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Like many trips this one almost did not happen. In January 2002 I applied for one of the limited places that the Ferrari Owners Club UK had on their four factory tours planned for this year. With over 1000 people chasing 130 places in total the odds were not great that I would be selected and as expected I received notification in March that I had not won the lottery for selection. Unexpected, however, was a letter that dropped through my door in June stating that somebody had dropped out and would I be interested in the last two remaining spaces on the factory tour scheduled Sept 4-6? Of course I wanted to go but who to take! The blonde was not interested but luckily a fellow Ferrari owner and friend was happy to come along. I originally met Neville Pugh on the Internet discussing Ferraris and we have visited each other many times in the past year. The trip, arranged for the FOC by Grand Touring Club, was scheduled for
Wednesday thru Friday. We were met at Stanstead airport by a representative,
checked in and met a few members of our group. A quick 1.5 hour flight
on GO Airlines took us non-stop to Bologna arriving at 3.15pm. We were
informed that Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello would both be
at the airport later that night to open up the new Ferrari Store in the
airport but unfortunately we could not wait so we boarded the bus to our
The 45 minute trip to our hotel the Mini Hotel Le Ville took 2.5 hours due to traffic problems and our driver deciding to take the "back way" to Modena! It was 6pm by the time we arrived to check in and all 30 of us were seriously in need of a drink! My impressions of this part of Italy were not overly favourable. Certainly the scenery was nothing to look at, lots of flat farmland and hundreds of abandoned farmhouses with no roofs. Apparently the strange inheritance laws of Italy make it difficult to pass on property to only one person in a will so invariably 20 people end up owning a house which means nobody actually lives there! At 7pm we had a drinks reception at the hotel bar. The elderly bartender refused to supply any drinks unless ordered in Italian. Naturally we had all left our phrase books behind but a quick crash course in Italian had us quickly sorted. Neville and I met the rest of the group and we than all had dinner at the hotel. My first experience of genuine Italian cooking and this meal like all meals to follow was memorable. Five courses of pasta and meat with plenty of wine. The group I was with was a good mix of younger and older, couples and singles, and everyone got on very well. My dinner table included a London fashion photographer, an investment banker, a computer wiz, a building restorer for English Heritage and a newspaper shop owner. All Ferrari owners from all different backgrounds with a common interest. After eating too much and drinking too much and watching the rain pour down we retired for five hours of sleep, ready for the factory tour in the morning. Thursday morning up bright and early! The bus driver was on time and we left at 9.15am for the 15-minute drive from Modena to Maranello. A word about Italian bus drivers. Our driver never had more than one hand on the wheel. A mobile phone was permanently attached to his head that he shouted loudly into non-stop. In Italy it is apparent that the biggest vehicle has right of way, which in this case was always us! Arrival at the factory put us right in front of the factory gates under the famous sign. The entrance has changed little in the past years and it looks just like all the photos I have seen growing up and dreaming of Ferraris. The factory is not just an assembly plant but also a manufacturing plant including its own foundry to cast engines and transmissions. Ferrari is unique in that they build all their own engines on site at the factory. Though we were not allowed into certain areas we were given a tour of the main assembly areas, the leather shop, and the engine and machine shop. The start of the tour is in a basic and small reception room at the factory entrance. The factory is a series of buildings old and new over a rather large area. The Fiorano test track is just across the street, which makes it handy to test the products. After handing in all our cameras and being given a stern warning about how cameras were not allowed in the factory at all under threat of expulsion we set off. We started with a small display of a 12 cyl boxer engine and the guide (Italian student with passable English if you used your imagination) explained how the Ferrari car was always about the engine. Then we walked out into the main plant area. This was the same building that my 328 was built in sometime in late 1985. Currently it is used to make all versions of the 360, 575, and the 456. Also being built was the new supercar, the ENZO! We started in the middle of the 360 line and walked towards the start. While new 360s were being built to our left, on the right was the fantastic new Enzo being built right in front of us! This was the first time any of us had seen this car in person and it is truly a fantastic sight. They are building 0.7 per day, totally by hand with just a few specialists working on the cars. Twelve 360s and about seven 575s and two 456s are also built per day. Bodies are delivered from an outside supplier (as they have always been) fully painted and ready to have the mechanics and interiors done by Ferrari. They then move down an assembly line while teams of workers do their thing. Both versions of the 360s are built on the same line and are mixed and matched on the line. The same with the 456 and the 575s, alhough we saw a few 360s on that line as well. The Enzos are built on a trolley and are hand pushed along a small area of the factory by the wall. It was interesting to see the existence of numerous FACOM tool chests in the factory (these expensive tool chests are flogged by the dealers as original factory tools and I can say they are certainly in the factory though I still don't think they are worth the considerable cost). The factory is very clean and bright inside but there definitely is not the sense that things are done with haste! We than walked through the leather and trim shop to see many old Italian women putting together the leather interiors of the cars. This was fantastic! All the colours and combinations that people ordered for their cars were laid out. Each car has a trolley of interior parts laid out on it that then goes to the appropriate place on the line for installation in the car. Everything was done by hand. Aside from a glue gun and sewing machines, it was all done with manual labour. (Remember this the next time the dash on your 360 starts shrinking in the sun!) After the trim shop we were taken into the engine and machinery room. If you like engines then this is heaven. This building was also packed with people though few appeared to be working at much! The Maserati engines were being built alongside the Ferrari engines and everything was tested for several hours before being installed in the cars. We saw racks and racks of cylinder heads, pistons, valves, and engine blocks and transmissions being assembled. The most memorable thing I saw was an Italian guy smoking a cigarette with a long ash hanging off the end while putting together intake manifolds with sealant and a big hammer! After we left this area we went to the engine testing area and final
After this we went over to the new Ferrari Store across from the main gates. Maranello has quite a few Ferrari shops as you can imagine so we hit them pretty hard. At 1.00pm the group met at the famous Cavallino Restaurant for another 5 course meal. It was warm, humid and sunny and the wine starting hitting us hard! After lunch we went to the official Ferrari Museum (a short walk away) and spent an hour in the Galleria Ferrari looking at the factory's own collection. It was a good museum with a great collection of old race engines but only about 20 cars which was disappointing. Still it's worth a visit. At 4pm we headed back to the hotel for a quick swim and at 6pm left again for the evenings events. Our first stop that evening was at the Panini cheese farm. Now I knew little about cheese until that evening but apparently the Panini parmesan cheese is world famous. The Panini family has also managed to acquire the largest and most complete Maserati collection in the world that they house in a huge barn on their farm. The inside looks like 1930s Rome and the cars are laid out beautifully. I think there were about 80 vehicles there and Mr Panini himself gave us a guided tour. He was a wonderful host. After this we headed into the city centre of Modena to have dinner at the famous Ristorante Lauro, a well know meeting place for racing enthusiasts. On Friday morning we were up early again . Our destination was the Maserati factory in the centre of Modena. Ferrari now owns Maserati and they are investing heavily in new buildings and plants. A huge new office building is complete right at the front of the factory and loads of construction was going on. Maserati aims to be building 10000 cars a year (up from the current 2000) within four years. This plant was very modern with all new assembly lines. Only 300 people work there building the two different Maserati models. Another car is due to start being manufactured in 6 months. It is easy to sum up the difference between the Ferrari and Maserati factories in the eyes of the shareholders. In the Ferrari company car park, all the cars were Alfa Romeos while over at the Maserati factory, all the executives had to make do with plain Fiats. The Maserati factory is very modern and has far fewer people working
in it. While over at Ferrari they have 78 minutes to work on a car at
each station on the line, at Maserati they have only 28 minutes. Maserati
is a car assembler with parts coming from all over but nothing is made
on site. The cars are just put together. We walked the lines and saw a
lot of pride in the new cars. The most recent Maseratis have the transmission
at the rear of the car connected to the rear transaxle instead of connected
to the engine in front of the drive shaft. This requires one hell of a
strong drive shaft between the engine and the rear axle, which spins at
full engine speed in an enclosed tube. When building the car the entire
engine, drive shaft, and rear axle are fit as one piece to the car in
less than 10 minutes. It is just lined up and bolted to the bottom of
the chassis. We could see it was going to be very difficult to service
certain items like the alternator as well as Just like Ferrari, the Maserati factory puts all the interior bits for one particular car on a big metal cart that is pushed along to meet the car at the appropriate place on the line. Thus we could see all the interior bits for one car laid out on a cart waiting to go into the right car. If you ever got the carts out of sync, imagine the chaos! After the cars reach the end of the line they are PUSHED by hand right out the door of the factory! Then they are started up and screech around the corner where they are doused with water to test for leaks. Then they are taken on a test drive through the busy streets of Modena. Apparently there are a lot of accidents involving brand new cars on this test-drive so the factory is building a huge testing centre on site so they can be road tested at the factory. I have to say it was really funny to see these brand new cars pushed off the end of the line (with fuel in the tank!) every 30 minutes and then being started up and roaring off. 15 hours earlier it was just a bunch of parts! Still very hand made, we saw no robots building anything. The vast majority of the cars appeared to be heading for the USA. All in all this was a lot of fun and like at the Ferrari factory we were given a nice thick book on Maseratis current range. We were told that they are going to stop running tours in the new year and possibly at Ferrari as well since Luca is not a fan of people seeing the factory at all. After this the group jumped back on the bus and we went a short way to a Fiat dealership in the back of which sits the Stanguellini Collection on the old Modena city race circuit. This houses a great collection of Stanguellini cars all owned and run by the Stanguellini family at the dealership they still own. Like at the Panini farm, we were given a private tour by one of the family members and saw a great number of great racecars plus a few old Lambos, Ferraris, and Jaguars. Definitely worth a visit if you are in the area. Finally after a stop in the city centre for lunch we headed to the airport for the flight back to England. Overall it was a fantastic trip and a load of fun. We didn't have time to see the De Tomaso collection or the Lamborghini factory or even the Righini Collection but I still think we crammed in as much as possible in the 48 hours we had. The scenery in the immediate area of Modena was strictly flat farmland though it is close to the Alps. The next time I return I plan to drive from England with Modena as the turning around point in order to explore the Italian Alps. The wine was excellent and the food heavenly. If you get the chance to visit this area jump at it!
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