“Hi, it’s Enzo. Want to work for me?”
Enzo Ferrari’s PA has fond memories of the Great Old Man. She recently visited South Africa and shared some favourite anecdotes with CAR
Brenda Vernor was Enzo Ferrari’s personal assistant for more than 15 years. Here she describes what it was like working at the Scuderia during the company’s “best period”.
“When clients or potential clients came to drive the cars, Enzo would ask them what was good and what was bad. He would make notes and, when they left, he would phone the engineers and tell them to attend to these suggestions. He was a very astute gentleman. When he wanted something, he got it. I remember when Marlboro came for a sponsorship meeting, you know what he said? ‘Sorry, I don’t smoke.’”
Brenda and Enzo’s paths crossed by pure coincidence, as she explained: “I knew Piero Ferrari, Enzo’s second son. He was a student of mine when I taught English at a private school in Modena, Italy. I also taught his daughter and his grandson. I did some private work for Mike Parkes, the English driver, and he lived in the same block of flats as Piero, his wife and his mother. Enzo would come every evening to meet them and I would sometimes bump into them on the way in or out. On one of these occasions, he said: ‘You know, I might take you as a secretary one day.’ I didn’t think anything of it but it wasn’t long after that my phone rang one afternoon and he said, ‘This is Enzo Ferrari speaking – want to come work for me?’ I just stood there with my mouth open. He said I should come through the next day to discuss it with him.
“He offered me the job because he didn’t speak English. I accepted the offer and he gave me a three-month trial … and that was it. I think I was lucky enough to have worked at the company during the best period of Ferrari. When Ferrari was Ferrari and the old man was in command.
“I think I was privileged to have worked for him. I was the only woman between 190 men. I had a whale of a time and I was the only English person working there, too, at that period.
“He asked Jody Scheckter and Gilles Villeneuve to send a telex every Monday morning following a race to inform him about the car; what they felt was wrong, how the race went and what happened. He wanted this information from the drivers’ mouths.
“The angriest I ever saw him was Monday mornings when we had not won on that Sunday. He lived for racing. That is why he sold the passenger cars: to pay for the racing cars. That was his everything.
“I looked after all the drivers, from Carlos Reutemann, Niki Lauda to Clay Regazzoni – I’ve seen them all.
I used to pack their bags, clean their overalls. It wasn’t my job but I did it. They were my boys. They changed in my office … oh, the things I saw.
“There was a lot of working after hours, including weekends. One Sunday, Enzo called me in. He wanted to have a conversation with Bernie Ecclestone. Mr Ferrari sat opposite me so I could translate everything. You never said no to the old man. He never said thank you but the next day, I would find a present on my desk. He did a lot for people that no one knew about. When I translated the letters into English, the English version would always go beneath the Italian and he would never sign the English version.
“He seldom went to the races. He would maybe go to Imola or Monza on the Friday and Saturday preceding a race but he would go home to Fiorano to watch it on television. Sometimes we would sit with Sergio Scaglietti, one of his best friends, to watch the race, but often he would be on his own.
“I once drove with him in a 330 GTS. Coming down the mountains with the old man driving, my hair was a mess. He was a very good driver. When Enzo stopped driving, his chauffeur used to tell me Mr Ferrari would always encourage him to drive faster…”