You are missing the point.
Do you agree that someone following the same path I described in my previous post could believe, from the chain of info you wrote, that the pic of the red airplane with the prancing horse on the tail and captioned by you “Ferrari F104
”, is related somehow to Ferrari ?
Because that’s all my correction was about, that airplane labelled “Ferrari F104” has nothing to do with Ferrari and I explained why.
The fact that I also specified that the 999 wasn’t the same as the 4-27 was for completeness. It was maybe obvious, probably nobody would have thought about it anyway, still I decided to write it clearly so that there’s no confusion and one doesn’t need to look at more or less evident clues to know it.
manchild wrote:
As this author said, it a shame that Ferrari allowed that this historic airplane ends up in rust. I wouldn't cost them much to clean it up and repaint it once in a while but having in mind who was running Ferrari in recent years it is not surprising that heritage comes last.
The people that have been running Ferrari in the recent years, as much as you hate them, took a factory that was in a disastrous situation, not only in F1 where at the time Ferrari was living basically a internal war between two separate factions, but also in term of quality of production cars. They took that sinking boat and transformed it in a factory in excellent conditions at every level. It took long, and maybe the work isn’t finished yet, and you can improve things here and there but they worked and are working for it and they are doing it for heritage and future of Ferrari.
They reorganised the whole F1 factory putting everything back in Maranello, creating the necessary up to date tools and infrastructures, and forgetting about that “technological centre” or whatever it was called that Barnard built in UK. Started a long term plan that in few years led from the low points of Alesi-Berger days when a win was a mirage to the era from 1997 till 2006 when, with only exception of 2005, Ferrari either won WCC and WDC or at least fought for them both till the very last races.
The same people then reorganised the production line and put down the basis for a continuous improvement of the models that from the low point of early 90s, slowly got better with the F355 and 456 and finally, in most part with the F360 and 550 generation, and definitively now with F430, Scaglietti and 599GTB includes in each category cars matching what a Ferrari should be in term of style, quality, performance and reliability. 5000 cars sold per year (maximum of production potential) and thousands people all over the world happy to wait years for one of them are there to demonstrate it.
Contemporarily Ferrari realized directly racing versions of the cars that private teams then used with success in different championships, as for example GT2.
A similar thing they did with Maserati, that was even less than a shadow of the glorious past and now not only is back on production with cars of definitively higher quality than in 90s, but is also back and winning on the tracks with the MC12.
They then gave to Ferrari and Maserati costumers the possibility to race on track with the new cars. With the Ferrari Challenge in categories for gentlemen and for professional races, that with F355 at the start and the F360 then had incredible success in several countries all over the world. And is now promising to be even more successful with the F430 Challenge, a “normal” F430 with original engine and gearbox, that simply stripped of useless accessories and with just few modifications on suspensions to use slick tyres, is on the track a very fast car, sign of the quality of the project.
And people could race in an even easier way with the Gransport, cars prepared directly by Maserati, the driver had just to arrive at the track for the weekend and was given everything needed to race and have fun.
Then they organised a real championship, the Historic challenge, with several meetings in the most beautiful track of Europe, to give to the lucky collectors owning old Ferrari and Maserati cars from any era the possibility to use them in a real competition.
Then they created an entire department “F1 clienti” for maintenance of the old F1 owned by costumers where a team of specialised mechanics, often the same people that worked with these cars on the track, work to keep these jewels dating from early 70s till present days, in perfect efficiency as if these were new, they are ready to build any part if required, exactly with same specifications as original.
In Maranello then in the recent years it was completed the Galleria Ferrari, a museum with 3 floors and an amphitheatre full of the most beautiful pieces of Ferrari history, in part permanent exhibition and in part changing every few months to display elements related to specific periods or events. To talk about what is contained there would take days.
So much for “heritage comes last”.
