Hard to know where to look when you first enter the Classiche department. The 335 MM (centre, top) is in for a full rebuild, while a 375 (right, top) is merely in for some new rear brake bolts
“THE CARS ARE CRAMMED IN TIGHTLY, NONE SHOWN SPECIAL DISPENSATION”
Through the famous red brick archway and turn right. It looks like a dead end, but here in a tucked away corner, dwarfed by the main production building and only 50m from Maranello’s main entrance, is a workshop. It’s smaller than you imagine, more cluttered. This is where the world’s most expensive cars come when they need a spruce up. Ferrari’s Classiche department.
You’d also imagine it’s been here since the beginning. But back when it got going in the Fifties and Sixties, Ferrari didn’t know it was going to be a big deal. It was a race team. It built cutting edge racers to the latest regulations. It was all about what’s next, not what’s past. It was Jean Todt who spotted the value in the back catalogue and realised that if others were restoring and rebuilding Ferraris, heck, the firm itself should have a stake in that. That was 2004. Just 20 years ago. The Classiche (that second one is a hard C) unit got going two years later.
“It exists to preser ve our heritage, our stor y and keep alive the legacy that a great man, our founder, left us,” Andrea Modena, head of Ferrari Classiche, tells me. Once a car is 20 years old, it’s designated a classic and falls under the umbrella of Modena’s team. “We try to preser ve every single one produced from 12 March 1947 until this precise day 20 years ago.”