1952 Ferrari 225 S

While the history of the Ferrari you see here will forever associate it with the great American World Champion Phil Hill, this particular car is much more important for its symbolic significance. In the early 1950s, Enzo Ferrari had his eye on America, and very few of his products of that time came about without the notion that they might do well in the new American sports car buying market. The 225 S was one of the cars that helped pioneer Ferrari’s opening up of what would turn out to be his most lucrative and lasting market.

I have always found the books about Ferrari interesting from several points of view: the ones about Enzo Ferrari himself have almost always viewed him in at least semi-heroic terms; the ones about the cars have usually divided them clearly between road-going machinery and racing cars. The reality is that, especially in the late 1940s and early 1950s, most non single-seater Ferraris were dual-purpose machines. Enzo Ferrari wanted to build and sell production cars for road use, but very few of the designs of that period could not be turned into racing cars. One can argue that Ferrari’s legend really evolved from the fact that virtually all his cars were, indeed, racing cars.