As the engine took shape on paper, and the young man’s condition deteriorated, a macabre irony became apparent. For Enzo Ferrari, the internal-combustion engine was a symbol of life. It had revolutionized society. He had watched it all happen during his lifetime. He spoke of automobiles as if they were animate. Cars possessed unique behaviors. They breathed through carburetors. They were skinned with metal. “Ferrari’s aim,” he once told a reporter, addressing himself in the third person, “is to perfect an ideal, to transform inert raw material into a living machine.” The engine of a car was
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