Enzo Ferrari's Darkest Hour

In 1949 Enzo Ferrari was red-eyed and haggard. The war had aged him and laid waste to his operations. The shop that once hummed with bustling craftsmen now lay empty and silent. He had built a small factory in the nearby town of Maranello where he fabricated machine tools and other munitions for the German and Italian armies until an American bombing raid put an end to production. Even in these discouraged hours Ferrari was scheming: he was in the early stages of building sports cars under his own name, though he could not yet imagine much demand for them.