That Enzo Ferrari had always been smitten with small cars was no secret: He loved the gift of his mini from Alec Issigonis, and could regularly be seen tooling around Modena in the little machine. 

It should have come as no shock, then, that at his eagerly anticipated annual December meeting with journalists that a small, sub-liter engine of 850cc capacity would have been innocuously placed on a stand near the stage with no placard to tell its tale. That was a story best left for Ferrari to tell, and he would.

The only clue was cast into the into its valve cover: the telltale number “854”. The “4” was obvious to students of Ferrari, for it was obviously a four-cylinder, but the “85” a mystery.

Another mystery lay in the anonymous but tidy, tiny coupe on the factory grounds, looking all the world like something that would have been produced by Fiat.

In no small time Ferrari confirmed that, yes, the small engine was of Ferrari's own design and was under the hood of the car parked so prominently outside. Too, Ferrari had a hand in building the engine. He also confirmed that the as-yet-unnamed coupe "...had disc brakes,  overdrive, and an engine that you can keep at full power on the motorway from Milan to Bologna," but that he had no intention of manufacturing either it or the car. 

He nixed the idea outright, famously saying that "...a Ferrari is a twelve-cylinder car."

The little 850 engine was the seventy-eighth developed by the Ferrari company, and had exceptional features for one built in those days. It had hemispherical combustion chambers and inclined overhead valves, operated from a single overhead camshaft by rocker arms.

This was a direct adaptation of the principles of the famous all-alloy Gioachino Colombo V-12 engine that dated to 1947, albeit in greatly reduced form. 

Still, whatever excitement the new powerplant generated quickly dissipated when viewed with the bodywork that surrounded it. Frumpy, Fiat-based lines that were more akin to a downmarket Peugeot or Austin rather than an upmarket Ferrari looked decidedly drab on the car, and the unique machine gun badging on the grill's center was more than a bit off-putting, too. It seems a plan was afoot to rope in the Italian arms manufacturer Beretta into a production deal but ultimately those went nowhere. 

With the bodywork issue unresolved, work continued on the engine's development, and Enzo assigned Franco Rocchi to the cause. Meanwhile, Ferrari authorized Giotto Bizzarrini to proceed with chassis development, and commissioned him to do so.

In what had become typical Maranello fashion, Bizzarrini created a strong platform of braced tubes, with the largest being oval-section at the sides, rising over the rear axle and extending forward to the engine and front suspension. 

Front suspension was by parallel wishbones and coils with rack-and-pinion steering while the live rear axle was guided by lower semi-elliptic springs and upper radius rods. The wheelbase was 86.6 inches with a track of 48.5 inches. 13-inch Turbo Sport Borrani wheels were used, a handsome design choice, steel with aluminum rims, retained by three-eared knockoffs on Rudge splines.

The project languished as financial arrangements for its manufacture stalled. Not one to let the grass grow underfoot, Enzo picked a 21-year old Giorgetto Giugiaro at Bertone to freshen things a bit with an attractive new body to get things moving forward again. The ‘Ferrarina’ was first shown in 1961 at the Turin Motor Show, but not at the Ferrari stand, rather at Bertone’s. The engine had been further developed in the meantime, too, with a displacement of 1032 cc and producing 91 hp at 6800 rpm.

Badged as the "Bertone Mille," an immense crowd had gathered around the car demanding more information. Nuccio palmed them off, stating that the car was a mere prototype only and that manufacturing had not been decided yet, and pricing had not been decided yet, either. It was, at this point, merely gathering consumer interest, and apparently the Turin debut showed that there was plenty of that to be had. 

By early 1962 plans were solidifying for the Mille’s manufacture, as Enzo's goal all along was to find someone else to manufacture his little jewel. 

Such a company took shape with the name of Autocostruzioni Societa per Azioni, or ASA, a partnership between racing drivers Giancarlo Baghetti, Lorenzo Bandini, and Gerino Gerini, who raced Ferrari and Maserati GT cars successfully. Other good customers of the Maranello enterprise were the wealthy father and son team of  Oronzio and Niccolò De Nora, who were well known to Enzo, as they were prominent in Milan’s electrochemical industry. The Industrie De Nora SpA remains active today. An addition to the De Nora plant was put up and the work of adapting the Bertone Mille to production took shape.

Production began in 1964. They were little gems, and the press quickly made comparisons to it and the Alfa Romeo Giulietta, although the Giulietta could be had for much, much less.

American distributor Luigi Chinetti was confident that 200 Americans per year would take the car for $7000 each. That never proved true, and the first car sold went out the door at $5920. A few years later the last car sold for the knock-down price of $4000. 

However, the ‘Ferrarina’ failed to achieve great sales success, even though it weighed less than 1800 lbs. and had a top speed of 118 mph, a car that was plenty fast and a great handler by any measure.

The trouble with the ASA was that, while fast, it wasn't exactly quick: it's 0-60 times of 14.0 seconds were middling at best and troubling at worst, especially for a car being sold as a "baby Ferrari." A 1275 Mini Cooper and Alfa Romeo Giulia sedan would clean its stopwatch, and for a fraction of the price. 

By 1967, with approximately 90 coupés and 20 Spiders built, it was all over except for the shareholder's screaming and shouting. 







The sweetest little...and I do mean little...Ferrari is no Ferrari at all, but rather a Ferrarina from Autocostruzioni Societa per Azioni, the ASA 1000 GT. The all-alloy, sohc 1032cc four hosted two Weber 40DCOE carbs and was good for a stonking 96 bhp. A top speed of 118 was plenty fast, too.