Famous Firsts – The Ferrari 125 S

The enduring legacy of Ferrari as a marque is so rich and serpentine, it’s easy to get caught up in a romanticised notion of Enzo Ferrari strolling out of the womb and immediately sketching out some race cars. But the inception of the world’s most celebrated and prolific equine-badged automotive manufacturer and its first car, the Ferrari 125 S, (aside from Porsche, perhaps – did you know that it’s actually the same horse? That’s a story for another day…) began with far more of a slow burn. And it owes a lot to Alfa Romeo.

A precocious and inquisitive youth, Enzo Ferrari was intrigued and beguiled by motor racing, not just for the spectacle but for the engineering that underpinned it. Aged 22, he entered the world of gainful employment at the Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili (ALFA) factory in 1920, rising to the hallowed rank of official works driver just three years later. By 1929, he’d founded Scuderia Ferrari S.A., his own motorsport concern which essentially acted as Alfa Romeo’s racing division for the next decade. This was a symbiotic arrangement, as Ferrari’s engineering nous allowed the supply of cars and technical innovations when Alfa’s coffers were stretched, while also allowing the headstrong Enzo room to grow.

This impressive growth was forced to take a dramatic turn in 1938 when Alfa Romeo decided to move its motorsport operations fully in-house, creating Alfa Corse and swallowing up Scuderia Ferrari as part of the new regime. And while Enzo wasn’t totally left out in the cold – indeed, he stayed on as a consultant for another year – it had always been his dream to build his own racing cars. A clean break from Alfa Romeo could allow him to do just that.

Initially, however, he was stymied by his own brilliance. Having built up a stellar reputation in the industry, Enzo had to agree to a four-year ban on using the Ferrari name on any cars he built – so the very first Ferraris weren’t actually badged or heralded as Ferraris at all. First came the Vettura 815, of which two examples were built under the name of his machine tool outfit, Auto Avio Costruzioni. And then came World War II, which inevitably put the brakes on Enzo’s headstrong ambitions.

In the aftermath of WW2, Enzo was champing at the bit to pick up where he left off, and in 1947 the first car arrived wearing the Ferrari name: the 125 S. As with the Vettura 815, just two examples of the 125 S were built, but their significance in the annals of motoring history is truly seismic. Everything that followed for Ferrari stemmed from this landmark model, and it’s undeniable that Enzo strode in with pluck and forthrightness when this jewel-like roadster was unleashed upon the world.

As the clouds rolled away to reveal the sun over the Piacenza circuit on 11th May 1947, few in attendance could have guessed the legacy impact of what they were seeing before them: the first car of an unparalleled and legendary line that would transcend the decades and write thrilling new chapters in the lore of both sports cars and motorsport. The elegant and sylph-like 125 S was powered by a Ferrari-designed and built engine, the Colombo V12. This is hugely notable in itself, as the Colombo engine would go on to serve in numerous Ferraris right up until 1988, its final iteration being in engorged 4.9-litre quad-cam form in the 412i. But in those early days – as the 125 S name suggests – it was a tiny and zingy 1.5-litre V12, each cylinder having a 125cc capacity.

Enzo had long admired Alfa Romeo’s impressive V12 engines, and sought to emulate (and, indeed, improve) by commissioning an old Alfa colleague, Gioachino Colombo, and his assistants, Giuseppe Busso and Luigi Bazzi, to refine the formula for the debutante Ferrari. With its triple Weber 30DCF carbs and 7.5:1 compression ratio it was a robust and racy thing, and the five-speed gearbox (there to better exploit the torque curve of the rev-hungry engine, which delivered its peak power at a stratospheric 6,800rpm) was a further novelty for the time; this clever combination led to an impressive string of victories which, of course, came as no surprise to those contemporaries who had been following Enzo’s career.

Lightness was the watchword in the development of the 125 S, its chassis formed from slender tubes in the Superleggera style, the overall dry weight of the car being a featherweight 650kg. Agility was baked right into the chassis thanks to its combination of double-wishbone suspension and transverse leaf springs, while hydraulically assisted drum brakes helped to rein in the mighty thrust of the Colombo V12. And while 118bhp mightn’t sound too heady to a modern ear, consider two things: firstly, this was three-quarters of a century ago; secondly, that actually puts it in the same power-to-weight ballpark as a Sierra RS Cosworth, an R33 Skyline GT-R or an E30 M3 Evo. (And, funnily enough, it’s nigh-on the same power-to-weight ratio as the aforementioned 1988 Ferrari 412i – such is progress.) Unsurprisingly, this other-worldly performance led to all manner of successes on the track.

Two weeks after its 1947 debut, the 125 S scooped Ferrari’s first ever victory in a race that will always be whispered in reverential terms by marque aficionados: the Grand Prix of Rome, held at the Terme di Caracalla street circuit, saw Franco Cortese take the chequered flag and thus become the first ever Ferrari driver to do so – the first of a great many. The 125 S entered fourteen races in its debut year and won six of them, a remarkable achievement for a fledgling manufacturer.

‘Remarkable’ is, of course, a term that would go on to characterise the oeuvre and the innovation of Ferrari across the decades. A marque that came to symbolise visceral race victories, uncompromising road cars, luxury and aspirational living… and it all stemmed from the lightweight 125 S racer with its bug-eyed visage and thimble-sized pistons.