In 1982, the town of Fiorano Modenese gave honorary citizenship to Enzo Ferrari.
The profitable and happy relationship between Enzo Ferrari and Fiorano Modenese began in 1972, when the Drake decided to build the Ferrari Test Track there.
But it was what he himself said, during the ceremony, that revealed his first actual contact with the town of Fiorano, when he was still a child. A hint of nostalgia was present as he thanked the town.
"I will tell you about my first encounter with the town of Fiorano. It was on 8 September 1909. The provincial railway station was in Modena at the time, in what is now Largo Garibaldi. I was with my mother and my poor brother, who perished in World War I, and we were going to get the train that ran from Modena to Sassuolo. We stopped at a tiny station, in an alleyway leading to Fiorano, where we met a friend of my father, a certain Morandi, who had a farm on the road from Fiorano to Maranello and who provided us with Lambrusco wine every year. We arrived in Fiorano and from here, on foot, my mother took me to visit the Madonna del Monte (Sanctuary of Fiorano - ed.), the Virgin Mary of Fiorano, which was my mother’s favourite place. I never would have imagined that, seventy-three years later, I would return to Fiorano to receive such a high honour."