Few filmmakers understand the emotional power of the automobile quite like Michael Mann. In Ferrari (2023), he tells the story of Enzo Ferrari during one of the most pivotal years of his life, capturing not only the drama of the legendary Mille Miglia but also the beauty, engineering, and unmistakable sound of some of the most iconic racing cars ever built.
Bringing 1950s Ferraris to life on screen was no simple task. Authentic period cars are extraordinarily rare and far too valuable to subject to the demands of filmmaking, requiring Mann and his team to recreate many of the film's vehicles with painstaking attention to historical accuracy, craftsmanship, and performance.
In the conversation below from RIDE: The Ultimate Guide to Cars on Film, architect Chad Oppenheim sits down with Academy Award–nominated director Michael Mann to discuss the extraordinary process of recreating Ferrari's world—from building convincing race cars and capturing their unforgettable sound to honoring the legacy of one of motorsport's most enduring legends.
SPEED, PASSION, LEGACY
Chad Oppenheim: You grew up in Chicago. What was your dream car as a kid?
Michael Mann: The first one was probably a ‘57 Chrysler 300C. I actually gave Dennis Farina’s character that car when we were doing Crime Story in the late ‘80s. When I was growing up, we actually took one for a joyride. I was 15 or 16 and we got stopped by the Chicago Police Department and were brought to the police station, which was a very interesting place. I later gave one to my daughter when she graduated from high school. She still drives it around. My other daughter’s got a ‘51 Chevy with a slope back. She and my mechanic at the time rebuilt the engine. They took the engine down to the bare block and then rebuilt the entire car. She calls the car Felix. It looks like Felix the Cat. Another kid got a ‘55 Bel Air.
Oppenheim: You have a designated family mechanic?
Mann: I actually had a garage with a family mechanic, because between myself, my wife and the kids, we have 13 cars. So we had our own garage with a lift and everything. And our mechanic just services everything, not the Ferraris though.
Oppenheim: What are some of those 13 cars?
Mann: A BMW, a Range Rover, my wife had a ‘62 Volvo with a stick shift that she was in love with. A ‘56 Ford pickup truck that we still have. I built a ‘70 Chevelle from scratch. And then all the kids’ cars.
Oppenheim: What was your first car?
Mann: A ‘57 Chevy that had been a taxicab. It was only two years old when I got it, and it already had 210,000 miles on it because it had been a cab. My grandfather had an independent cab company.
Oppenheim: When did you first lay your eyes on a Ferrari? I read that when you were in film school in London you saw one Ferrari go by, and it left a mark on you. What was it about it?
Mann: I was standing in the rain on Brompton Road. And this 1967 275 GTB four-cam came by. It was very dark blue. I remember responding to it the same way people respond to sculpture or architecture. It was just this beautiful form with these deep-set wheels. And just the sound of it… it was a work of art that moves.
Oppenheim: When was the first time you visited the factory in Italy?
Mann: I think ‘93 or ’94. I was with Sydney Pollack—we started the film [Ferrari] together. He was going to produce it and I was going to direct it. And at another time, I was going to produce it and he was going to direct it. And it was there, in Italy, that I realized why that car I saw on Brompton Road impressed me so much. It was the genius of Enzo Ferrari. We had this moment where we walked into the factory, and in this small room there was a white line on the floor. There was a guy who was building an engine for a passenger car. One man built the engine from scratch. We stayed on our side of the line and we didn’t say a word. One guy would build the engine, somebody else would build the transmissions, and then there was another group of guys in metal fabrication. In the leather department, there were women sitting at sewing machines. They would take a cowhide and build the entire interior out of one cow. The way they would build cars was to have different workers build every component.
Oppenheim: Why did making Ferrari take so long? Is it because you’re a perfectionist?
Mann: If I wanted to make it for $25 or $35 million, I could have done it a long time ago.
But I wanted to make it the right way or not at all. It’s an expensive film. Just the cars we had to build—there were the 11 replica cars that we built, which was, like, $6 million. They were about $500,000 each. Plus, no car-racing film had ever made money so that was a slight impediment with financiers. At least, until Ford v Ferrari. So the reason it took so long was because we had to get all the money because we ended up financing it independently. I would have preferred to have a studio write
the check, but there was pessimism about the movie’s domestic distribution in the US.
Oppenheim: So did you prove everyone wrong? Did it do well?
Mann: It’s done fine. It did great in the UK and Italy. But my gratification came when I showed it to everybody at the factory. They loved it. I was more nervous about that screening than any other screening.
Oppenheim: How involved was Ferrari in the movie?
Mann: They weren’t. They were friends of the project. We had a fabulous amount of cooperation from them. Also, I’m close with Piero Ferrari. We had many, many dinners and we looked through his father’s collection of watches, letters that we had to Laura Ferrari’s doctor. If I needed engine parts for a scene, they would get them for us.
Oppenheim: Well, it must be great marketing for them, right?
Mann: They don’t need marketing. They don’t spend any money on advertising because they don’t have to. The boost I gave Ferrari was with Miami Vice. They had come through a bad period just before ’85 or ’86. The cars for the US market were just stacking up in New Jersey before Miami Vice came along.
Oppenheim: What made you pick the Ferrari Daytona for that show? And how did you pick the color?
Mann: We couldn’t use a real Daytona because it had a transaxle, which means that half of the transmission is in the back end. So we got a replica Daytona, which is basically a modified Corvette. And at some point I got a call from a guy, I don’t remember his name, who was the head of Ferrari in North America. They didn’t want us to use a replica. So they lent us a couple of Testarossas.
Oppenheim: Which Ferrari do you personally drive?
Mann: I had a Tour de France that I just sold. And I have a 599, which I love and I’m never going to sell.
Oppenheim: Those are in that family garage you were talking about?
Mann: No, that garage is gone. They’re at the house with my four motorcycles, which includes a Norton from 1961.
Oppenheim: Have you ever raced cars?
Mann: Yeah, I was racing with the 360 when those first came out, which was the first time they had the F1 shifting. Everyone who drove one thought they were Michael Schumacher. I mean, I was never that good because I started way too late. You have to start when you’re four or five years old.
Oppenheim: How did you get the famous Ferrari engine sound with the cars on the movie?
Mann: We got it with ADR after the fact. Just like we do with dialogue when you want to replace a line or there’s too much noise. You take the actor on the recording stage, and we have a whole process by which they loop a line. We did something like that with the cars. In post-production we set up real Ferraris and Maseratis, and we duplicated the conditions in the movie and we set up microphones. The sound they make is fearsome. It’s seductive and it says “power”. It sounds dangerous. We took a 1962 Ferrari race car and drove it with about eight or nine microphones mounted on it as we reproduced all the actions, like the upshifts and downshifts and braking.
Oppenheim: What happened to all of the cars you made specifically for the film?
Mann: First of all, we donated the single-seater Ferrari race car. We donated the 801 to the Ferrari Museum. But in general, we took the body panels off and destroyed them because it’s Ferrari IP. The chassis were all built in the UK by Neil Layton. He built the Batmobile. He’s fantastic.
Oppenheim: Can we go back to the first Ferrari you bought? You got it right after you made Thief, right?
Mann: Yeah. I bought that car from Hollywood Sports Cars over on Hollywood Boulevard. There was a Belgian 308, and we had to customize it to comply with the EPA. Ferrari’s compliance was horrible, and so the car became incredibly underpowered. It became 400 pounds heavier with all this stuff. Every other one I bought, I bought at the factory.
Oppenheim: So was it just something that you knew you would get with your first big paycheck?
Mann: Yes. That was the 308 for me. It was really dark black. It was great. I don’t think I was as good a driver then as I was later, but…
Oppenheim: What was the biggest challenge of making Ferrari?
Mann: The biggest challenge is the people, the drama, getting it right, particularly the character of Enzo. His relationship with Laura is so unique. They can’t live apart and they can’t live together. He’s got this whole other family. You can’t be judgmental about that. Or bring a contemporary sensibility about gender politics to this situation in 1957. We’re in Italy, we’re not in Santa Monica.
Oppenheim: You’d been trying to get this movie made for so many years that there were lots of other actors who had been attached to it before Adam Driver came along, right?
Mann: Yes, including Christian Bale. But I can’t imagine anybody doing a better job than Adam and Penelope [Cruz]. She’s unbelievable. And he works pretty much the same way I do. He’s insanely demanding of himself.
Oppenheim: Are there other racing movies from the past that were inspirations?
Mann: There really weren’t. Early on, I asked myself “What do I want the racing to make you feel like?” And I wanted it to feel like you were inside the experience. I didn’t want to push you away with beautiful pictures to make you feel that you’re an observer. And then with Patrick Dempsey playing Taruffi, he’s a real race car driver. So he was always driving for real. He’s had like three podium finishes at Le Mans.
Oppenheim: You chose to focus on one year, 1957. Why?
Mann: Yes. Doing a traditional chronological biopic would be boring. There was that spring and summer of 1957 in which everything Ferrari was and everything that was going to be all collided into that one year. It’s the pending bankruptcy, the discovery of Enzo’s second family. All of that came to a head in that one moment. So that became the genome of the drama. That’s all I was interested in.
Oppenheim: What car is your daily driver in real life?
Mann: We got an electric Porsche, which is terrific. I mean, there’s so much thought that went into that car. It’s the first time I’ve ever had a Porsche.
Oppenheim: Porsche versus Ferrari?
Mann: Come on, Germany versus real cars, there’s only Ferrari. Even getting in a Lamborghini after driving a Ferrari is like driving in a pickup truck.
Oppenheim: So what’s the next Ferrari for you?
Mann: Well, I’ve got my name on a list for something coming up. [Mann asks for the tape recorder to be turned off.] I’ve also got my eye on the 296. We spent a lot of time at the Fiorano racetrack. I talked to all of the Ferrari test drivers. And every one of those guys said to get the 296. And then I drove one around. It is a twin-turbo, V-6—light, fast, really marvelous.
Oppenheim: What’s your favorite car film?
Mann: Probably Bullitt. That chase. I mean, I’ve never seen The Fast and the Furious; it’s got to have a real solid story for me.
Oppenheim: What do you think about electric cars? It’s kind of hard to do them on film, right?
Mann: If I’m driving in LA traffic, it’s fantastic, because you can just relax. But in film, it would be difficult with no sound.
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