Transcript
Introduction
"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 n manufacturers built street-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-willed 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 hurtle down a road, all things of which the optimistic Americans believed could be purchased with the all-mighty dollar."
Okay, so that's an excerpt from the book that I read this week and the one I'm going to 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 vs. Ferrari. And so what I'm going to do today is I'm going to 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 the one 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.