Did Ford almost buy Ferrari?
Yes. In the early 1960s, Henry Ford II's love for car racing was part of the reason that he decided that the Ford Motor Company would start competing. The other part had to do with the fact that Ford needed a marketing boost in the face of slipping sales and stiff competition from GM, especially when it came to attracting younger buyers. The only problem was that Ford didn't have a sports racing car in its fleet. By 1963, Henry Ford II (the grandson and namesake of the company's founder) decided that the quickest way to get Ford on the racetrack would be to buy Ferrari. Ford sent a group of dealmakers to Modena, Italy to hash out a deal with Enzo Ferrari, which took months of meticulous negotiation. The negotiations are expedited for the sake of the movie.
The Ford v Ferrari true story reveals that Ford's offer was $10 million. At first, Enzo Ferrari agreed to the deal, but there was a clause in the contract which stated that Ford would control the racing budget (and in turn the decisions). Enzo Ferrari (also known as "Il Commendatore") couldn't handle the idea that anyone else would control the decisions regarding his race team, so he bailed on the deal. Ferrari using Ford to leverage more money out of Fiat is fiction. Fiat didn't buy a stake in Ferrari until early 1969, well after Ford's first Le Mans win. It's true that an angry Henry Ford II sought revenge by directing his company's finances toward putting together a racing team and building a sports car that could beat Ferrari, specifically at the most prestigious car race in the world, the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
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