Yahoo Autos How Ferrari Calls Out Its "Friends" for Crashing Its Cars
They said he was some sort of royalty. I felt compelled to believe them. He was a Continental sophisticate. And I was effectively born in a cornfield and raised in the east-side suburbs of Detroit. The closest contact I had with royalty was when my friend mounted a crown air freshener to the parcel shelf of his Cavalier Z24. I might have gone to high school with kids carrying the last names of Reuther and Ford, but that was an entirely different variety of royalty. They wore the same kind of shoes that I did.
Luca Cordero di Montezemolo did not wear the type of shoes I wore and, unless he's currently lounging in a pair of salt-stained Saucony Jazz sneakers, he still doesn't. Look at his name: Its length suggests a high birth in the way that a two-digit house address implies a nice neighborhood. I was allowed into his aura when he was the head of Ferrari. Because of course he was the head of Ferrari. He was suave without a drop of douchiness. He was refined and mannered but not effete. You got the sense that he cared deeply about the fabric from which his clothes were tailored. His hair was long and wavy, implying a certain raffishness. Most men his age wearing such a coiffure look as if they're trolling for inconveniently young women. I don't think Montezemolo was, but had he been, I bet he excelled at it. He certainly excelled at making Ferrari a championship-winning Formula 1 team in the '70s and then again in the aughts. His Ferrari was high tech and Old World. It was exclusive even while the prancing horse logo appeared on everything from Lego kits to diaper bags.
He was forced out of the top job at Ferrari in 2014 by the late Sergio Marchionne, who, despite a fantastic sense of humor and an oddly charming refusal to hide his chain smoking, was schlubby in his ash-flecked sweaters. His voice was deep and his words were blunt. He sounded like Benjamin Netanyahu. According to Montezemolo, Marchionne told him that "no one is indispensable." It's a statement nearly as true as it is cold.
I think Montezemolo would have found a smoother way to insert the knife had he done the stabbing. Here's why.
In 2008, I drew the plum assignment of flying to Sicily to drive Ferrari's first retractable-hardtop California. Yes, the one with the massive rump of a Venus figurine and the diagonally stacked tailpipes of a Lexus IS F. One might have thought California would have been a fine choice to stage the first media drive of this car. But, as it turned out, Sicily was perfect.
This was not because of the thick fog that shrouded the hilltop road we traversed at less than 20 mph. And I was not personally a fan of the rat-bastard wasp that, unprovoked, stung the back of my neck with sufficient force for me to blurt, "F*@k!" interrupting a tour guide's history lesson about sea salt and windmills.
Over lunch, the journalist seated next to me said, "Psst." (By the way, who actually says "psst" instead of "hey" or "Dan"?) I looked over and followed his gaze down to the floor where his briefcase sat open. Inside was a chunk of a carbon-ceramic brake rotor, probably five inches in length with ragged edges where it had become violently disassociated with the rest of the disc. He'd scavenged it from the site where one of the Californias had smacked into, then dragged its left side along, a stone wall, comprehensively trashing every panel on that side of the car, blowing the airbags, and shattering at least one brake rotor. Let us stop to consider two things here: 1) How did someone manage to thwack a wall on his side of the car on a relatively straight stretch of road? And 2) how creepy is it to collect crash souvenirs?
He pointed out the journalist responsible, not that he needed to. The perpetrator's sickly pallor and distant stare pegged him as the crasher. We regarded him as we would radioactive waste-a physical reality, but one you don't want to live near.
That evening, we gathered at a seafood restaurant by the water that Ferrari had rented. Somehow, the number of diners had grown threefold compared with dinners of earlier evenings. Once the wine lubrication had begun, Montezemolo stood up to welcome the group. He introduced Ferrari's test drivers and executives who'd flown in to attend. He extolled the virtues of the Sicilian food we were about to enjoy. He thanked us for coming, though I suspect it was his way of pointing out that we should probably thank him, just not in person because he is very busy. We were among friends, he said. Then he said (and I am paraphrasing here), "But tonight, we have a new friend." He motioned for the perpetrator to stand. "My new friend, come here." The perp slinked, red-faced, across the room like a dog who had just soiled the rug. "Friend, I must thank you. This is a very new car. There are not many of them. So there are not many parts for them. But today, you made sure that we have many spare parts. So, thank you." Montezemolo might be a blue-eye from an aristocratic Piedmont clan, but that night, he was all Sicilian. I miss him. But he was not my friend.
From the April 2019 issue
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