We all have our favourite Ferraris from the past 70 years, the current exhibition at the Museo Enzo Ferrari reveals the company’s favourites.
The trio of the Ferrari Museums is one of the crown jewels of Italy’s infamous motor valley, a 100km long route around Bologna. This region gave birth to Italy’s automotive elite, like Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, or Pagani that mended a rich automotive tradition including the Imola race track.
Visitors can lose an entire week but also endless financial resources while discovering a noble automotive heritage in factory museums and private collections. The spending budget can quickly inflate when the programs include pre-scheduled factory visits and renting high-end luxury cars by the kilo (in this case per minute) in dozens of specialists offering driving experiences.
The Museo Enzo Ferrari in Modena is one of the three Ferrari museums accessible through a single ticket.
The Engine Museum is a lovely addition to the Enzo Ferrari Museum
The Museum’s current exhibition takes visitors back to the roots of the iconic Italian marque through thematic exhibitions that tell the story of Ferrari’s founding father and showcases some of the most exclusive cars ever built.
Since March 2019, the current Timeless Masterpieces exhibition awaits visitors in Modena, with some of the most elegant cars in the history of the marque on display.
The exhibition focuses on Gran Turismo and sports models, both for their iconic value and for the important role they played in the stylistic revolution of the Ferrari brand, giving shape to the aesthetic vision of their respective eras and leaving their mark on the automotive industry and beyond.
Around the cars, the walls display objects, works of art and images of famous faces in chronological order from the various eras.
The exhibition aims to offer a view on automotive design from a different perspective, as an expression of broader creative and cultural movements, with a streamlined style that has been growing and developing since the thirties.
Every hour, there is a special thematic show projected to the main wall of the museum hall.
The 166 Inter from 1948 and the 750 Monza from 1954 were chosen to open the exhibition, two seductive symbols of the post-war economic boom. The 166 also marks the birth of the Ferrari car company as a mean to finance Enzo Ferrari’s passion for racing.
The 166 received a lot of limelight last year, museums and exhibitors used the occasion of the 70th anniversary to showcase the first-generation 166s. Back then the model name referred more to the engine, spawning a wide range of bodyworks, and even the 166 Inter designation covered a wide range of models by today’s standards.
Next up was a Ferrari 212 Inter, that replaced the 166 and 195 Inter grand tourers in 1951, and continued the success of the brand. The exhibition showcases a beautiful bicoloured bodywork designed by Vignale, one of my personal favourites.
The 250 California from 1957 continues this legendary series, followed by the 250 GTO from 1962 that is among the favourites of multi-million dollar auctions, last year one was bought for 70 million dollars.
The brown 250 GT Berlinetta Lusso is also a great car of its era, even if I recall more beautiful versions, that were showcased in last years Ferrari 70 anniversary exhibitions.
The Green 275 GTB was also an iconic piece of machinery. The top of the line V12 two-seater grand touring coupé was produced between 1964 and 1966. The cool GTB acronym stands for Gran Turismo Berlinetta.
The classic line-up is closed by a steel blue 330GTC.
A more modern 365 GTS4 from 1969 (commonly referred to as Daytona) ensures the continuity to the modern era.
This is the era of super and hypercars, the exhibition, however, does not take that easy road (there will quite a few hypercars in the article on the Scuderia Museum).
Instead, the post-1990 cars include many special editions built based on series production cars.
Some of them are actually standard spec cars, like the 456M GT from the ’90s, a fairly recent Ferrari California from 2008 and the GTC4Lusso from the current model range.
Others are special editions to commemorate particular events, like the 612 Sessanta created for the 60th anniversary of the Ferrari car company.
The 2005 Ferrari Superamerica was a sort of a Targa version of the 575M Maranello with an electrochromic glass roof.
Total production of 559 cars ensured the exclusivity of the model.
The exhibition is concluded by an extraordinary piece of machinery, the Ferrari Monza SP1 revealed last year. I saw the car at the Ferrari stage of the Paris Motor Show, but could not get that close due to premature closure of Hall 1.
This innovative reinterpretation of the classic Barchetta cars of the fifties also introduces a new concept of special limited series cars baptised as Icona.
These models eloquently demonstrate how a car can become a universal and eternal symbol of beauty.
The Museo Enzo Ferrari is equipped with a wide range of auxiliary services from cafeteria and souvenir shop to simulators.
The museum ticket also provides entrance to the Ferrari Engine museum next door, and it is advisable to opt for a joint ticket that also opens the gates of the Scuderia museum in Maranello.
FOR AN OVERVIEW OF ALL THE CAR MUSEUMS I EVER VISITED, CHECK OUT THE INTERACTIVE MAP:
