Two major exhibitions opened recently in “Motorland,” as the locals often call Modena, the unofficial home of Italy’s high-performance racers and road cars. One quietly commemorates the heated competition between Ferrari and Maserati cars on the race tracks of the world in days gone by, while the other honors one of the world’s greatest car designers of all time.
Ferrari and Maserati are crossing swords again, but this time peacefully. Their latest “battleground” is the Museo Casa Enzo Ferrari in Modena, which embraces what was the Ferrari family home, where 18 cars are on display in an exhibition called “The Great Ferrari-Maserati Challenges.”
The show harks back to 1926, when Enzo Ferrari managed the racing Alfa Romeos and the Maserati brothers, still based in Bologna, had come up with the Maserati 26, the first car produced under their own name. It tells of some of their epic battles on the track and road circuits of the world and includes a stunningly beautiful 1954 Maserati 250F, in one of which Juan Manuel Fangio won his fifth and last Formula One World Championship in 1957. Rubbing shoulders with the Maserati A6 GCS that twice won the Grand Prix of Italy, is the Ferrari 340 MM in which the late Count Giannino Marzotto won his second Mille Miglia in 1953. The exhibition will be open until March 2013.
Meanwhile, a three-month tribute to one of Italy’s most sophisticated designers and gentlemen opened at the official Ferrari museum at Maranello last October, honoring the memory of the late Sergio Pininfarina who styled most of the Ferraris of the last 60 years. His talents ranged from designing cars like the short wheelbase 250 GT in which Stirling Moss won the 1960 RAC Tourist Trophy and the NART-entered Masten Gregory/Jochen Rindt 250 LM, winner of the 1965 24 Hours of Le Mans to the Pinin, a four-door Ferrari requested by the Commendatore that never went into production. Also on display are Sergio Pininfarina’s Ferrari BB, 360 Modena and the Enzo ultra-supercar. This exhibition closes on January 7, 2013.
