It was automotive madness.
Consider, for a moment, the idea of racing the most powerful sports cars in the world on public roads with no safety barriers or precautions.
Now consider staging that race over 1000 miles (1600 kilometres), regardless of the weather, over twisting, snow-topped mountain hairpins, narrow city streets, lined with every conceivable danger and obstacle. Driving flat out, as fast as man and machine could go.
This mayhem was the motor race known as the Mille Miglia, starting in Brescia in the north, and finishing in Rome in the south.
Car-bonkers Italy, home to the famous car-building houses of Ferrari, Maserati, and Alfa Romeo, was to stage the last great open road races of the modern era in 1957.
And a nearly bankrupt Enzo Ferrari had staked his reputation on winning it.
A new biopic simply titled Ferrari will be released which will encompass the events leading up to the summer of that race, what happened during it, and the tumultuous events which followed.
Adam Driver - yes, the same Kylo Ren from Star Wars - will play the coiffed and stylish, tortured, complex and fiercely intense boss of the famous Modena-based sports car builder. Penelope Cruz will play his wife, Laura.
US author Brock Yates wrote what most consider the definitive history of the man behind one of the world's most famous car brands.
In it, he described the lead-up to the 1957 race: "Open road races had long been considered too dangerous by most civilised nations and had long since been banned," he wrote.
"Even the Mexican government had cancelled the famous Carrera Panamerica de Mexico after eight people - four drivers, two riding mechanics and a pair of spectators - died in the 1954 event.
"But the Mille Miglia only gained in popularity among the Italian people."
Some 10 million ltalians lined the road to watch it.
"Thousands of police and army regulars laboured in a futile attempt to keep the mobs off course but the drivers still had to be steeled to drive flat out into packs of fans - moving, wobbling walls of flesh - that would part like the Red Sea as they sped through," Yates wrote.
"In the rural sections, children skittered across the highway and often rode their bicycles on the shoulder.
"Some farmers refused to adjust to the annual madness. Competitors would sometimes crest a hill to find a tiny Fiat sedan, a tractor or a farm wagon wobbling along in the opposite direction."
Success in the Mille Miglia would guarantee Ferrari acclaim at home and abroad but most importantly crack the door to the hugely wealthy American market for his sports cars.
Because to his legion of cashed-up fans, it wasn't just buying a car, it was becoming part of the Ferrari aura and mystique.
Although notoriously fragile and idiosyncratic, the blood-red Ferrari cars and their wailing engines were seen by the true believers as an embodiment of something almost ethereal and the world's greatest coachbuilders at the time, like Zagato and Scaglietti, were desperate to win favour with the factory.
Consider, too, the historical and emotional context to the race. His eldest son, Alfredo, or just "Dino", had died the year before due to complications arising from muscular dystrophy.
Ferrari was grief-stricken, as was much of Italy, and he would visit his son's gravesite daily as part of his morning ritual.
For the 1957 race, Ferrari assembled a crack team of drivers including British prodigy Peter Collins, Italian world champion Piero Taruffi, German Wolfgang von Trips and Spanish aristocrat Alfonso de Portago.
The best driver in the world, three-time world champion and Argentinian maestro Juan Manuel Fangio, had fallen out with Ferrari and was unavailable. Britain's hugely talented Mike Hawthorn had shunned the open road race as being too dangerous.
But the genius Stirling Moss, the race winner in 1955, was there for Maserati. He held the race record, at an astonishing average speed of 132 miles per hour (212km/h).
Moss was seen as the driver to beat. As it transpired, his race lasted barely 10 kilometres before his brake pedal sheared off and he plunged off the road, miraculously unhurt.
After the start flag dropped, Ferrari's victory hopes began to slowly unwind. The cars of both Collins and Taruffi became mechanically crippled and unable to win.
It was then down to Portago to achieve glory for the Scuderia.
Then, on a five kilometre stretch from Cerlongo to the village of Guidizzolo, tragedy struck.
Yates described the incident thus: "The Portago Ferrari twitched to the left, catching a stone kilometre [marker]," he wrote.
"Suddenly out of control, the car came at them [the spectators] like a pinwheel of death, spinning and gyrating, first into a ditch, then sailing clear over the first row of onlookers to disintegrate against a pole.
"Shreds of aluminium and steel flailed into the crowd as the car, amid evil thuds and booms of impact, flung its two passengers into the trees and pounded itself into a rumpled, steaming, inert, upside-down lump in a deep roadside drainage ditch.
"All was silent, save for the moans and screams of the dying and wounded.
"Twelve people lay dead, including Portago, who had been sawed in half by the scything hood of the Ferrari."
Five children were among the 10 local spectators killed. Twenty more were seriously wounded.
"It was the end," he wrote.
"An outraged cry of anger, frustration and anguish came from every corner of the nation.
"The national mood was to lash out, to pinpoint the perpetrator and to lynch him for the carnage.
"The scapegoat would be Enzo Ferrari."
The man who just days before had been the most celebrated man in Italy, was reviled, and charged with manslaughter.
Four-time Academy Award nominee Michael Mann directed Ferrari, and co-wrote the script.
Ferrari will debut at the Venice International Film Festival, which starts on August 30, and will be released internationally later this year.
We've made it a whole lot easier for you to have your say. Our new comment platform requires only one log-in to access articles and to join the discussion on The Canberra Times website. Find out how to register so you can enjoy civil, friendly and engaging discussions. See our moderation policy here.
