An old photograph inside Ferrari’s headquarters in Maranello, northern Italy, shows a young, long-haired man brimming with joy and anticipation as a red racing car approaches the finishing line. It shows the 1974 Spanish Grand Prix and Niki Lauda’s first grand prix victory. The young man is Luca Cordero di Montezemolo; then Ferrari Formula One team manager and now, more than 40 years later, the chairman of Ferrari.
Could he imagine then what he would become today?
“No, to be honest, no,” said Montezemolo in an exclusive interview with Life, “but ever since that time I knew that I would be involved with cars in the future, not exactly here at Ferrari, but with cars because it has been my passion since I was a child.”
Now, at 66, one still senses the same passion as in the photograph of the younger Montezemolo. With his impeccable suit, charming smile and aquiline nose, one understands immediately why he’s been dubbed “the champion of Italian culture”.
“Your country,” Montezemolo begins in just one of his observations on Thailand throughout the interview, “despite difficult moments, is, in a way, not much different from ours, because in Italy we change prime ministers very often, too.”
As the interview progresses and as he reveals more of his life and career, you get a clear sense as to why many consider him “the uncrowned king of Italy”. A few years ago, a poll conducted by public opinion research firm SWG found that 60% of Italians thought it would be good for the country if Montezemolo were to enter politics.
Born into an aristocratic family in Bologna, Montezemolo’s sporting career began as a rally racer for Giannini Fiat 500, but his career with Ferrari began one fateful day when he appeared as a guest on a popular radio show.
“The show was live so anything could happen,” recounted Montezemolo. “That day I was there as a young rally driver and one guy called and commented on how terrible car racing was, how people died in the races and that it is a sport only for rich kids. I said that he was talking nonsense and Enzo Ferrari happened to be listening to the show. He phoned in and asked who I was. He appreciated that I was tough with the guy. He told me that whenever I’m in Maranello, come meet him, that he would love to meet me. So I went to see him.”
At the time, Montezemolo was studying for a masters in international commercial law at Columbia University and was on his way to becoming a lawyer. After the meeting however, and when Enzo Ferrari offered him a job as his assistant, he immediately took up the opportunity, a decision his parents weren’t very happy with.
“They said ‘listen, you are going back to play with cars again, you have already done a lot with races in the rally. Become a lawyer now and stop playing with cars.’ But I was very lucky to have a lot of support from Enzo from the beginning. He told me he wanted to give me a chance because he needed young people with fresh mentalities. He gave me a lot of room to work and always supported me.”
Montezemolo became team manager and was instrumental in Lauda’s championship victories in 1975 and 1977. Those early years at Ferrari were often quite stressful though, recalls Montezemolo, as Enzo Ferrari would often pair very competitive and passionate members of the team together, in order to get the best out of them. Despite the stress, however, Montezemolo said it was an interesting and fantastic experience.
“I learned a lot being close to Enzo and those lessons have always been very important. At the time I was not married and spent a lot of free time with him, even when the factory was closed in the summer.”
With his close ties to the Agnellis family, however, Montezemolo left Ferrari to take on a variety of roles under the family corporate empire, including head of Fiat racing activities, senior manager of Fiat, managing director of the drinks company, Cinzano and director of the publishing company Itedi.
“To be honest I didn’t want to do Formula One for the rest of my life,” said Montezemolo. “For me it was a fantastic experience, we won and I became very popular in Italy because I was a young team manager of Ferrari. I was sad to leave because Ferrari is a passion, but on the other hand I also wanted to do something different.”
In 1991, however, a few years after the death of Enzo Ferrari, he returned to Ferrari as a chairman.
“On one side I was very pleased because it felt like coming home, but on the other side I was very worried because Ferrari was in a difficult financial situation at that time. It was also my first experience as a CEO of a car manufacturer.”
Despite the fact that Ferrari hasn’t won a Formula One championship in a few years, the car manufacturer has undoubtedly come a long way under Montezemolo’s leadership. They have won 14 titles; six drivers’ championships and eight constructors’ championship titles. Ferrari’s finances have also significantly improved, from the crisis in 1983 that saw just 2,325 units produced per year up to around 7,000 units in recent years.
Although the very idea of Ferrari coming second in races is still considered a disaster in many people’s minds, talking to Montezemolo makes you realise that winning is not the only goal the company is aiming for. When he took up his position in 1991, one of his main aims was to drive Ferrari as an organisation, as a team, into the new millennium.
“I was looking ahead a lot, in terms of the products, the organisation and the layout of the factory, because at that time Ferrari was like a very important movie star, which had a very important long history but was in a condition where it no longer received offers from movie producers.
“I wanted to create the Ferrari of the future, without losing the tradition.”
Today, each area in the factory looks more like a university campus than a typical factory. There are trees everywhere, even in the assembly line sections. There’s free medical services for employees and also free summer school for the employees’ children.
This goes some way to explain why in 2007 the Financial Times voted Maranello the best place to work in Europe and why Ferrari has been named as the world’s most powerful brand by London-based experts Brand Finance for the second year running, surpassing Apple, Google, and Coca-Cola.
Over the years, the client base has also strengthened alongside the brand. The ideal Ferrari client, Montezemolo says, is someone with a passion for cars, the design and technology. Footballers, he said, did not always fit into that category.
“They just buy a Ferrari to show off,” said Montezemolo. “They buy it and maybe after six months they change it. If you buy it, you have to keep and enjoy it, not change it as if it was a jacket.”
Although demand is still high and the company has the potential and capability to increase sales numbers, from last year Ferrari made the conscious decision to sell less.
“I don’t think there are many companies in the world that decide to sell less,” said Montezemolo. “I want to focus on exclusivity. In the last five years or more, we have been forced to inject a lot of cars to the worldwide market and now it’s time to stop. I’ve always told my people that you don’t sell a car, you sell a dream.”
Despite fewer sales, the company has managed to maintain profits mainly due to the increased number of car owners opting to personalise their cars through programmes like “Tailor-Made”, which allows clients to create their own Ferrari, down to the tiniest detail. Others take advantage of the maintenance service for their classic models, like in the restoration division of the Ferrari Classiche Department.
“It’s all about the desire and the emotion of driving, the exclusivity. When you buy a dream, you have to desire a dream so if you can have a Ferrari tomorrow, it’s not a dream, you have to wait, you have to desire it.”
Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, left, when he was Ferrari Team manager, talks with F1 racer Niki Lauda at the French Grand Prix in 1975.
