Why Are Ferraris Red?

There is no single agreed date. Wikipedia's Rosso corsa article says the 1903 system initially gave Italy black, that Italian cars moved to red after a couple of years for reasons that remain unknown, and that another account credits Prince Scipione Borghese's win in the 1907 Peking to Paris race in a red Itala. Wikipedia's list of racing colours gives yet another route, saying Italy took red after a red Fiat won the 1907 French Grand Prix. Other accounts place the settling of the color later, as far as around 1920.

So the honest answer is that Italy's red was in place by the early twentieth century, and the exact moment and reason are not firmly established. The 125 S in the photo, the first car to carry the Ferrari name in 1947, simply continues that Italian tradition.

People often assume red is part of the Ferrari logo. It is not. The Prancing Horse is black on a yellow field, edged in black, with an Italian tricolor strip on top. Red appears only in that small green-white-red band. The big red is the paint on the car.

The yellow has its own story, tied to Enzo Ferrari's hometown, and it is covered on the page about why the Ferrari logo is yellow.

Customers can order a Ferrari in other colors, and plenty are blue, black, silver or yellow. In 1964 Enzo Ferrari even had cars entered by the North American Racing Team in American colors, as a protest, according to Wikipedia. The default image of a Ferrari is red because the racing color became the brand's color.

From 1997 the team's red shifted toward orange for tobacco sponsorship, and Ferrari went back to the original shade at the 2020 Tuscan Grand Prix.