The Ferrari motorcycle club
EVERY NOW AND THEN THE STORY THAT ENZO Ferrari Scuderia started out racing motorcycles rather than cars resurfaces, usually supported by little more than a list of motorcycles entered into races by one Scuderia Ferrari. The supposition is then supported with some ancient photos of Enzo in the proximity of a few racing motorcycles.
There’s even a nicely illustrated book on the subject, II mistero delle moto inglesi di Ferrari (The mystery of Ferrari’s English motorcycles) by Nunzia Manicardi available, with a fair English translation, from the Rudge Enthusiasts’ Club. Yet, despite some heavyweight authorities claiming the story to be true, the more you dig the less hard evidence there is.
Enzo is rarely – if ever – quoted, and the other members of the Ferrari family involved in motorsport are conveniently forgotten. Certainly a Scuderia Ferrari entered motorcycle team races in the 1930s, but was it the same team that Enzo founded and still competes in Formula 1 today?
And the Scuderia Ferrari motorcycles weren’t Italian but rather usually Rudges so, to an impartial observer, there seems to be a lot of wishful thinking going on. Blurry images of shield-shaped badges are claimed to be the famous yellow SF and prancing horse logo, but an awful lot of other businesses had a shield motif. Then there are the articles in Motociclismo said to be by Enzo — conveniently claiming he’s writing under an assumed name – based solely on content and that Ferrari briefly flirted with sports reporting.
Yet Ferrari did commission Vittorio Guerzoni, builder of the smaller Mignon motorcycles, to develop a 500cc racer. But the two fell out, with Ferrari telling the press –
