The real first Ferrari | Frankel’s Insight

I expect plenty of you know also what a traditionalist Enzo was. If you looked under a 1964 250 GTO you’d find a spaceframe chassis, double wishbone front suspension, a live rear axle and the latest development of the famed ‘Colombo’ V12 which powered that very first car, but now with its capacity doubled to 3-litres.

Interestingly enough, the second Ferrari model series, the 166, came out in 1948, its 2-litre displacement coming courtesy of a 58.8mm bore — the very same bore you’d find on the final 275 GTB/4 produced 20 years later.

It was from the same engine family that sprang the 4.4-litre that powered the Daytona and, once more expanded, lived on in 4.8-litre configuration under the bonnet of the 412 Grand Tourer until 1989, over 40 years since its original conception. Enzo always knew how to wring maximum value from whatever or whoever he was dealing with, be it engines or racing drivers.

But I digress somewhat. Because of course, that 125S wasn’t the first Ferrari at all, just the first car to be called a Ferrari, a subtle but distinctly different thing. Nor was it the first car to bear the famed prancing horse emblem on its flanks because that had been seen on sports racing and Grand Prix cars when Ferrari ran the works Alfa-Romeo racing team in the 1930s.

The missing link between the two great eras of Enzo Ferrari was the AAC 815. It stood for Auto Avio Costruzioni and was so named not because the great man was too modest to use his own but because a condition of him escaping his Alfa contract in 1938 was that he didn’t put his name on a car for four years. And by 1942 both Enzo and Alfa had other things on their mind.

The 815 was very far from perfect car. Two were built, even if Enzo insisted in his autobiography it was just one, and from start to finish the whole process from design past development to delivery took four months. He was clearly not very happy with the result, at least if the single paragraph he devoted to it in his autobiography is an accurate guide. It’s not hard to see why.

It was designed by Alberto Massimino, who had studied under Vittorio Jano and worked for Enzo both in his Scuderia Ferrari days and also at Alfa Romeo. The rather pretty bodywork was the handiwork of Touring of Milan.

The car was as simple as the timescale for its completion suggests and relied heavily on Fiat parts. It had a spaceframe chassis and live rear axle (just like that ’64 GTO), and the same kind of Dubonnet leading arm independent front suspension found on some versions of super-successful Tipo B (often called P3) Alfa the Scuderia raced in the 1930s.

The engine was unique however: a straight-eight design like those Jano had done for Alfa Romeo, but displacing just 1.5-litres and developed around the cylinder head design of the Fiat 508C. It produced 76PS (56kW) which was not an exactly sparkling specific output for a competition engine, even back then. For example, Aston Martin’s considerably older but similarly sized engine used in the 1934 Ulster provided around 86PS (63kW) on half the number of cylinders.

Even so, such was Enzo’s reputation that he had no trouble finding homes for the two cars that got built. One went to the improbably entitled Marchese Lotario Rangoni Machiavelli di Modena, the other to none less than a then 21-year-old Alberto Ascari.

Both were entered into the 1940 Mille Miglia, hastily renamed the Brescia Grand Prix because Mussolini had banned open road racing after the death of ten spectators when a Lancia Aprilia went into the crown in 1938. The race was instead held over nine laps of a closed 104-mile triangular course, with Mantua and Cremona providing the other two points.

What is interesting is that both cars led the 1.5-litre category, out-pacing the largely Aprilia-based opposition with apparently little problem. But both would retire with engine failure, Ascari early in the race, Rangoni relatively late and leading the class quite literally by miles.

Enzo would dismiss the cars, saying they were unsuccessful thanks to their lack of development time and I have no doubt he was entirely on the money. Six weeks later, Mussolini invaded France, bringing Italy into the war on the wrong side of history and that would be that for a very long time.

Both cars however survived the conflict, but not — in the case of Rangoni’s car — an apparently accidental trip to the scrapper in the late 1950s. So Ascari’s car alone remains, in a private collection, the sole reminder of what was truly the first Ferrari, even if it was never allowed to be so described.