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A Pilgrimage to Maranello

With our wives fast asleep in the back of the rental car as we headed south down the autostrada, it was time to execute our cunning plan. With a left instead of a right at Modena, we were no longer heading for Monaco. With some precision navigation along several picturesque Italian country lanes, we rolled into the quiet little village just our wives awoke, realising that the smooth hum of autostrada travel had for some time been replaced by lots of twists and turns and clandestine navigational instructions. "Where are we?" they asked. "We thought it was high time we stopped somewhere for lunch" we replied graciously, "so we pulled into this little town". "We think it's called Maranello." Suspicion was evident. "It was on the way!" I claimed, sitting on the map.

Maranello is a mecca for any Ferrari lover, and I have alway wanted to go there. There are lots of Ferrari related things to see, not just the famous factory. With a bit of creative travel planning, it is on the way to just about anywhere, although the smoothness of our coup was lessened by getting lost and spending an extra hour getting there than we should have.

We were driving from Villaraspa in Northern Italy to Monaco for the GP. The map showed it was only a small detour to get to Maranello, so the opportunity was too good to pass up. We could afford to add an hour or two to our trip and still get to our hotel in Nice on time. We drove down the A22 autostrada that runs south from Verona to Modena and turned left onto the A1 that runs east to Bologna. Our maps showed that Maranello was on a smaller road off to our right, so we drove down the autostrada looking for the turnoff. It didn't take long to discover that all the side roads shown on our map in fact crossed our autostrada as bridges, so we couldn't turn off. In fact we ended up arriving at the outskirts of Bologna before we found a way to get off the autostrada, and we had to back track quite a way.

Finally we arrived. I'm not sure what I expected of such a world famous town, but it was not this. Maranello appeared to be a sleepy little village, reminiscent of an Australian country town. There were no obvious tourists, aside from us.

I had heard about a restaurant decorated with Ferrari memorabilia which sounded like the ideal place to stop for lunch, so we drove around looking for it. We stopped at one that appeared promising from the outside and had a delicious lunch, but the car connection seemed a bit over-rated. As it turned out, we were at the wrong place. We asked for directions to the factory, as no doubt had many tourists before us, and found it was straight up the main street.

We drove past the factory, looking for a car park. We pulled into a side street and parked next to a dazzling yellow Lamborghini Diablo. It turned out we were parked outside a shop selling Ferrari merchandise, so we just had to go in for a look. We spent quite sometime inspecting many Ferrari related object - brief cases, clothing, watches etc. In short, every possible way you could think of for the Ferrari fanatic to dispose of large amounts of money.

 
 
We walked down the street towards the factory. As we looked across the street at the factory, we realised we were standing outside the restaurant we had been looking for, Il Cavallino . It is directly opposite the factory gates, and apparently many workers eat lunch there. We crossed the street, stepping out of the way of a passing F50, and stood outside Ferrari factory, taking the obligatory photos. There was very little action around the factory - maybe it was still lunch time. There is actually not that much to see from the outside, but it sure feels special to be there all the same. We wished we'd done more research to know if it was possible to get inside. I'd heard it was not possible so we didn't try, but I later heard that if you convince a dealer that you're serious about buying a new Ferrari they may be able to organise a tour for you.

Nearby we spotted a large red arch with the Ferrari logo atop. Closer inspection revealed it to be the official Ferrari museum, Galleria Ferrari, fittingly enough at 43 Via Dino Ferrari. Apparently it was created in 1990 as a collaboration between the local community and the Ferrari factory. We could not leave Maranello without visiting the museum, so we paid our money (around 10,000 Lira) and went inside. The foyer where we bought our tickets was full of more merchandise for the well heeled enthusiast, golf clubs, polo shirts etc. First impressions were that the museum was much smaller than expected, however the quality of cars was more important than quantity. The lower floor contained about a dozen road cars of various models including 3 F40 variations, a 288GTO and a Dino GTS. There were also various F1 cars from the 80's and 90's. The museum was almost deserted, and all the cars were standing completely unprotected on the spotlessly clean floor, so you could get as close as you liked. Despite warning signs to the contrary, some other tourists even opened up the doors of an F40 and had a closer inspection of the interior, before the security guards got to them.

Upstairs were two more racing cars, one from the modern era and one of the beautifully classic cigar shaped models. Also upstairs were expansive display cases showing small scale models of every Ferrari model ever made, as well as many of the trophies won by Ferrari over the years, including some of the F1 Grand Prix trophies that you see being held up on the podiums after races. Another interesting feature was a recreation of Enzo Ferrari's original office, as well as some F1 engines on display.

It wasn't until we had ambled around Maranello for almost 5 hours that we realised we were way behind schedule on our trip to Monaco, so we headed out of town via the main street that runs past the factory. The road rises up over a bridge and if you look down to your left, or better still park somewhere and walk up the bridge, you find yourself looking down on the Fiorano test track, and if you're lucky you see some interesting cars being punted around the track.

We finally left Maranello at around five in the afternoon with a long trip ahead of us. In fact we were so late arriving in Nice that our hotel had closed for the night and we were forced to sleep in our car until the hotel reopened the following morning. Despite this, I'm sure none of us regretted making the detour to Maranello. The town is well worth a visit for anyone who gets a bit weak in the knees at the sight of a Ferrari. There is plenty to see, both in stationary attractions and moving ones. However it would be worth doing some research first to get the most out of it.