Why Is the Ferrari Logo Yellow?

Badge on a Ferrari 166 S bonnet · CC BY-SA 3.0 / 350z33

Short answer

Why the Ferrari logo has this color

Enzo Ferrari said the yellow behind the Prancing Horse is the color of Modena, the town where he was born. Ferrari's own magazine describes it the same way and notes that yellow appears, with blue, in Modena's emblem. The horse itself came from a different story, the fighter pilot Francesco Baracca. The yellow is the part that points to home.

Quick read

Ferrari logo at a glance

Color: Canary yellow, often called Giallo Modena
Source of the color: Modena, Enzo Ferrari's hometown
Where it sits: The field behind the horse, framed in black
Also used on: The Ferrari wordmark at the Maranello gate
Not part of the story: The horse, which comes from Francesco Baracca

Logo palette

Ferrari logo colors

Select a swatch to copy its HEX value. Values reference archived artwork unless official guidelines are cited.

Ferrari yellow#FFF200

The field of the rectangular badge behind the horse, sampled from the archived logo file.

Black#010100

The Prancing Horse, the wordmark and the thin outline around the badge.

Enzo Ferrari · public domain

Ferrari logo yellow is the color of Modena

Enzo Ferrari was born in Modena, and his racing team Scuderia Ferrari was based there before the factory moved to Maranello in 1943. He described the canary yellow as the color of the city. Ferrari's own magazine says the yellow, which appears with blue in the Modena emblem, was chosen for the Prancing Horse badge from the team's beginnings in 1929.

That puts the yellow on the badge as a signature of place. It is the one part of the logo that says where the company is from, next to the tricolor that says what country.

How yellow is used on the Ferrari badge

On both the shield and the rectangle, the yellow is the field behind the black horse, edged by a thin black outline. The black horse gets its strength from sitting on yellow, and the Italian tricolor sits above it. The brand page lists the archived logo's yellow as a bright lemon-like tone, but that is the color in the file, not an official specification from Ferrari.

For the horse and its history, including Baracca and the 1932 debut, see the page on the Prancing Horse.

Ferrari factory gate, Maranello · CC BY-SA 4.0 / CAPTAIN RAJU

Ferrari yellow beyond the badge

Yellow shows up all over the brand. The photo shows the Ferrari lettering at the factory gate in yellow, and yellow shields flank the entrance. The Enzo Ferrari museum in Modena is described on Wikipedia as painted in the yellow Enzo chose for the logo, and the shade is sold as Giallo Modena. In 2022 Ferrari's Formula One team added yellow to its cars for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, which Ferrari presented as a nod to its origins.

Ferrari Testarossa · CC BY-SA 4.0 / Alexander Migl

What is not documented about the Ferrari logo yellow

Enzo Ferrari's own wording about Modena is the main evidence, and some retellings add details, such as the exact year the yellow was combined with the horse, that the sources used here do not support. One blog even places a version of the story in 1932, and that date could not be confirmed. If a detail is not in a dated source, treat it as legend.

The yellow shield also appears as a small badge on the fender of cars like the Testarossa above.

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