.
BROCK YATES, an editor and columnist for Car and Driver, has written a dozen books, a newsletter, hundreds of magazine articles, and two screenplays, and has hosted two television shows. He has won the Ken Purdy Award for excellence in automotive journalism and the Playboy humor award.
He and his wife, Pamela, live in a restored farmhouse in upstate New York.
