Who Owns Ferrari? Ferrari History, Explained: Enzo, Maranello and the Prancing Horse

Ferrari history	Answer	Where that comes from
Who founded Ferrari	Enzo Ferrari	Born in Modena on 18 February 1898, died in Maranello on 14 August 1988. A racing driver for Alfa Romeo before he built cars of his own.
When Ferrari was founded	1929 / 1947	The racing team in 1929; the first Ferrari-badged car, the 125 S, in 1947; the first road car, the 166 Inter, in 1948.
Where Ferrari is from	Maranello, Italy	Headquarters since late 1943. Every car and every engine is assembled there; chassis come from nearby Modena.
Who owns Ferrari	Listed; Exor largest	Exor 21.33% of the shares and 32.32% of the votes; Trust Piero Ferrari 10.67%, as of 4 February 2026.
What the name means	“Blacksmiths”	Ferrari is an ordinary Italian surname, the plural of Ferraro, a blacksmith.
The prancing horse	Francesco Baracca	The emblem of Italy’s top fighter ace of the First World War, given to Enzo by the pilot’s parents in 1923.
Cars sold in 2025	13,640	Against 7,255 in 2014, the year before the listing.

The Ferrari you can drive in Los Angeles Ferrari 488 GTB, Rosso A twin-turbo V8 behind the seats and the prancing horse on the wheel. On its own calendar, at $1,999 a day. Dates and rate →

Who founded Ferrari, and when was Ferrari founded?

Ferrari was a racing team for eighteen years before it was a car maker. Enzo Ferrari built road cars to pay for racing, and the order of those two things still explains most of the company.

Enzo Ferrari was born in Modena on 18 February 1898 and drove for Alfa Romeo through the 1920s. In 1929 he set up his own team in Modena, Scuderia Ferrari, at first to race Alfa Romeo cars, so the Scuderia worked as Alfa’s racing arm rather than a rival to it. In 1939 he left Alfa Romeo and founded a company of his own, Auto Avio Costruzioni, in the Scuderia’s old premises. A clause in his Alfa Romeo contract barred him from racing or designing cars for four years, and Auto Avio built a single model, the 815, which did not carry his name.

In late 1943, with Allied bombing a threat in Modena, Enzo moved the works from Modena to Maranello, and it has never left. After the war he started building cars under his own name. The first was the 125 S, a racing car with a 1.5-litre V12 by Gioacchino Colombo: it first appeared at Piacenza on 11 May 1947, failed to finish, and two weeks later won the Grand Prix of Rome. Only two were built. A year later came the first road car, the 166 Inter, and in 1949 a Ferrari won the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

So when was Ferrari founded? Three answers are correct, and they mean different things: 1929 for the team, 1939 for the company that became Ferrari, and 1947 for the first car with the name on it, which is the date most people mean. Enzo died in Maranello on 14 August 1988, at ninety.

Who owns Ferrari today?

Ferrari belongs to its shareholders. It is a listed company, Ferrari N.V., and its own 2025 annual report on Form 20-F sets out the ownership. Exor N.V. is the largest shareholder, with about 21.33% of the shares and 32.32% of the voting power as of 4 February 2026. Exor is controlled by Giovanni Agnelli B.V., held by the Agnelli and Nasi families, descendants of the man who founded Fiat. Trust Piero Ferrari, set up by Enzo’s son, who is Ferrari’s vice chairman, holds about 10.67%. The rest trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker RACE and on Euronext Milan.

That arrangement is only ten years old. Fiat bought 50% of Ferrari in 1969 and raised its stake to 90% in 1988, after Enzo died; Piero kept the other 10%. In October 2015 Ferrari sold shares in an initial public offering in New York. The separation from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (now Stellantis) was completed on 3 January 2016, and the Milan listing followed on 4 January. The holding company was incorporated in the Netherlands on 4 September 2015 and has its legal seat in Amsterdam, but its headquarters and its principal place of business are in Maranello.

So “who makes Ferrari?” has a plain answer: Ferrari does. Fiat no longer owns it and has not since 2016; Volkswagen never has. The Agnelli family’s connection runs through Exor, which is a shareholder, not a parent car company.

Where is Ferrari from?

Ferrari is from Italy: from Modena, where Enzo was born and the Scuderia began, and from Maranello, where the company has been based since 1943. Ferrari’s annual report says it assembles all the cars it sells, and all the engines in them, at its plant in Maranello, and builds every chassis in a nearby facility in Modena. A Dutch-registered holding company does not change the country of the car: no Ferrari is German, and none is built outside Italy.

What does Ferrari mean? The name and the prancing horse

The name is a surname, and an ordinary one. Ferrari is the plural form of Ferraro, meaning blacksmith: the same kind of name as Smith in English. Ferrari the company means the man, and the man’s name means the trade. The word has no hidden meaning beyond that.

The prancing horse, the Cavallino Rampante, has a better story. Francesco Baracca was Italy’s top fighter ace of the First World War, with 34 victories, and he flew with a black prancing horse painted on his aircraft. He was killed on 19 June 1918. In Enzo’s own account, after he won a race at Ravenna in 1923 he met Baracca’s parents, Count Enrico and Countess Paolina, and the countess told him to put her son’s prancing horse on his cars: “It’ll bring you good luck.” Enzo kept the black horse and added a canary-yellow background, the colour of Modena, his home town.

Ferrari’s annual report calls the Prancing Horse “a symbol of exclusivity, innovation and cutting-edge performance”, and the company guards it accordingly: the horse, the racing shield and the Ferrari name sit among the marks it protects with about 4,410 trademark applications and registrations in around 150 countries.

Ferrari facts

Ferrari fact	Figure	What kind of number that is
Formula 1 seasons	Every one since 1950	The only team that has raced in every season since the championship began, and its oldest.
Formula 1 titles	16 / 15	Constructors’ and drivers’ championships, more than any other team, with 248 Grand Prix wins. The most recent titles were 2007 (drivers) and 2008 (constructors).
Le Mans	2023, 2024, 2025	Three wins in a row at the 24 Hours, and the 2025 world endurance titles for manufacturers and drivers.
Cars sold	13,640	In 2025, against 7,255 in 2014. Ferrari calls this a controlled volume strategy.
Ticker	RACE	New York since October 2015; Milan since 4 January 2016.
Age	97 / 79 years	In 2026, since the Scuderia (1929) and since the first Ferrari-badged car (1947).

Every figure in that table except the arithmetic of age is Ferrari’s own, from the same annual report. Racing is still the centre of the company. The road cars keep their link to it in a way you can feel: the 488 GTB was the first mid-engined Ferrari with a turbocharged V8 since the F40, and, as evo records, its engine won the overall International Engine of the Year award four years running, from 2016 to 2019. Where Ferrari stands against its neighbour from Sant’Agata is set out in Ferrari vs Lamborghini, and what the most valuable Ferraris have sold for is in the most expensive Ferrari ever sold.

The Ferrari you can drive in Los Angeles

History is the reason people want the car, and the car is in a garage on Robertson Boulevard. Ours is the 488 GTB in Rosso: Ferrari’s mid-engined berlinetta from 2015, a 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8 making 661 bhp at 8,000 rpm and 560 lb ft at 3,000, three seconds to 62 mph and more than 205 mph. Those are evo’s figures. It is the Ferrari layout most people picture: engine behind the seats, two seats, and the yellow-and-black horse in the middle of the steering wheel.

It is $1,999 a day, on its own calendar, and the date usually decides more than anything else. A Saturday in season goes first, so send that date early and it is held. Where it sits against the cars that replaced it is in 488 vs F8 vs 296.

What it costs, and how it reaches you

The 488 sits in the top deposit band: a $2,000 refundable hold, back 5–7 business days after the car returns, with the Protection plan priced per day off that band and the higher young-driver fee for a driver under twenty-five. It prices by the day at every length; there is no block on this shelf. Collection from our lot on Robertson Boulevard is free and delivery to the partner hotels in Beverly Hills is complimentary.

Airport delivery is $150 both ways standard, where the car waits in the airport parking structure and you take the shuttle out to it, or $300 both ways VIP, where it is at the terminal, half that for one direction — and on a two-seat car with a shallow front boot the terminal tier earns its money. The rest is in the terms, and the car’s calendar is on the marque page, Ferrari rental in Los Angeles.