What colour was the first Ferrari?

https://www.ferrari.com/en-RS/auto/125-s

 

Very Red. Red was the color of Italy as adopted by the Commission Sportive International - foruner of the FIA back in the 20's - 30's before the war. Post WW2 international racing was sanctioned under the previous rules and then in 1950 Formula 1 was established using the same basic rules in terms of national color... and design parameters. until 1968/69 most teams used their national colors with some variation in hue, and stripes. Colin Champman ended all that with imperial tobacco sponsorship.

Ferrari has constantly maintained Red as its base color, however the hue and shade has changed dramatically over the years. The first Ferrari was Red based on the rules adopted by the CSI.

in 1965 Ferrari abandoned red for two races in North America ( as a reaction to legal difficulty in Italy ) and went with NART - owned by Luigi Chinetti -cars were in white and blue - and had the NART badges on them vs. Ferrari badges. these were entered under NART but were Factory cars. Olivier Gendeben was given a Yellow 156 run under ecurie belge in 61.... other than that all Ferrari factory racing cars have had a Red base color since.

 

Depending on which car was the first Ferrari, it can be either red, or red: both the Auto Avio Costruzioni 815 of 1940, which, it can be argued, was the first “Ferrari”, and the first Ferrari 125 of 1947 were red.

The shade, hue and intensity of “Red” for Rosso Corsa never was defined in an internationally recognised system of color qualification, such as Munsell's, British Standard, etc...so any shade of “red” would do.
In the first years, Ferrari used a darker red, close to “lie-de-vin” in French, or close to what was called “Rosso Barchetta” later. With the advent of television, it changed to a more orange color. There have been dozen of different shades used for “Rosso Corsa” along the years.

Yellow is the traditional color of the city of Modena, hence the color named “Giallo Modena”. When Enzo Ferrari decided to use the Baracca horse for its racing blason, he choose “Giallo Modena”, the color of his own city, as the background color for the “Scudetto”. Some people have therefore deduced that “yellow” was the “true” color of Ferrari; and some others, hearing that, and not having any knowledge of the first Ferrari cars, deducted that the first Ferraris were yellow, which is simply not true.

Rgds

 

Hi Tom,

"Rosso Corsa" was adopted as the racing color of Italy in 1907 after FIAT's first international Victory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_auto_racing_colours

Rgds

 

Cool.... I knew it was a long while ago! its an interesting story on Wikipedia...