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During the summer holidays this year I took time out to visit Maranello, or at least attempt to. If you browse the Ferrari web site it suggests that factory visits are possible. However, in reality, the F1 sponsors and their customers take up most of them now.
However, what is available to everyone is the Galleria Ferrari,
which is just down the road and is supported and supplied by the
official factory.
Maranello is the sort of place
you could drive through and not realise you were missing out on
a slice of history. It looks a typical sleepy Italian town, but
then the bulk of the Ferrari activity now takes place at Fiorano
just down the road, near the test track.
When we were there, even the Cavallino Restaurant was closed.
(Due to open the week after we had left) Anyway we made the
most of it and paid up to go in the Galleria.
The Galleria is on two floors with another unit just off to one side. It consists mainly of about 12-18 cars on the 2 floors plus another 6 in the 2nd unit. The 2nd unit changes its theme and when we were there, the theme was the Mille Miglia with a number of cars around the room, supplemented by a video showing race footage. Unfortunately, the commentary was in Italian and carried out at the usual frightening pace, so not much was understood.
In the main areas, there were 3 main themes.
Historic Sports / GT cars, road going cars and (of course)
F1. Some of the cars are shown in the photos. As I hope you
can tell, they are displayed in a very dramatic way which sets
them off very well. There is some history in terms of reading
material, but I would have liked a lot more. The problem with
petrol heads is that having spent all our lives absorbing hundreds
and thousands of facts, we know a hell of a lot!
There were some very nice touches.
A recreation of Enzo's original office which was very evocative.
A huge glass display case of a number of old racing trophies
Several large murals of photo's relating to racing in particular
eras.
What was nice, was that none of the cars were behind any barriers, you were simply asked not to touch them. Quite a number are still privately owned and are on loan so any sort of damage is still a worry.
However, I did perch on a tyre of the ex Villeneuve F1 and crouch behind one of the Sports GT's to simulate sitting in it, without feeling I had broken the spirit of the agreement.
Altogether, we spent about 2 ½ hours in there and Carol thought she got off lightly.
In summary, it's worth going to see. However with so many good
historic meetings taking place these days, it is possible to see
cars like these more often. Whilst not wishing to sound complacent,
I did enjoy seeing things like the old trophies as much as the
cars. The good thing about being able to go to the factory would
have been to be able to see things how they were when Enzo was
there. The Galleria is a modern building and as such has very
little atmosphere of its own.
In terms of evoking history Monza wins hands down. Do them both
if you can, they're not that far apart
An example of one of the many charts used to depict drivers, cars and events in a particular decade. Very emotive and a real talking point. I managed to impress Carol by naming all the pictures ion the 70's frame. Oh Dear! OLD G*T rating now set at 10!!
The displays are
very strikingly, yet simply done.
