Ferrari, like in the family. Summer camps, gym and free doctor – Chronicle

Maranello (Modena), 3 November 2020 – Going beyond the dividing bar, like the entrance of a ‘forbidden city’, the industrial plant from via Abetone, you still seem to see it Enzo Ferrari in his office on the left peering behind one of the five square windows, all the same, “what happens, who enters and who leaves”. The square that today bears the name of Giovanni Agnelli is the historic heart of the factory. The point where workers in red overalls and employees in blue shirts and badges in sight with the emblem of the prancing Horse they meet at a brisk pace. Before separating and reaching their respective stations and desks through a decumanus that leads to numerous side streets with the names of even living pilots.

The effect it is from a hive that is never tame and gigantic, over 250 thousand square meters where the approximately 4000 employees who work there take care of the ‘citadel’ – as they call it in these parts – and the citadel literally takes care of them. In the sense that those who work in Ferrari are protected from the heat of the so-called Formula Uomo: gym, free medical visits extended to family members, ‘corporate butler‘for daily tasks, summer camps, medical visits, achievement awards.

In the eyes of the people of Rossalleggi the pride of belonging to a legend. You enter the heart of Ferrari and see the latest ‘Roma’ model climbing up the ramp of a truck (“leaves for delivery to a customer”), while on the right stands the ‘Product Development Center’ designed by Fuksas ( “in 2019 no more than 10,131 cars were built”, exclusivity, staying under actual orders is a fundamental part of Ferrari value). Then it is the turn of the assembly lines where 35-40 cars come to life a day and, immediately after, of the forge of ideas commissioned by Sergio Marchionne to include four strategic components in a single building: Ferrari Design (which includes about eighty car designers and designers), the Modelleria for the preparation of the bodies, the Taylor Made and the Atelier for the customization of the models.

At the end of the establishment, on the view on via Grizzaga, you are overlooked by the legendary Wind Tunnel, designed by the architect Renzo Piano and inaugurated in 1997: it has the shape of a huge exhaust pipe, is 80 meters long and houses a 5-inch turbine that emits air flows useful for checking the aerodynamics of the Formula One single-seaters.

But to understand where the myth is born, you have to go out and move a couple of kilometers, where at a certain point the square of the Ferrari Museum opens, 500 thousand visitors a year, exhibitions that tell the men and racing cars from the year of birth (1947) to date. In these months on display you can admire the House’s Hipercars, the F40 for example for one and a half million to two million euros that reaches 100 kilometers in 4 seconds to the Ferrari 812 from the very powerful V12 bike in the front housing, as Enzo Ferrari would have liked, because, he said, “engines like horses must stay in front”.