π
2011-09-05 01:01
in Cars, Ncars
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After the Lamborghini Factory, we headed to Maranello aka Ferrari-town. Boy, what a contrast it is in size. Ferrari is not a building down some road like Lamborghini, it is almost an entire town (at least city blocks' worth).
nice company car :)
The factory is not a couple of buildings, it's an entire city block. Then you have the store, the museum, and let's not forget the entire racetrack, and nearby racecar handling buildings and race team with huge semis that can take your very own racecar and crew anywhere you'd like to go (for a few dollars that is :)
Several places next to the museum rented ferraris for short drives:
We then went to the museum to sign in for and wait for our tours:
All the ferrari staff wears work uniforms, red for builders and white for engineers
Ferrari cafe has lambrusco you can buy
We were lucky to get a long tour of the Ferrari factory (something otherwise not open to the public), and while it was as thorough a tour as they could give us, I feel like there was so much we didn't see (including the then secret 458 spyder), merely because of how big the factory is. Of course, they have to weigh how much they can show us vs not losing company trade secrets.
We started by a guided tour of the museum:
the 458 has a beautiful mean look :)
Interesting factoids I learned at the factory: workers all wear the same red uniform and the engineers wear white. Each car is made on its own building/floor. Contrary to Lamborghini, you can only chose from a few approved colors (Lamborghini will paint it pink or hello kitty if you pay for it :).
I saw engine pieces being fit together with a robot that dipped metal pieces in liquid nitrogen to shrink them just a bit so that they fit nicely without a hammer :)
Once the long tour was over, we saw the race team and a lap of their track, of which I got a lap but unfortunately in a van that I wasn't driving :)
I want to get paid to do donuts on their skidpad :)
It was a busy day and a great visit. |
