Ferrari in America: Luigi Chinetti and the North American Racing Team

Description How did that come to be? Was this the product of a slick Madison Avenue campaign? No. In fact, as former CEO Luca Cordero di Montezemolo proudly notes, Ferrari has never purchased a single advert. Was there a single event that turned our attention to Ferrari? No. Instead it was a very organic method by which one out of a handful of the new, small-scale, post–World War II European specialty constructors came to survive and then thrive. That is not to imply that the Darwinian selection process was all happenstance. There was plenty of human agency. Much has been written about the guiding hand of Enzo Ferrari, the brilliance of the engineers, the relationships with superlative coachwork designers, and the versatility of the racing-team management. The conversion of these features into a car that is desirable to just the right clientele required its own skill set. That particular insight was provided by Luigi Chinetti.   Chinetti saw the opportunity from a unique perch of knowledge acquired from both sides of the Atlantic. He had gained technical knowledge from Alfa Romeo back in his native Italy. Fleeing the Mussolini regime, he settled in with a group of fellow expats in Paris where he both refined his business acumen and embarked on a successful racing career. What only in retrospect seems fortuitous, Chinetti was stranded in New York when the Nazis occupied Paris. He would in due course become an American citizen, and along the way cultivate relationships among elite sportsmen and technicians involved in the burgeoning sports-car culture of the New World.   Next, Chinetti performed an act of midwifery for Ferrari, driving the fledgling firm’s first great build, the 166, to victories at Le Mans and Spa. It immediately put Ferrari on the map in Europe, as well as among the cognoscenti of America. The postwar prosperity of America created a latent demand for the types of cars that many GIs had seen while in Europe. Apart from enterprising hot-rodders, there were no domestic products to choose from. European constructors, struggling under their battered conditions, began to appreciate the value of the American market. The British were the first. Through the cheaper MG and the more elegant Jaguar, they quickly understood the concept of “export or perish.”   The two great high-performance Italian manufacturers, Lancia and Alfa Romeo, came to release their first postwar products, the Aurelia and the 1900, respectively. Both were geared toward the European milieu. They were harbingers of a new and important class of car, the dual-purpose Gran Turismo. It was a slice of the sports-car pie that in due course would be competitively dominated by Ferrari, thanks in no small part to Luigi Chinetti.   It took Chinetti to remind the Italians that their future lay across the ocean. Enzo Ferrari’s independent streak of breaking free from Alfa Romeo and establishing his own series of companies perhaps made him more receptive to innovation. In any case, Chinetti met with Ferrari during the former’s first postwar visit to Europe. The exact nature of that meeting is somewhat shrouded in the mists of time, but its eventual outcome is clear. Once Ferrari began to build cars, Chinetti became responsible for importing them to the United States. He understood the key elements of the American client base that Europeans easily overlook. It is a populous and vast country, and it is critical to establish bridgeheads on both coasts. American tastes and practices both on the road and the track were different than those of the Old World.