50 Years with Ferraris takes the reader behind the scenes at Maranello Concessionaires Ltd, Britain’s famous Surrey-based importer of Ferraris founded by Colonel Ronnie Hoare. When Neill Bruce first photographed a Ferrari road car, a Dino 246 GT, in 1971, his work so impressed the powers-that-be at Maranello Concessionaires that they commissioned him to do all their promotional photography thereafter. Whether shooting production cars, factory scenes or motor show stands, he has been in Ferrari’s orbit ever since.
- Top-quality photography, originally shot on large-format film and reproduced to today’s highest standards on gloss art paper.
- Road cars of the 1970s, including Dino 246 GT, 365 GTC4, 365 GTB4 ‘Daytona’, 365 GT4 Berlinetta Boxer, 308 GT4 2+2 and 308 GTB.
- Evocative photography of a visit to the Maranello factory in 1973, including a meeting with Enzo Ferrari and tours of the main factory, Scaglietti’s body-manufacturing facility and the Fiorano test track.
- Road cars of the 1980s, including 400i, BB 512i, Mondial QV Cabriolet, Testarossa, 288 GTO and 328 GTB.
- Inside the Maranello Concessionaires workshops, showing all sorts of fascinating scenes such as servicing, body repair and the paint shop.
- Road cars of the 1990s, including F40, 412, 348 ts, Mondial t, 512 TR, 456 GT 2+2 and 348 Spider.
- Insights into the techniques and procedures involved in car photography.
The author presents some of his best pictures — the great majority in colour — and tells engaging stories about how they came about, including some of the mishaps along the way.
The subject of this book is Ferrari’s racing history from 1960 to 1965, a period that was one of the most successful in the marque’s history so far. In this era, which began with completion of the transition from front-engined to rear-engined configuration, Scuderia Ferrari won just about everything with a variety of iconic machinery that included the ‘shark-nose’ 156 and the fabled 250 GTO. Driving Formula 1 Ferraris, Phil Hill and John Surtees delivered two World Championship titles in the space of four years. Ferrari sports cars racked up a string of six consecutive victories in the Le Mans 24 Hours, a feat subsequently surpassed only by Porsche.
- 1960: A year of transition in F1, struggling with the powerful front-engined Dinos while rear-engined Cooper blew away its rivals; Le Mans yielded five of the top six places with Testa Rossas placed 1–2.
- 1961: F1 supremacy with the all-conquering ‘shark-nose’ 156 — Ferrari’s design for the new 1½-litre formula — saw Phil Hill emerge as World Champion after Wolfgang von Trips’s death at Monza, and brought Ferrari’s first constructors’ title; another Testa Rossa sweep at Le Mans gave Olivier Gendebien his third Ferrari victory in this classic race and Phil Hill his second.
- 1962: After the departure of key engineering brains, F1 fortunes plummeted, with no victories all year; but Ferrari’s onward march in sports car and GT racing continued, enhanced by the arrival of the 250 GTO; Gendebien and Hill won Le Mans yet again.
- 1963: Former motorcycle champion John Surtees began the effort to restore F1 success against Lotus pre-eminence; Ferrari’s rear-engined sports cars finally bore fruit as Lorenzo Bandini and Ludovico Scarfiotti in a 250 P won Le Mans, where Ferraris now took the top six places.
- 1964: With the F1 title chase going down to the wire, John Surtees delivered another pair of drivers’ and constructors’ crowns driving the new V8-powered 158; Nino Vaccarella and Jean Guichet in their 275 P headed yet more Ferrari steamrolling success at Le Mans.
- 1965: The last year of 1½-litre F1 brought a lean Ferrari season while Lotus again dominated; sports car success continued, topped by an unexpected sixth consecutive Le Mans victory, achieved by Jochen Rindt and Masten Gregory in a 250 LM.
This book covers this period in detail for the first time and exclusively features the work of one of the greatest racing photographers ever.