Go Like Hell

by A. J. Baime

  In some ways, Hill fit in here more so than at home. Racing drivers were respected professionals in Europe. It was a vocation, one for educated men who wore ties to dinner. Only, unlike opera singers and professors, these men were trailed by death constantly. The danger didn’t seem to bother other drivers, but it bothered Hill. He had evolved, as one profiler put it, “into one of consummate and meticulous skill nurtured by an increasingly heightened and almost paranoid fear of death.”

  “I would so love to get out of this unbent,” he told one reporter. “I have a horror of cripples. Even when I was a little boy I couldn’t bear to look at anyone who was deformed, could not bear to see them suffering. I guess I’ve always worried about ending up that way myself.”

  Hill always had to keep his eyes open, to make sure he didn’t become the victim of another man’s mistake, another driver or a mechanic. He didn’t have much contact with Ferrari. When he found himself in Ferrari’s office, he saw the black-framed portraits on his desk—de Portago, Musso, Hawthorn. They were champions and martyrs. Hill felt a strange tension between himself and his boss. Perhaps they didn’t entirely trust each other. America was Ferrari’s biggest market, and Hill possessed intrinsic value. He was opening the eyes of an increasing population to the glamour of European motor sport, and to the beauty of Ferrari cars.

  The U.S. fans waited to see if Hill would fulfill what they believed was America’s destiny: a World Champion of their own. Or would he end up one more black-framed portrait on Ferrari’s desk?

  In 1958, Hill opened the season with wins at the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 1,000 Kilometers of Buenos Aires. In the spring, Ferrari teamed him with the Belgian war hero Olivier Gendebien at Le Mans. The pair would share a 250 Testa Rossa ("red head,” as the 3-liter V12’s cam covers were painted red). No other race carried the commercial significance that this 24-hour event did. Ferrari’s entire business plan was based on proving on the racetrack that his cars were special—not just beautiful, but the finest and fastest in the world. Victory at Le Mans’ Grand Prix d’Endurance was proof.

  When Hill climbed from his cold sheets on race day, he saw rain clouds outside the window. Standing in the pit before the start, he turned to his teammate.

  “We can win this race if we have the guts to go slow the first part,” he said to Gendebien.

  The Belgian took the initial shift. Hill stood in the pit watching and smoking, awaiting his turn at the wheel. He took over and, at nightfall, those rain clouds opened up. With almost zero visibility, Hill unleashed one of the greatest performances in Le Mans history, passing car after car in the pounding rain. At dawn, broken cars lined the course, one engulfed in flames. A dozen drivers had crashed, one fatally. The #14 Ferrari was well in the lead, and hour after hour, Hill came closer to immortality.

  On June 22, 1958, at 4:00 P.M., Phil Hill became the first American Le Mans champion. As his Ferrari spirited him past the checkered flag, he threw his fist in the air in triumph. He drove the victory lap with his teammate sitting on the hood of the car. The rain had cleared and legions of fans watched the exhausted pilots cruise by, knowing that, with an American champion crowned for the first time at Europe’s greatest race, American cars couldn’t be far behind.

  5

  The Palace Revolt: Italy, 1961

  This kind of love, which I can describe in almost a sensual or sexual way within my subconsciousness, is probably the main reason why, for so many years, I no longer went to see my cars race. To think about them, to see them born and see them die—because in a race they are always dying, even if they win. It is unbearable.

  —ENZO FERRARI

  ON A WINTER DAY early in 1961, journalists gathered in the courtyard of Enzo Ferrari’s factory to see the unveiling of a new fleet of racing cars. The group shuffled around on the cobblestones, sizing up the machinery. In due time, Ferrari appeared. His press conferences were odd affairs. The man remained aloof, though he understood the power of the typewriter as well as anyone. These new cars, he said, married his time-honored philosophy—the importance of pure horsepower—with the most cutting-edge innovations.

  “I want to create a car,” Ferrari said, “with the greatest possible speed, the least weight, the least fuel intake, and all parts of equal durability.”

  The last three years had seen an unprecedented leap forward in racing car technology. The machine that resembled its prewar ancestors morphed into a Space Age bullet. The concept of aerodynamics was new. Designers had begun to change the shape of cars so that they could cut through air efficiently. Disc brakes, developed in England, allowed drivers to wait until the last split second before slowing into a turn. Engl and’s revolutionary Cooper Formula One cars had proven the efficacy of mounting the engine behind the cockpit. A rear engine allowed designers to shave off pounds by simplifying the driveline, lower the center of gravity to within inches of the ground, and keep the weight of the power plant directly over the driving wheels. All of this served to place more performance in the hands of the driver.

  Ferrari was responsible for none of this innovation. But married to the awesome power of his engines, this new technology would result in unprecedented dominance.

  Phil Hill realized early in 1961 that the Ferraris were not going to lose. He braced himself. There was going to be an intense struggle for victory within the team. He could not know at the time that the season would take an unexpected turn, that the foundation of Ferrari’s empire was about to be cracked.

  In sports car racing, Hill won at Sebring in March. In June, he won at Le Mans. Ferrari’s cars placed first, second, and third. The nearest competitor, a Maserati, finished 183.92 miles behind. Ferrari had claimed the Le Mans crown three of the last four years. Hill had the perfect temperament for endurance racing—a fierce competitiveness joined with great mechanical sympathy.

  In Formula One, however, the drama proved more complicated. The new Dino F1 car was blood red and rear engined. Its front end had dual air intakes, resembling the gaping jaws of a feeding shark. Thus its nickname: Sharknose. The Dino was going to chariot one driver to World Champion honors, but the team featured two senior members—Hill and the Count Wolfgang Von Trips. They were equally matched.

  It would be mano e mano, just like Ferrari liked it.

  Count “Von Crash,” West Germany’s most celebrated sportsman, was an affable thirty-three-year-old whose good looks and ability to speak four languages made him an ambassador for his sport. He possessed none of Hill’s mechanical intellect, but he had the gift of natural instinct and an absolute adoration for the glamour of speed racing. In May, Von Trips won the Dutch Grand Prix in the Dino. On the podium he stood next to Hill, who’d placed second. Mobbed by fans and photographers, the blue-eyed Count pulled Hill in and laid the victory wreath over the two of them, a gesture of solidarity. At the Belgian Grand Prix a month later, Hill won, followed by Von Trips. At the British Grand Prix, it was Von Trips, then Hill.

  The two men were friends. As the season progressed, however, their teeth clenched behind their smiles. No American had ever won the Formula One title. No German ever had either. Behind the scenes, the tension at the factory was excruciating. Hill was a master of speed. Von Trips was willing to give everything.

  That summer, mainstream America opened its eyes to the European racing scene for the first time. Hill was regarded as the homegrown hero, a world-class racer but also a deep-thinking man, an intellectual. His thirty-four-year-old face, wrinkled now, with creases of thick flesh around his worried eyes, showed up in countless newspapers and magazines. The Los Angeles Times called the kid who couldn’t swing a baseball bat “Mickey Mantle in a Ferrari.” Esquire: “He is resolve, terror and courage all in one.” Newsweek put Hill on its cover. The story quoted Enzo Ferrari: “Of course I am concerned about my drivers. Each time I shake hands with one of them and give him a car, I wonder: Will I ever see him again?”

  The season came down to one race, the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. A victory by eithe
r man would clinch the title. During practice the day before, Enzo Ferrari stood in the pit. Each day before the Italian Grand Prix he made an appearance. It was one of his only public appearances of the year and it caused a stir. Ferrari wouldn’t stay for the race; he’d be leaving soon. In the pit, Hill’s nerves were stretched to the breaking point. He was talking to his mechanics about his windscreen. It was poorly designed, he argued. The Dino was not perfect. Ferrari’s angry bark interrupted.

  “Maybe you ought to just put your foot down harder!”

  On Sunday afternoon, September 10, 1961, Hill stood behind the pits with his helmet on while an aid poured water from a can down the neck of his coveralls. The cool water helped to calm him. He preferred to start the race soaking wet. Thousands had crowded Monza’s woody acreage awaiting the race’s start. It was a great moment for Italy, a chance to see a Ferrari pilot clinch the F1 World Championship in front of a home crowd. Around the circuit television cameras were mounted; the race was one of the first to be broadcast.

  Wearing a silver helmet in honor of West Germany, Von Trips settled into his Dino. Monza was not his favorite track. He had crashed here before, nearly been killed. Twice. In qualifying, he’d won the pole. Hill and the rest of the drivers settled into their cars. Engines running, earplugs in, goggles on, hands on the throbbing wheels. In front of his television, Enzo Ferrari took his place.

  The starter waved the Italian flag and the pack of red, green, and silver fuselages fired forward, trailing a cloud of exhaust. Gaining velocity, they headed for the first turn, the Curva Grande, then around turn two into a straight. Hill made his move early. From out of the second row, he darted into the lead. Von Trips fell behind, battling with a Scottish youngblood named Jimmy Clark in a lime-green Lotus. They hurtled around the circuit, Hill in front, Von Trips and Clark dueling nose to tail a few lengths back, over the dangerous Monza banking,* past the pits and into lap two. On the backstretch, the pack screamed down the straight headed for the tightest turn—the 180-degree Parabolica, a sweeping second-gear curve with a blistering approach.

  Hill downshifted and entered; Von Trips and Clark followed. At well over 100 mph, Von Trips went for the racing line. So did Clark. Their wheels touched. The cameras were rolling. Von Trips’s Ferrari spun out of control and hit the inside guardrail. It cartwheeled up a five-foot grass embankment and, twisting like a helicopter blade, the red Dino scythed through the ranks of spectators standing behind a wire fence before tumbling back toward the pavement.

  What had happened? Smoke obscured the chaos in the crowd. A flag man came sprinting, signaling caution. The race went on.

  Forty-one laps later, Hill crossed the finish line first and the checkered flag waved. He knew there’d been an accident, and he had a good idea of who it was. But he never removed his eyes from the action unfolding directly in front of him. He pulled into the Ferrari pit and saw technical director Carlo Chiti.

  “And Trips?” Hill asked. “Is he dead?”

  Chiti’s face was grave. “Come on,” he said, “they want you for the awards ceremony.”

  The next morning, in a hotel in Milan not far from the Autodrome, a new World Champion descended a flight of stairs into the lobby. Hill found a crowd gathered around the hotel’s only television. They were watching Von Trips’s accident, which was being aired over and over. Footage of the ace pilot being carried off on a stretcher, his arm dangling off the side, drew gasps. A commentator groaned on in Italian. Count Wolfgang Von Trips and fourteen spectators had been killed.

  Hill found a place to sit and a friend spotted him.

  “Are you going to quit, Phil?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t made up my mind yet.” After a pause, he became philosophical. “After all,” he said, “everybody dies. Isn’t it a fine thing that Von Trips died doing something he loved, without any suffering, without any warning? I think Trips would rather be dead than not race, don’t you?”

  “What are you going to do, Phil?”

  Hill thought for a moment. Then he said, “When I love motor racing less, my own life will be worth more to me, and I will be less willing to risk it.”

  In Maranello, Enzo Ferrari stayed secluded behind his factory gates. He too had seen the accident on television, and when the news arrived—the death toll—he prepared himself for the fallout. The front page of the Corriere della Sera: “Fifteen Dead from the Tragedy at Monza. The Investigation Has Begun at the Autodrome.”

  In the past, accidents had always been mysteries, with variables never fully understood. They unfold so quickly and violently, no two witnesses tell the same story. “Unfortunately,” Juan Manuel Fangio once said, “the man who could tell you exactly what happened is always dead.” But this was different; television cameras had filmed the last race of Count Wolfgang Von Trips. A government commission of experts promised to place blame. “You can’t imagine what it was like,” Hill later recalled. “It seemed like everybody in the damn country was milling around Maranello, and there’s Enzo Ferrari, with three days’ beard growth, and wearing bathrobes all day.”

  Ferrari did not attend Von Trips’s funeral, though his wife did. Hill was a pallbearer. The casket was driven through the streets of the Count’s home city of Cologne in the pouring rain atop his overheating Ferrari roadster. The procession of umbrella-holding mourners snaked as far as the eye could see.

  The most dominant year in Ferrari’s history ended in despair. Every victory and every tragedy since Dino’s death had heightened the tension inside the factory. And in the fall of 1961, the situation in Maranello deteriorated. Dissatisfied employees began to make demands. Ferrari’s wife, they said, was nosing around too much, and there were other complaints. Perhaps the bad publicity and the bloodshed was too much for them to handle. Rumblings inside the factory grew in volume.

  Nothing like this had ever happened, as Ferrari’s word was always the last. Now major figures in the organization were bonding against him. As a result, eight key men left him in November, two months after the Monza tragedy. Among them was Ferrari’s racing team manager and chief engineer. The company’s finance guru, its foundry manager—all left at once. Ferrari refused to beg anyone to return. He called a meeting of his junior staff.

  “We got rid of the generals,” he said. “Now you corporals must take charge.”

  Ferrari’s company was struggling. He spent all his profits on racing, and he was badly in need of money. He was being vilified at every turn. In the newspapers that he read religiously, the Magician of Maranello was being called the Monster of Maranello. One contract driver’s wife called him “an assassin.” Had he not brought Italy another World Championship? Had he not raised the reputation of the Italian automobile into the stratosphere? He believed his country had forsaken him, and his own men had betrayed him, walked out in a much-publicized “Palace Revolt.”

  The old man was livid. And so he came up with a plan.

  6

  Ferrari/Ford and Ford/Ferrari: Spring 1963

  The American really loves nothing but his automobile.

  —WILLIAM FAULKNER

  IN FEBRUARY 1963, officials at Ford’s German division in Cologne received a mysterious letter from the German consul in Milan. The letter told of a “small, but nevertheless internationally known Italian automobile factory” that was for sale. No names were mentioned. The letter fell into the hands of Ford’s Director of Finance in Cologne, Robert G. Layton, who at first believed the Italian factory must be one of the foundering operations sideswiped by an unstable economy. Some legwork, however, revealed that the factory in question was producing the most famous sports and Grand Prix cars in the world.

  Layton forwarded the note to Dearborn on February 20. “For what it is worth, I am attaching a letter,” his communication read. “While I doubt whether this is of special interest, there may be angles that I do not know of.”

  By coincidence, Lee Iacocca and his chief engineer Don Frey had discussed the possibility of pur
chasing Ferrari. Most Americans had never seen a Ferrari in person, but they knew of its status. A mention of those three syllables signified beauty, sex, money, fame. Most of all: speed. The only way Iacocca could bring that kind of clout to Ford was to buy it.

  When he approached his boss with the idea, it struck a chord. The notion sat well with Henry II’s plans for Europe. He knew intimately the mystique of this Italian automobile. In 1952, Enzo Ferrari gave the grandson of Henry Ford a black 212 barchetta as a gift. It was a beautiful car of clean, simple lines. Henry II added his own touch, a little hint of the Stars and Stripes. Around the Italian wire-spoked wheels, he fit a quartet of Firestone whitewall racing tires.

  If the market abroad was the future, and racing victories translated into sales, the Ferrari factory could be a brilliant strategic acquisition. Iacocca got the go-ahead to explore.

  On April 10, 1963, the phone rang in the office of Enzo Ferrari’s right-hand man, Franco Gozzi, at the factory. A thirty-one-year-old six-footer known for his quick wit, Gozzi was a Modenese trained in law. He was married to the daughter of Ferrari’s barber Antonio.

  Gozzi struggled for a second. He had a coffee in one hand and a crossword puzzle in the other—a rare moment of relaxation, as the boss was not around. When he answered the phone, a voice came through in Italian with an American accent.

  “Filmer Paradise here, is Mr. Ferrari in the office?”

  Gozzi replied that he would take a message.

  “Is Ferrari there or not?”