The Ferrari automobile ranks among the most enduring symbols of taste, affluence and a love of speed.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Magnum P.I., “Miami Vice’s” Crockett and Tubs and James Bond villainess Xenia Onatopp all drive the Italian sports car whose “throaty rumble” thrills its devoted fans.
Classy as the cars may be, the man behind them, Enzo Ferarri, played by Adam Driver in the new Michael Mann movie “Ferrari,” which is released on Christmas Day, was anything but.
“He would fart and burp and cuss and do what he wanted… He taught himself to calm his baser instincts,” Stacy Bradley, editor and contributing writer to “Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine,” by her late father Brock Yates, on which the hotly anticipated movie is based, told The Post.
Bad behavior included “sleeping with hundreds of women” and not minding when his best drivers died in the line of high-speed duty.
Never mind that he was married to Laura, and had a longterm mistress, Lina Lardi — played by Shailene Woodley — and a lovechild. “Lina Lardi had pride of place,” continued Bradley. “Laura held the place of power. But Ferrari slept with everyone.”
And he shunned propriety. During the 1958 French Grand Prix, the dashing Ferrari driver Luigi Musso crashed to death while mishandling a turn. He left behind a race-loving fiancée Fiamma Breschi, a stunning Italian actress.
Soon after, Fiamma herself told The Guardian in 2004, “[Enzo] started to desire me… He told me that he couldn’t imagine his life without me.”
She told Think Design magazine in 2012: “He could never stop apologizing about Musso and would send me letters everyday written with his signature in violet ink professing his undying love.”
The pursuit worked. Their very public affair lasted for years.
John Nikas, a Ferrari expert and coauthor of “Badass,” a bible of auto design, told The Post: “He was fast, like his autos. Fiamma was a stunning woman who knew cars. She was a unicorn!”
There was no love lost between Fiamma and Lina. “Signora Lina never made his life difficult,” Fiamma said in 2004, She died in 2015, aged 81. “When she was unhappy, she would go shopping in Modena. Her other hobby was knitting… My hobby was driving a Ferrari.”
Nikas believes that the double entendre was intentional.
Born Enzo Anselmo Giuseppe Maria in 1898 and raised in Modena, which became Italy’s race-car capital, he, was the second son of Adalgisa and Alfredo Ferrari. Enzo’s older brother died of the flu in 1916 and Adalgisa made no secret of the son she preferred.
“His mother used to walk around the house, beating her breast, saying that God took the wrong child,” said Nikas. “Enzo is very much a Greek tragedy rolled up into a motorsports package.”
After a short stint in the Italian army – with the unglamorous job of shoeing mules – Enzo raced cars for Alfa Romeo, won prestigious races, headed up his own team and built cars for the company.
That all skidded to a stop in 1937 when Alfa took the team in-house. Enzo left in a huff two years later and began contemplating his own business.
Anger was his great motivator. “He felt that he got screwed by Alfa and he hated Fiat,” said Bradley, explaining that the company rejected him for a job. “He wanted to kick the s–t out of Fiat.”
In 1939 he started his company — its factory was commandeered by the Fascist regime during the war — naming it Ferrari six years later.
He adopted the prancing horse from an emblem on the downed SPAD S.XIII fighter of Italy’s greatest World War I ace, Count Francesco Baracca.
Never mind that the odds were stacked against Enzo: his teams went on to win 5,000 races and snagged 25 world titles.
He financed his race cars by selling road autos to the likes of Peter Sellers and Roberto Rosselini, who bought a customized model for daughter Isabella.
“He was a genius and not a trained engineer,” A.J. Baime, author of “Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans,” told The Post.
“He was afraid of airplanes and elevators. He described himself as a ‘manipulator of men.’”
It was not just men he manipulated. Ferrari spirited female workers from the factory floor for afternoon trysts, returning with a smile and a spring in his step.
If it seems odd for him to be bedding factory girls instead of princesses and pin-ups in the Italian era of La Dolce Vita, Bradley explained, “He had attractive women working in the factory.”
Plus: “If the woman had the right body parts, he was happy with that. Look at Laura [his wife]. She was not a stunner.”
The two married in 1923. The couple’s only son, Dino, was born nine years later, in ’32. The child was beloved by Enzo but sickly out of the gate, suffering from muscular dystrophy — and dead by the age of 24.
Though Laura put up with a lot from Enzo, she was hardly a shrinking violet. Laura feuded with Enzo’s mother and exuded authority.
“No one ever wanted Enzo to get a cold,” said Bradley. “Then Laura would be in charge. She entered the [headquarters] and employees ran for their lives.”
She once slept on stacks of tires to make sure they would not get stolen. Maybe the tough cookie demeanor drove Enzo to be a wanton philanderer.
If you believe rumors, however, he paid a price for it. In 1924, while still a racer for Alfa Romeo, Enzo was picked to compete in the highly regarded Grand Prix of Europe, a challenging race on the rough roads around Lyon, France.
The current edition of “Enzo Ferrari” recounts that the future auto titan showed up with the Alfa team, practiced as he was expected to and suddenly, “without warning boarded a train and returned to Italy.”
Enzo later attributed the Irish exit to exhaustion. Others speculated a nervous breakdown. And there were those who attributed his bail-out to the sexually transmitted disease of syphilis.
While the syphilis may be apocryphal, the rumor itself was widespread. As per the book, it “would dog him to his grave.”
If Enzo knew about the whisperings, he likely would have paid them no mind. “Enzo had no shame and did not care what people thought,” said Nikas.
As much as Enzo loved winning, he had little emotion for drivers who risked and lost lives in his vehicles, often under his direction.
Following a particularly gruesome crash, he was charged with manslaughter (it failed to stick) and the Vatican newspaper described the sunglassed mogul as “an industrial Saturn devouring his own children.”
When the German driver Wolfgang “Taffy” von Trips perished in a crash at the 1961 Italian Grand Prix, Enzo attended the funeral. “Afterward,” said Nikas, “he told a priest friend, ‘Don’t you think I did a good job of looking sad?’ He viewed people as fungible pieces of equipment.”
His self-centered ways appear to have taken a toll on his wife’s mental stability. She took to walking around with a suitcase that is said to have been loaded with lira.
Enzo, meanwhile, barely left Modena, splitting his time between his factory and his home. He received trackside race reports over the phone.
After Laura died in 1978, Enzo finally acknowledged Piero, his lookalike son by Lina Lardi, giving him the Ferrari name, 10 percent of the company and an executive job
But by 1978, Ferrari was owned by Fiat. In need of backing in 1969 as racing fortunes flagged to German rival Porsche, Enzo sold 50 per cent to Fiat.
In the 70s sales flagged. “There was inflation and an oil crisis,” said Nikas. “Not a good time to be selling expensive cars.” In 1980, Fiat bought another 40 percent.
Far from feeling crushed to be at the mercy of Fiat, a one-time enemy, Bradley said, “He was thrilled. Enzo charged top dollar and maintained control.”
He died in 1988, at 90, but Ferrari’s culture is unchanged: the cars’ buyers are vetted and must treat them with respect.
When Justin Bieber painted his Ferrari 458 Italia F1 neon blue, he was blackballed from buying special editions and exclusive models.
Nikas said: “Enzo would love it. If he is not burning in hell, he is smiling.”
