David Rosenthal

So at age 22, in 1920, Enzo starts his first company.

a coach building business in Modna called Carazzaria Emilia.

Now, what is a coach building business?

This is another really important point to understand about the car business at this point in time.

For most companies, and especially car companies that were making sports cars, the actual bodies or the coaches were

were built and designed by third-party coachbuilders.

The cars were just an engine and a chassis that the carmaker would deliver.

And then the clients would go to a coachmaker, like this one that Enzo is starting up, and have them build the body to their taste and specifications that would go on top of the mechanics of the car.

Yes, totally.

In this case, it's actually a holdover from the horse-drawn carriage days where the coachbuilders built carriages, but they obviously didn't supply the horses.

So the same thing starts to emerge here in the early automobile industry.

So Enzo's admittedly pretty half-baked plan here is that thanks to his sure-to-come new fame and fortune as an Alfa Romeo race car driver,

customers alfa romeo customers and customers of other car companies are going to come banging down his door to build their car bodies to build their coaches what the connection is between being a good race car driver and being a great coach builder i'm not sure and uh neither is the market because the business does not go well it's a failure and within two years enzo is bankrupt now

Perhaps relatedly, Enzo's sort of mettle as a professional race car driver also proves to be good, but he's not great.

He has all the talent, all the skill, but he comes to realize he doesn't have the one final thing that separates the true motorsport champions from everyone else.

He's too afraid to die.

He can't push himself and the car to the point that it's really, really, really on the edge.

The limit, yes.

Part of this, of course, is his sort of haunted past.

You know, the deaths of his brother and father.