Key information
Foreword: Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason
BUY: Signed copy available from author
A brand new take on an old love, Ferrari Design: The Definitive Study sheds new light on the timeless designs of some of the world’s most beautiful and iconic road cars.
Award-winning author Glen Smale focuses on the style and looks of the cars, speaking to Ferrari stylists and international designers past and present to tease out valuable insights into the hidden world of Ferrari design.
Smale, a former ‘Design Writer of the Year’, assesses the impact of wider social changes on Ferrari designs and shows how they were both influenced by and also evoked the culture of the times. The free-spirited ‘60s, for example, were expressed in the flowing designs of the cars, which later, as the mood of optimism began to fade, gave way to the more functional shapes of the ‘70s.
The classic designs are examined through each decade of the company’s history, from the 1940s to the present day and the author also looks at the unique elements that come together to create each car. These range from the actions by Ferrari himself, a notorious autocrat who would hire and fire as he saw fit, to technological changes which made new materials available to designers, such as the use of aluminium in the 1990s.
Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, one of the UK’s leading car collectors, provides the Foreword for the book. His collection of vehicles is stored in an aircraft hangar and includes three Ferraris – a 512S, an F40, and his favourite – the 250GTO – which is one of only 39 built and said to be worth in excess of £10m.
Lavishly illustrated with 200 colour photographs and many previously unpublished styling drawings, this fascinating book will appeal not only to car enthusiasts but anyone with a passion for great design.
From Nick Mason’s Foreword:
“I think it’s true to say that Ferrari has made plenty of bad cars, but also many great ones. At the same time, it’s arguable that Ferrari almost never made any ugly ones… This book looks at the well trodden Ferrari story from an altogether different angle, by analysing the inspiration (both cultural and technical) and the evolution of Ferrari design over the last sixty-odd years.”
