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A fighter ace's horse became Ferrari's
A Hero's Symbol
Baracca was killed in combat just before the war ended, and Italy remembered him as a national hero. His parents, a count and countess, were early fans of the young driver Enzo Ferrari. One night after the war the countess told Enzo to paint the black horse on his car for luck, and she gave him a photo of her son in front of his plane with an inscription asking him to use the symbol.
Building the Badge
Enzo was launching his racing team, the Scuderia, which means stable, so a horse fit twice over. He placed it in a yellow shield, yellow being the color of his hometown Modena, with the three colors of the Italian flag above it.
The shield stood for his intention to do battle on the racetrack, and the flag colors for his ambition to make the team and its future cars Italy's national sports car company. The horse first went on Alfa Romeo cars, which makes old photos odd to look at: an Alfa Romeo with a Scuderia Ferrari prancing horse on the fender, in front of the door.
How did Porsche get its horse emblem?
Porsche's crest features a black horse taken from the coat of arms of Stuttgart, its home city. Like Ferrari's horse, it stands on a yellow background. The city's name comes from Stutengarten, an old German word for a stud farm, said to date to around the year 950. Porsche introduced the crest in the early 1950s.
Why was Baracca linked to a horse?
Francesco Baracca began his military career as a cavalry officer in the Piemonte Reale regiment before moving to the flying corps. He scored his first aerial victory in 1916. By the end of the war he had won 34 victories, the most of any Italian fighter pilot.
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