What Are The Juiciest Automotive Scandals You've Heard Of?

Photo: Kevin Dietsch (Getty Images)

I’ve been working my way through a series of different Enzo Ferrari biographies, and I have to be honest: We keep talking this guy up as if he was some engineering legend, but mostly he was just pretty good at organizing business and sleeping with a lot of women. It’s that latter part that had me wondering what other juicy automotive scandals have floated around that I haven’t heard about.

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Now, it’s well known that Mr. Ferrari was something of a ladies’ man — and Brock Yates reiterates this multiple times in his book Enzo Ferrari: The Man, The Cars, The Races. We know that company head Piero Ferrari is Il Commendatore’s illegitimate son, born of Ferrari’s longtime mistress Lina Lardi. But I didn’t realize that his proclivities actually involved, uh, stealing the widows of his dead drivers.

Luigi Musso had carried the hopes of a nation on his shoulders when he joined the Scuderia in 1956; he was one of only two Italian racers on a team that fielded up to five cars in a race, and in 1957, after the death of teammate Castellotti, was Italy’s only hope of an Italian champion.

As the 1958 season progressed, Musso became increasingly annoyed with his British teammates Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins — both of whom were more experienced drivers and who also enjoyed teasing Musso. In the 1958 French Grand Prix, Musso was so fired up chasing after Hawthorn that he lost control of his car, struck a ditch, and somersaulted. He died of head wounds later that day.

Musso left behind a young girlfriend. Fiammi Breschi first met Musso in 1952, when she was still a teenager, and the Italian racer soon left his wife and children to be with his new mistress. After he died, Ferrari took Musso’s place in her life; he set up boutiques for her to run and spent the rest of his life penning love notes to her. Breschi soon became so devoted to Ferrari that she often served as a spy for him.

Of course, ol’ Enzo isn’t the only scandal man in automotive history. We have stories of Colin Chapman faking his own death. We had the entire Takata airbags saga, and then the Carlos Ghosn situation. The options are honestly endless — but I want to hear from you. What automotive scandals keep you up at night? What tea entertains you to no end? Let’s gossip down in the comments.