FACTORY FRESH

In a quiet corner of the Ferrari factory in Maranello, a small dedicated team document the past and offer classics a future...

- OLLIE MARRIAGE

Through the famous red brick archway and turn right. It looks like a dead end, but here in a tucked away corner, dwarfed by the main production building and only 50m from Maranello's main entrance, is a workshop. It's smaller than you imagine, more cluttered. This is where the world's most expensive cars come when they need a spruce up. Ferrari's Classiche department. 

You'd also imagine it's been here since the beginning. But back when it got going in the Fifties and Sixties, Ferrari didn't know it was going to be a big deal. It was a race team. It built cutting edge racers to the latest regulations. It was all about what's next, not what's past.

It was Jean Todt who spotted the value in the back catalogue and realised that if others were restoring and rebuilding Ferraris, heck, the firm itself should have a stake in that. That was 2004. Just 20 years ago.

The Classiche (that second one is a hard C) unit got going two years later.

"It exists to preserve our heritage, our story and keep alive the legacy that a great man, our founder, left us," Andrea Modena, head of Ferrari Classiche, tells me. Once a car is 20 years old, it's designated a classic and falls under the umbrella of Modena's team. "We try to preserve every single one produced from 12 March 1947 until this precise day 20 years ago."

He's taking me for a tour. The cars are crammed in tightly, none shown special dispensation. I get the impression that if they had more space, Classiche would expand to fill it. There are just six bays, plus a separate benched area for engine and gearbox work. Nor is it immaculately clean. I walk beyond a divider and find boxes full of old parts and some ancient machining tools.