FERRARI IN AMERICA: LUIGI CHINETTI AND THE NORTH AMERICAN RACING TEAM

Along with a handful of other names such as Coca-Cola, Ferrari is the very definition of a brand. By some metrics it is the world’s most powerful brand. The Prancing Horse emblem is recognized the world over even by people who have never seen one in the flesh. Indeed, the term is so ubiquitous that many of the uninitiated will simply refer to any exotic-looking sports car as a Ferrari.

Much has been written about the guiding hand of Enzo Ferrari, the brilliance of the engineers, the relationships with superlative coachwork designers, and the versatility of the racing-team management. The conversion of these features into a car that is desirable to just the right clientele required its own skill set. That particular insight was provided by Luigi Chinetti.

Chinetti saw the opportunity from a unique perch of knowledge acquired from both sides of the Atlantic. He had gained technical knowledge from Alfa Romeo back in his native Italy. Fleeing the Mussolini regime, he settled in with a group of fellow expats in Paris where he both refined his business acumen and embarked on a successful racing career. What only in retrospect seems fortuitous, Chinetti was stranded in New York when the Nazis occupied Paris. He would in due course become an American citizen, and along the way cultivate relationships among elite sportsmen and technicians involved in the burgeoning sports-car culture of the New World.

Chinetti met with Ferrari during the former’s first postwar visit to Europe. The exact nature of that meeting is somewhat shrouded in the mists of time, but its eventual outcome is clear. Once Ferrari began to build cars, Chinetti became responsible for importing them to the United States. He understood the key elements of the American client base that Europeans easily overlook. It is a populous and vast country, and it is critical to establish bridgeheads on both coasts. American tastes and practices both on the road and the track were different than those of the Old World.

The European market for racing and sports cars tended to be along a spectrum ranging from those fully invested in competition to those less so. American palettes tended to bifurcate between people engaged in competition and those for whom the sports car was a form of pleasurable and exhibitionist transportation. Chinetti coached Ferrari into meeting some of these demands. The communication was not always smooth. There were often problems in the pipeline. Many could be attributed to uneven build quality, metallurgical issues, and the volatility of Italian labor.

Chinetti’s intimate experience with racing led to the creation of NART, the North American Racing Team. From late 1957 through 1982, it became the most recognizable face of Ferrari to most in the United States. At Le Mans, NART, along with Belgian Jacques Swaters and his Écurie Francorchamps, were the principal privateer Ferraris in the great 24-hour race.

Indeed, between his charisma and the addictive nature of motor racing, Chinetti was able to attract a cream of clients who in equal measure were highly accomplished in diverse fields as well as often exhibiting the quirky nature associated with a finicky thoroughbred of a sports car.

Given their oversize personalities, it is no surprise that Chinetti and Ferrari were often at loggerheads. Later, as Ferrari, the man, had a lesser role in Ferrari, the company, the relationship with the original American importer became more diffuse. While NART as an active entity faded, and on August 17, 1994, we lost its leader, the preceding four decades marked an apogee for Ferrari, not only in American racing, but in the American psyche as well. It is all thanks to NART and Mr. Chinetti, and this is their story.