Sempre Ferrari Wins Dave Cummins Award

It's a well known secret that our own Jeff Littrell, editor extraordnaire, was selected last year as a recipient of the FCA's Dave Cummins Award for his outstanding work in editing and publishing Sempre Ferrari.

The original award was known as the "Warren Fitzgerald Memorial" and was first presented to Mr. Fred Leydorf, who wrote an editorial in the 1970 FCA news bulletin on the history and preservation of Ferrari. This award was implemented by Mr. Dave Cummins with the Chrysler Corp. and their stylist Keith Baker.

Below is a personal note from Mr. Cummins about the award.

"It began back around 1971, or so, when Fred Leydorf, then president of the Ferrari Club of America, (and a charter member) felt that the club needed a monthly news bulletin to augment "The Prancing Horse" magazine in order to keep the membership up to date on sell and swap items, service tips, and relatively current items of interest while Prancing Horse could be reserved for articles of permanent record and Ferrari History. Fred's kind and generous wife, Sue, suggested that I be the editor of this new monthly news bulletin for reasons to this day are unclear to me. But I was thrilled at the opportunity, of which I partook for about 12 years - until I finally turned the responsibility over to younger hands.

During my tenure Fred sensed the need to encourage professional quality writing on behalf of Ferrari History and the preservation of historical authenticity within the Prancing Horse magazine. At the same time Warren Fitzgerald, the clubs historian and co-author with Dick Merritt of "Ferrari, the Sports and GT Cars" died of cancer. It was determined that there should be an award in Warren's memory for this kind of writing which would appear in the Prancing Horse. Fred asked me to propose a design. He simultaneously realized I was deeply involved in both the "concerns of Ferrari" and the artistic end of automotive design as an executive in styling at Chrysler Corporation.

The design of the award seemed simple to me - a three dimensional model of Ferrari"s hood badge - the Prancing Horse cast in bronze should be the main feature and I asked one of our clay modelers, Keith Baker, to interpret. He was a very fine sculptor and artist in his own right. This was mounted on a white travertine marble base with a brass plate at the bottom with the engraving: " Warren Fitzgerald Memorial Award". Upon it's completion Fred informed me he would be journeying to Modena/Maranello and I suggested we present the first one of these to Enzo Ferrari. It turned out that when Fred arrived at the factory gate in Maranello the guard detained him for the usual "few minutes". While waiting for word he rotated and held the award to the sunlight , realizing it was to be a gift to the commendatore. For all I know it may have very well facilitated a visit to Enzo,; Fred later told me he was greatly pleased with the gift as it is usually the case for visitors to ask for rather than to give something of significance. Later publication of the Ferrari Yearbook will support this by showing the award on the shelf behind the desk at the Pista de Fiorano office.

Quite a bit later, in 1993, Prancing Horse quarterly magazine editor Dave Siebert, called me with a proposal for an award to be given for the best regional FCA news bulletin; not necessarily every year, but as the merit proved worthy.

Further, he felt it should not be mandatory that someone had to die before an award be made in his name and that I should be designated as the person for whom this award should be named. Of course I was flattered, and made sure that this was really the intent. Having been assured this was a sincere proposal concerning the integrity of Ferrari literature, I decided there should be an kinship between the Warren Fitzgerald aw

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