The 24 Hour War

It all started with a business deal gone sour

and what came out of that

was the greatest rivalry in the history of racing.

Ford. Ferrari.

Two titans of the automobile industry

waged war, at what was at the time in the 1960s

the biggest race in the world:

The 24 hours of le mans.

You have to imagine the scene.

250,000 people.

Television cameras for the first time.

People all over the world were watching this one race.

It was like a Superbowl of speed.

Definitely the most dangerous sporting event of any kind in the world.

To win le mans, it meant that you were the best.

Everybody drove in it.

All the formula 1 stars at the time

drove in le mans

alongside all the sports car heroes.

It's the ultimate venue.

You win le mans, the whole planet knows.

We're starting 55 cars.

I don't think more than 15 or 20 are going to finish.

For an automotive manufacturer,

it proves their endurance more than any other race

can possibly do.

Commercially, it is the most important race to win

in the world, for a car manufacturer.

From the moment the second automobile was built, racing was born.

And the car that would win is the car people wanted to buy.

It took a lot of cheek to think it could rival the horse

as a way of getting around.

The car lost the race.

But it won all the attention.

And none was any too modest in the things he had to say

about his own breed of horseless carriage.

The best way to settle these competing claims

was in a sport w.K. Vanderbilt brought to America from Europe.

A race over public roads.

By the third year of the race, 1906,

2 million people turned out to witness this new sport

where men and machine were linked as teammates.

Racing at 60 mph on the straights.

Only the fittest car survived.

And those which held up in competition redoubled their boasting in advertising.

From there on out, people who built cars

knew they had to win races to market their cars.

So racing spread the gospel of automobile companies all over the world.

In Detroit, a man named Henry Ford

was making what he called a quadracycle.

It looked like a buggy, only it had no shafts or a horse to be harnessed to.

The horsepower was going to come from a gasoline engine he had made himself.

In 1901, Henry Ford was kind of struggling at that point.

He would end up starting and failing twice

before he started the Ford motor company.

He was an engineer and a technical guy.

And he was not one of the wealthy people at the time.

He had this very pivotal race against Alexander winton.

He had the crystal bowl victory winner for this race.

He thought Alexander winton was

the most important race car driver of the day.

That maybe if he got some of his engineers and

put together a car and raced winton, and beat winton,

that would be the beginning of the new launch of the Ford motor company.

He raced a car that he called "sweepstakes."

But it was lighter and it was more efficient than Alexander winton's car.

And he was behind Alexander throughout most of the race.

And then Alexander's car began to slow,

so he eventually caught up and passed him, and won the race.

People came to him after the race

and said "anything you want to do, Mr. Ford, we're happy to invest."

That's always been something in my mind that has

really kind of a key element of our company's DNA.

Which is that we were really born on the racetrack.

1923, I think, was the first year that le mans was run and there was a model-t racer.

And various private companies had taken model-ts

and adjusted them and used them in racing.

That started the modern day history of the Ford motor company.

Enzo Ferrari, was born northern Italy

1898. Into a mixture of a rural and industrial area.

His father was called Alberto and he was a metal worker.

The family of Ferrari, they had a house in modena.

They were producing parts for the Italian railway.

My father, as a kid, he was not much interested in the family business.

He was a dreamer.

In 1908, father took Enzo

to a big motor race called the coppa acerbo.

He was fascinated by these racing cars.

And so he fall in love with moto racing.

And from that day onwards, he wanted to be a racing driver.

The 1st world war happened.

It was a tragedy for everyone. It was a tragedy for him.

He lost a father.

He lost a brother.

Enzo is called into the service.

He starts doing motor maintenance for the artillery regiment.

Still, in the back of his mind,

what he really wants to be is a race car driver.

After the war, he did sell the house

for buying racing cars.

This is the reason for which at the beginning

the people from modena thought he was crazy.

For Mia-Romeo, he did one race

called the coppa acerbo in 1924.

Won that. And said that was the point

when his life changed completely.

That was when he said he became a real racing driver.

At the same time, alfa-Romeo is going through all kinds of

financial problems with the parent company.

They can't be seen to be directly involved in motor racing,

in the way that they have been.

So they hive off the motor sport side to Enzo.

He sets up a new organization called scuderia Ferrari.

Which is in everything but name, is the alfa-Romeo racing team.

For the first time, he had premises of his own.

He also had a badge of his own.

A black prancing horse on a yellow background.

The prancing horse is a family story about my father.

That he was a young racing driver...

And he won, two years in a row,

a race called circuito del savio.

And in the crowd was a guy called count baracca.

His son, francesco, had been a wwi fighter Ace

in the Italian airforce.

He had 34 kills before he was killed himself.

The mother of francesco baracca told Mr. Ferrari

to use the emblem of her son for his car because

he was the only man in Italy eligible to use the prancing horse.

And to use the logo in 1929.

'T “.1. L, II I

while Ferrari is running alfa-scuderia Ferrari,

they win everything there is worth winning.

They win grand prix, they win the targa florio,

and from 1931 to 1934 they win le mans 4 times.

All on his watch.

One thing that goes all the way through Ferrari's life,

he was an individual. He did things for him.

So when Ferrari eventually negotiates his way out of alfa Romeo

around 1939, he gets quite a good financial payoff.

But part of the settlement is that he will not be allowed to build cars

using his own name for 4 years.

As it turns out, those 4 years will be 4 years of wartime.

During wwii, we had basically converted all of our factories

for war production.

Tanks and airplanes and jeeps and everything.

It really was Henry and edsel's idea to transform Willow run

and build bombers.

Henry and edsel wanted to help the war effort.

They wanted to do whatever they could

to help win the war. Many of the history books would say

if the Ford motor company hadn't stepped up and built the bombers at Willow run

we might not have won the war.

The business during the war was producing grinding machines for the army.

And this was the means to survive.

To have his employees working, even during the war.

But at the same time, he was designing cars.

And he had engineers who were working for him designing cars.

Modena is quite heavily bombed during the war.

It's possible, that during World War II Ford and Ferarri had there first run in

it's highly likely that the bombers that took out Ferrari's factory

had come from the factories of Ford motor company.

Ferrari needs somewhere a bit quieter.

With the money he got from alfa-Romeo

he bought ground in maranello, where he wanted to

build the factory with the purpose to produce cars.

I deem this reply a full acceptance of potsdam declaration,

which specifies the unconditional surrender of Japan.

After the war, in 1947, the design of the first Ferrari was ready

two years after the war.

The 125 s. It was a 12 cylinder.

You have to understand something. Italy was destroyed.

Everything was a ruin.

And to start producing racing cars

under these conditions was considered to be crazy.

He was following his dreams.

His passion for engines and for racing.

The new Ferrari, it's very, very sophisticated.

He built very small engines, but very sophisticated engines.

And they were purely designed for racing.

So it had overhead cam shafts, hairpin Springs,

lots of carburetors. Everything about it was a racing car.

The car, shortly after it's introduction,

won the grand prix of Rome: Circuito di caracalla

he only built two 125s,

but those two cars did so much,

that Ferrari is now a name in his own right.

The cars are called Ferrari, and they start winning.

Henry had gotten quite a bit older in the 40s.

He can't run Ford motor company. Edsel died.

So they bring my father, Henry Ford ii, out of the Navy.

My grandfather, for as strong a personality that he had,

I think still really created that team atmosphere.

And he brought people in and delegated,

and relied on other people to make important decisions.

Henry Ford the 1st was a little bit less Democratic

about the decision making process.

He was the end-all-be-all of the Ford motor company and

he didn't really ask other people for help.

It was his way or the highway.

Young Henry Ford, he had no experience.