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Enzo Ferarri saw drivers as disposable and took their women

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.”

Before Enzo Ferrari built cars, he raced them. He made his debut as a professional driver in 1919, at the wheel of his in C.M.N. (Costruzioni Meccaniche Nazionali) in the Parma to Poggio di Berceto hillclimb. Alamy Stock Photo
Ferrari red, known as Rosso Corsa, is striking — and for good reason. Enzo Ferrari wanted his cars to be a distinguishing shade of the color that was once required for all Italian race cars. Bridgeman Images
Adam Driver, plays Enzo Ferrari in “Ferrari.” In 1957, the Mille Miglia, a brutal streets race it ended with Enzo facing charges of manslaughter. A driver lost control of his Ferrari, resulting in 11 deaths. The charges were ultimately dropped. Courtesy Everett Collection

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.”

Fiamma Breschi was the fiancée of Luigi Musso, one of Ferrari’s drivers. But when he died in a crash, Ferrari pursued her aggressively and made her his second long-term mistress. ANL/Shutterstock
Breschi was a beautiful woman who knew cars. The author John Nikas describes her as “a unicorn,” explaining Ferrari’s relentless pursuit of her until she agreed to become his mistress. Maison Bibelot
The normally reclusive Enzo Ferrari made no secret of his affair with Breschi; the two were seen regularly on race courses, even though he was known to have a wife at home and a lovechild with his other mistress. corriere.it

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.

In the movie “Ferrari,” Shailene Woodley plays Enzo Ferrari’s number one mistress, Lina Lardi. Adam Driver, adjusting his cuff, is ladies’ man Enzo.
The pressure of convincingly portraying Enzo Ferrari, Adam Driver (above) has said, was compounded by the movie being shot on location in Modena, Italy. Courtesy Everett Collection

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.

Enzo Ferrari’s first race as an Alfa Romeo driver was in 1920, at the wheel of a 40-60HP Corsa. He finished first in his category and a legendary career began to rev up. Alamy Stock Photo
In 1921, here he’s pictured behind the wheel of his Alfa Romeo ES at the Mugello circuit in Tuscany, Italy. He finished second in that event but would suffer his first accident two months later, as he tried to avoid cattle on a race route. AP

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.

The famous prancing Ferrari horse was inspired by the insignia on the fighter plane flown by Italy’s greatest World War I ace.
Francesco Baracca, ace fighter pilot for Italy, posing alongside his SPAF S.XIII fighter plane. The prancing horse on its body inspired the insignia that became synonymous with Ferrari.

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.

Enzo Ferrari outside the race car factory in Modena. He found his lovers among the young women he employed, returning from afternoon trysts with a smile. Thomas D Mcavoy/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock
Laura and Enzo Ferrari were married for 50 years. Despite his philandering ways, she cared about her husband and about his company, ruling employees there with an iron fist. Find A Grave

“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.”

Laura Ferrari went from sleeping with tires, to guard them against thieves, to roaming Medina with a suitcase full of lira as her husband’s serial philandering took its toll. Find A Grave
Lina Lardi with Enzo Ferrari. She lived in a house across the street from the factory and is widely viewed at the auto mogul’s number-one mistress — and mother of his only surviving son. sfcriga.com

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.”

Dino Ferrari (far left) with father Enzo (second from right), working on an engine that would power one of the family firm’s automobiles.

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.”

Dino Ferrari, behind the wheel of a Ferrari, was beloved by his father and died tragically young. Born ill, he died from complications stemming from muscular dystrophy at the age of 24.

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.

The doomed Luigi Musso behind the wheel of his Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa. Despite his death in Ferrari’s service, Enzo moved quickly to make Musso’s grieving girlfriend one of his harem of lovers. Getty Images
Enzo Ferrari with the auto designer Battista Farina in the early 1950s. Farina’s most acclaimed work was done for Ferrari.

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.”

Enzo Ferrari loved cars, women and winning, but not necessarily in that order. ZUMAPRESS.com
Wearing his signature sunglasses, Enzo Ferrari attends a test drive at Modena Autodrome. The Italian city where he was born reigns as the country’s capital of auto design. Getty Images

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

Piero Ferrari, the out of wedlock son of Enzo, did not receive his last name and 10 percent stake in Ferrari until after the death of Laura, his father’s wife. Now 78, he remains the company’s vice chairman. WireImage
Ferrari has earned the fascination of millions, resulting in books including (from left) “Go Like Hello,” by A.J. Baime which details his rivalry with the Ford family; “Badass,” by Bruce Meyer and John Mikas; and “Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine,” by Brock Yates, which forms the basis of the movie released on Christmas Day.

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.”

After painting his Ferrari neon blue, pop starJustin Bieber was blackballed from purchasing Ferrari’s exclusive models and special editions — part of the iron grip over image and legacy which Enzo Ferrari instilled in the company and which remains to this day. /SplashNews.com
When Don Johnson played James “Sonny” Crocket on “Miami Vice,” his white Ferrari Testarossa — introduced in the third season after his Ferrari Daytona Spyder was blown up by a Stinger missile — became a co-star of the 1980s hit.

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.”

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