People usually picture Ferrari as this big car maker from the start, but that is not how it went. Enzo Ferrari, the guy who made it all happen, he was more into racing at first. He drove and managed teams, especially for Alfa Romeo back in the day. And he did pretty well with that, I mean, he knew what he was doing.

Things changed around 1939 when he split from Alfa Romeo. There was some kind of argument, and they made him sign something saying he could not put the Ferrari name on race cars for four years. So instead of jumping right into cars, he set up this other company. Auto Avio Costruzioni, I think it was. They built machine tools and parts for planes or something like that. Not the exciting stuff you imagine for Ferrari.

Then the war hit, World War II, and it messed everything up. The factory in Modena got bombed, twice even. He had to start over basically from nothing. It must have been tough, but Enzo kept his mind on cars, on racing ones especially. As soon as the war was done, he went ahead and renamed the company Ferrari anyway. The agreement was over by then, technically.

He brought in this engineer, Gioacchino Colombo, who was smart with engines. They worked on a V12, 1.5 liter, small but it revved high and sounded wild. That became the core of the first Ferrari car, the 125 S. In 1947, March 12, they started it up in some workshop in Maranello. You can picture it, oily floors, the engine roaring loud.

It did not win the very first race at Piacenza in May. But not long after, a few weeks, it took first at the Rome Grand Prix. That put Ferrari out there, on the racing scene.

The logo with the prancing horse, Enzo got that from a pilot in World War I, Francesco Baracca. The guy had it on his plane, and his mom suggested Enzo use it for luck. He put a yellow background on it, from Modena colors, his hometown. Kind of cool how that stuck.

Enzo was the type who would not back down, stubborn and always pushing for wins. He said something like aerodynamics are for people who cannot make good engines. That sums up the whole attitude, speed over everything else, not comfort. Passion, Italian style, it seems like.

All this came from that rough start, the contract issue, the bombed factory. He just would not stop. It feels like a side thing that turned huge, but maybe that is oversimplifying it a bit.