#97 Enzo Ferrari (Ferrari vs Ford)

**David Senra** (0:00)
I want to tell you about a one-time-only limited event that I don't think you're going to want to miss. I am doing a live show with Patrick O'Shaughnessy from the Invest Like the Best podcast in New York City on October 19th. Patrick has interviewed over 300 of the world's best investors and founders for his podcast. I've read over 300 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs for my podcast. We'll be talking about what we learned from seven years of podcasting, sharing our favorite ideas and stories, and doing a live Q&A. There will also be special event-only swag. If you live in New York City, I think it's a no-brainer. But if not, I think it's a great excuse to fly in. I've already heard from a bunch of people that bought tickets. They're flying in from other cities. Some people are flying in from other countries. That's setting the bar really high, so I will have at least four shots of espresso or four energy drinks before or during the show so we can make it a night that you'll never forget. If you're interested in attending this unique live event, I will leave a link down below. I highly recommend you get your tickets today, and I hope I get to see you in New York on October 19th. In 1963, following a business deal gone sour, two industrialists from either side of the Atlantic Ocean became embroiled in a rivalry that was played out at the greatest automobile race in the world.
In its broad strokes, this book chronicles a clash of two titans, Henry Ford II of America and Enzo Ferrari of Italy at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans is a sports car race, but in the 1950s and 1960s, it was more than that. It was the most magnificent marketing tool the sports car industry had ever known. Renowned manufacturers built straight legal machines that would prove on the racetrack that their cars were the best in the world.
A win translated into millions in sales. It was a contest of technology and engineering, of ideas and audacity.
Success could only be achieved by the marriage of brilliant design and steel-wheeled courage.
It would require a greasy-fingered visionary to run the show, a team of the most skilled drivers in the world, and the swiftest racing sports car ever to hurdle down a road. All things of which the optimistic Americans believed could be purchased with the almighty dollar.
Okay, so that's an excerpt from the book that I read this week and the one I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is Go Like Hell, Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans, and it was written by A. J. Baime. So I've been wanting to read this book for several months, and I decided to wait because there's a high budget movie that's coming out next week, starring Matt Damon and Christian Bale, among others, about the story that's in the book. The name of that movie is Ford versus Ferrari. And so what I'm gonna do today is I'm gonna use this book as the start of a two-part series that I want to do on Enzo Ferrari. So the parts that I picked out of the book that I want to talk to you about today has to do with what can we learn from the founder of Ferrari and his unique personality and the way he goes about things. And then next week, I'm gonna go into what may be the longest book that I've ever read for the podcast. It's, I have the hard cover. It's a biography of Enzo Ferrari. It's like 980-something pages.
Maybe when I read all of Warren Buffett's shareholder letters, that was probably a little longer. But it's gonna be, we're gonna go into, I'm gonna go into much more detail next week. But this book is a great way to introduce us to who Enzo Ferrari was and to how he thought about building his business. So where I wanna start is, we're gonna see, so like I said before, I'm gonna focus mainly on Enzo Ferrari. But if you happen to read this book, you're gonna realize that there's a, it's interesting because it's really comparing and contrasting the difference between a founder and a manager. So you have Henry Ford II, which is the grandson of Henry Ford, who's now taking over a company 60-something years after its founding, and he's going up against Enzo Ferrari, who has complete control over his small company. So I just wanna read this section that really highlights what's going on. Unlike the men who founded American car companies early in the century, Henry Ford, Ransom Olds, the Dodge brothers, the Ottoman of the day didn't have to know how to design an engine. So they're talking about the people running the companies in the 1960s.