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The Ultimate History of Ferrari

Part of the '8 DVD Box Set – Classic Cars' reviewed by John Cooper Running Time - 92 minutes www.greenumbrella.co.uk

Before starting, I must confess that I’m not a Ferrari fan. I hope this won’t prevent me from providing an objective review, but I really can’t see what the fuss is about. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against them and if I had Ferrari money maybe I would have a different view.

As with the other reviews a list of the chapters will give an immediate feel for the feel and flow of the DVD:

1. The Alfa Years
2. The Early Years
3. The Fifties
4. The Sixties
5. The Seventies
6. The Eighties
7. The Nineties
8. 21st Century

Interview with Enzo Ferrari

The first point of note is that unlike the other DVDs I’ve reviewed from the set, this one doesn’t flow as smoothly as each chapter is started with an opening credit which makes it all seem a bit disjointed.

The whole racing heritage of the company means that the majority of the DVD is dedicated to its competition history.

The story starts in 1929 with the Scuderia Ferrari team racing Alfas before starting to build their own cars after the war. The DVD then proceeds largely in this manner and recounts decades of racing history with a seemingly endless list of model names and numbers, results, dates and facts. To be honest this became a bit of a blur to me and makes the pulling out interesting snippets for a review extremely difficult.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the DVD, just not in the same way as the others in the boxset. There is lots of great footage of the likes of Fangio, Hawthorn, Ascari and Moss, which is interspersed with footage from modern historic racing events such as Goodwood. One thing that did strike me is how well the film showed the evolution of the body styling of Formula 1 cars over the years.

Another thought that occurred to me afterwards was how the story compared to the equivalent Jaguar DVD. We’re talking about two marques that were in direct competition yet the two DVDs both give the impression that they were all conquering at the time. I’m sure the truth is something between the two.

As I said at the beginning I’m not a huge fan of Ferraris (I know I’m probably in the minority on this) so you should probably take my views with a pinch of salt. For me however, whilst still OK, this DVD lacked the documentary qualities of the others in the set. No doubt if I had a Ferrari and wanted reassuring of it’s racing pedigree then it would be the DVD for me.