FORNARI PASSIONE ROSSA

1974 – Argentina: The First Spark

I grew up in Argentina, a country where motorsport sits just behind fútbol—and where Fangio had already made Formula 1 feel like part of our national identity.

I had learned about Fangio, González, Ickx, Rindt and Stewart, but everything changed with the 1972 Argentine Grand Prix, when Carlos Reutemann made his Formula 1 debut with Brabham and sensationally took pole position. And then there were the red cars. As the old saying goes, ask a child to draw a car and he will paint it red. Ferrari stood as the lone Italian team in a field dominated by British constructors.

In 1974, I attended my first Argentine Grand Prix. Although Reutemann’s hopes of victory were cruelly extinguished just 300 meters from the finish line, watching Niki Lauda and Clay Regazzoni bring their Ferraris home in second and third place ignited a passion that has never faded. From that day forward, I was—and always will be—a tifoso della Scuderia.

The photograph appeared in an Argentine sports magazine covering that race. My friends and I were at the top of the grandstand visible in the background, just beneath the two umbrellas we had brought to protect ourselves from the scorching January sun of the Argentine summer.

1995 – Argentina: The Collection Begins

I had been collecting Matchbox models since 1968 and completed the typical annual 75-model collection from 1970 until 1980. In 1995, I began collecting Ferrari models in 1:18 scale. At first, the approach was simple: I bought the Ferrari models I liked and could find in Argentina, mostly 1:18 Bburago and Maisto models. The first was none other than the F40, the last car produced under Enzo Ferrari’s watch. The cars were beautiful objects in their own right, but the collection did not yet have a defined historical structure.

The photograph shows a display cabinet I had in my studio in Buenos Aires around 1998.

2002 – Italy: A Different Way of Collecting

Living in Italy changed the way I understood the hobby. For the first time, I had access to models I had never seen in Argentina, including Minichamps, Kyosho and others. A little later, I discovered specialized model builders and craftsmen capable of recreating cars, liveries and race configurations that the major manufacturers had never produced. I visited some of them personally and bought models directly from their workshops.

2003 – Italy: Not Just a Model… The Car

Everything changed one day when I visited a distributor’s warehouse. For the first time, I saw an Exoto model: the Ferrari 312 T driven by Niki Lauda at the 1975 United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen. The manager encouraged me to buy it, but the price was beyond anything I had ever spent on a model. As a way of turning down the offer, I said I would buy an Exoto only if it were the 312 T2 driven by my fellow Argentine Carlos Reutemann. Guess what? He had it—number 35, with rain tires, exactly as raced at Monza in 1976.

2004 – Italy: A Collection With a Purpose

From that point on, the collection began to grow with a very different purpose. It was no longer about quantity, but specificity. If a car was going to become part of my collection, it had to reproduce a real race car as accurately as possible. Formula 1 and Formula 2 became its backbone, but the scope gradually expanded to include Ferrari sports cars, Le Mans, the Mille Miglia and selected road cars.

By 2004, eBay was widely available and access was no longer the same obstacle. I set a target: to own every Ferrari Formula 1 and Formula 2 model ever raced—not just any version, but a model representing an actual car, with the same configuration and livery it carried in competition. If it was not commercially available, I would have it commissioned or make it myself.

2021 – USA: A Major Milestone

In 2015, I set a second target: the collection had to represent every driver who had competed in three or more races for Scuderia Ferrari. By 2021, I had reached goals that once seemed almost impossible: representing every Ferrari Formula 1 and Formula 2 car that had officially raced for the Scuderia from 1948 through 2021, as well as every driver who had raced three or more times for the team.

2022 – USA: Ferrari Recognition

That milestone eventually reached Ferrari through my friend Marcos Neukirchner. Ferrari decided to tell the story of the collection in The Official Ferrari Magazine. The interview was conducted online, and a professional photographer came to my home to document the collection. You can see more in Ferrari Recognition.

That experience inspired me to create the Fornari Passione Rossa identity, share the collection with the world, launch a website and begin presenting it on social media.

Today – USA: Fornari Passione Rossa

Fornari Passione Rossa continues to evolve. In 2023, I achieved another major goal: representing every Ferrari model raced by Scuderia Ferrari and NART at Le Mans. Now I am working toward representing every model raced by the Scuderia in the Mille Miglia.

Today, the objective is not simply to display a collection of miniature Ferraris. It is to use those models to document Ferrari racing history—one car, one driver and one race at a time.