Palace Revolt

IN 1961, ENZO FERRARI FIRED HIS ENTIRE MANAGEMENT TEAM. HERE’S WHY

IN 1961, FERRARI seemed a perfect place to work, with an established group of managers and a string of competition successes, including Phil Hill’s Formula 1 World Championship, the Sports Car Championship (four victories in five races with the 250 Testa Rossa and the Dino 246 SP), and the GT Championship. Those eight managers were long-term employees, still young and all talented. Yet, on Tuesday 24 October, at the end of a calm, apparently normal weekly meeting, Enzo Ferrari suddenly fired all of them.

They were the heads of his most important departments (in alphabetical order): chief development engineer Giotto Bizzarrini, design boss Carlo Chiti, administration head Ermanno Della Casa, foundry boss Fausto Galasso, sales director Girolamo Gardini, purchasing manager Federico Giberti, personnel boss Enzo Selmi, and racing team manager Romolo Tavoni.

‘It was all our fault, the biggest mistake ever,’ says 91-year-old Tavoni (pictured) when I visit him at home in Casinalbo, a village close to Maranello. Tavoni came to Ferrari on 16 January 1950, ‘on loan’ from the bank where he worked and supposed to stay only for a few months – only he rose through the ranks to become team manager.

‘All the managers had some issues with Enzo Ferrari’s wife, Signora Laura Garello Ferrari, who, following the death of her son Dino, had become unstable. She created a lot of embarrassment, once accusing HR manager Enzo Selmi, in front of other employees, of not giving the employees all the money Ferrari gave him for them. On another occasion she accused chief designer Carlo Chiti – again in front of his employees – of not paying the rent on the apartment he was living in. I was personally slapped, but we all went on until Ermanno Della Casa had an argument with her and, feeling deeply offended, consulted a lawyer.

‘The idea was to have a letter written by the lawyer, in which all the managers would ask Ferrari to “take care” of his family. It took me five days to accept signing it, because I felt it was wrong. I knew the man, probably better than the others, and I knew that Mrs Ferrari was a personal tragedy for him, but when the others talked about the “corporate spirit” I surrendered.

‘The agenda of the weekly meeting on the last Tuesday of October 1961 was normal, but we all noticed the letter left open, for us to see, on the table. The meeting ended without a word being said on the topic. We left the room and went downstairs, where each of us was welcomed by our second-incommand. Our juniors had been promoted to managers, and their first duty was to tell us that we were no longer Ferrari employees. We had only a few minutes to collect our belongings and leave the building.

‘I knew everything about Enzo Ferrari. Having been his assistant from 1950 to 1956 I had helped with the management of his three families: his mother’s, his ‘official’ one, [his wife Laura and son Dino], and his ‘unofficial’ one [his younger son, Piero, and Piero’s mother, Miss Lina Lardi]. So I asked to have a two-minute meeting with him. He refused at first. I was then allowed in his office for one minute. But the decision had been made. Everybody thought the punishment was for the attack on his wife, but the truth is that the mistake was the letter. Enzo Ferrari created us, he made us successful, but he wanted from us the greatest possible loyalty.

‘Writing a letter – and worse still, asking a lawyer to do so – instead of talking directly to Ferrari… This was the real mistake. We, the managers in charge of his company, had lost all credibility. In his eyes our actions had revealed a lack of trust in him.

‘If we had talked to him, his answer would most likely have been something like: “I know, I know. But since I have to live with her, you have to do the same, because we are a team.” But he would never, ever, have fired us for this.’

Tavoni, still considered one of the greatest managers in Ferrari’s history and that of the wider Italian motor industry, carried on working at the Monza racetrack, managing it for more than three decades. Yet for years he was prevented from returning to work at a car manufacturer. Abarth for one would have loved to have Tavoni, but Ferrari had let it be known that he would not appreciate the hire… Only one of the managers went back to Ferrari: Della Casa asked Enzo’s mother for help in making amends with the Old Man.

Just two months after the upheaval of the ‘Palace Revolt’, Ferrari had moved on, and the young Mauro Forghieri had replaced Chiti as technical director.

‘We thought the punishment was for the attack on his wife. The mistake was the letter’