It was Leo Tolstoy who said: “History would be an excellent thing, if only it were true.” The same reasoning goes for the prancing horse, Ferrari’s famous emblem. Enzo Ferrari always said that he had been given the emblem in 1923, after winning a race in Ravenna. It was presented to him by the parents of Francesco Baracca, a WWI fighter pilot who had been shot down in 1918. On his SPAD had been the weapon shield of a black horse. Here the story gets a bit fuzzy, as there are several theories how he came by the emblem of the horse. The first is that Baracca loved horses; the second is that Baracca first served in a cavalry regiment, which had a horse as emblem and a third theory is that Baracca took the shield with the horse from a German plane, which was done quite often in the war. The horse was the emblem of Stuttgart, which is also the emblem of Porsche. However, no-one knows why the horse's tail is up on the emblems of Ferari and Porsche, and down on the emblem of Baracca. Nowadays most historians accept the theory that it was actually a medieval weapon shield from Ravenna. After World War II the prancing horse appeared on all Ferrari’s in a slightly modernised version. Sixty years of Ferrari production will be celebrated at the Interclassics and Topmobiel Car Show in Maastricht, The Netherlands, starting tomorrow until January 13. Sixty of the most famous Ferrari’s will be on show and you can find the PreWarCar stand amidst these mighty Ferrari’s.

January 10, 2008