“We Don’t Sell A Car, We Sell A Dream”

Michael Lirosi of New Mexico State University studied in Reggio Emilia this past Spring 2015. Students studying in Reggio Emilia have the opportunity to attend a field trip touring the Ferrari Museum and Factory which Michael explains was one of his favorite experiences. 

“We don’t sell a car, we sell a dream”—USAC Reggio Emilia Ferrari Field Trip

Michael Lirosi takes a photo with the cars in the Ferrari Museum.

Last week the USAC program was gracious enough to take us to the Ferrari Factory and Museum in the city of Maranello. It was an incredible field trip! Definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity for a lot of us students in the Reggio Emilia program. The best part about it was that we didn’t have to do any work to set it up, all we had to do was sign up for it at the first orientation! Did I mention that it was free? Yeah that could actually be the best part. Actually what am I saying??!! The best part was all those beautiful Ferraris displayed in the museum, all of them worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some of them millions!

The museum is actually not too far from Reggio Emilia. It’s about an hour bus ride, but the beautiful scenery of Italy makes the ride go by fast. Once we got there, we had our own personal tour guide waiting for us. Everything was planned out ahead of time and ran super smoothly (More props to USAC!).  We handed our tickets in, and the tour began.

The way the museum is set up is pretty interesting. There are 5 different exhibition rooms, all with different themes: The Race Cars theme, Hollywood, The Great Los Angeles, The Charm of Pebble Beach, and The Magic of Technology in Ferrari. We started off in the Race Car exhibition which was stacked with all the different Formula 1 Race cars and GT race cars that Ferrari has produced over the years which have raced and won on American tracks. In that same exhibition they had the “Hall of Champions” room which had all 8 of the Ferrari Formula 1 Champion cars displayed. Every car was worth over a million dollars! The next exhibition was Hollywood, which had a screening of clips of famous movies with Ferrari as the protagonist and cars that took part. It was very cool to see how the brand developed into a global icon. My favorite room was the “Great Los Angeles” where you get to walk on a “red carpet” that leads to the first 250 California and the last model, the California-T. In the room were some of the most beautiful Ferraris of all time. It was incredible! That led to the charming exhibition of Pebble Beach, where one-off and yet to be unveiled models are showcased on the green of the Hotel Lodge golf course. The last exhibition was the “Magic of Ferrari’s Technology” in the world of Silicon Valley, a room that lets visitors into the secrets of the most recent models, including the unparalleled “LaFerrari”. The LaFerrari might be the most beautiful car I have ever seen and lucky for us, we got to see it before it even hits the market!

That concluded our museum tour, so we were able to grab a quick bite to eat in the Ferrari Café and waited until our tour of the factory began. After fifteen or twenty minutes the tour began. We took a shuttle to where the cars were actually made and Ferrari’s main business offices area. It was very cool to see the first original Ferrari office and the different types of architecture each building possesses. They also took us to where they test drive the F1 race cars! That was cool seeing the track and hearing about how Enzo Ferrari’s favorite building was in the middle of the track, because he liked listening to the cars drive by. All in all, the factory tour was very informative and had some really cool stuff to see!

Students in Reggio Emilia attend a field trip to the Ferrari Museum.

Once we got back it was time to head back to Reggio Emilia, but man what a great day and what a great field trip USAC Reggio Emilia was able to put on for us! I highly recommend signing up for as many USAC field trips as you can because they do such a good job of planning everything out and making sure everything is taken care of, so all the students have to do is relax, enjoy, and make great memories and wonderful stories to tell your friends and loved ones someday. I want to end this post with a quote I read at the museum and I thought it was a wonderful way of branding their company and the way they do business. “We don’t sell a car, we sell a dream” –Luca Cordero Di Montezemolo (former Ferrari president).

Do you want to experience the dream of the Ferrari? Check out the USAC website and see what else Reggio Emilia has to offer!

–USAC