FERRARI fans had good reason to paint the town red recently in celebration of the carmaker's 60th anniversary - especially since the town in question was Maranello, where the automotive objects of their affection are built and where founder Enzo Ferrari (who died in 1988) has long been its unofficial patron saint.

Maranello is quite possibly the only city in Italy where Ferraris outnumber Fiats (or seem to, anyway). Here, no one bats an eyelid when an 'ordinary' car with the Prancing Horse badge roars by on the way back to the factory after a road test.

The carmaker, which has won numerous awards citing it as the best place to work in Europe, is both the town's largest employer and its biggest source of tourist revenue. Everyone has a vested interest in the fortunes of the company, whose racing team - Scuderia Ferrari - attracts fanatical hordes from every corner of the world.

Several months of anniversary celebrations, including a round-the-world relay featuring several thousand owners and their cars, culminated in Maranello at the end of June, when Ferrari threw a party to mark the end of the festivities. More than a thousand Ferraris, including the first Ferrari ever built - the 12-cylinder, 1500cc, 125 S - converged on the fabled Fiorano test track next door to the factory.

Festooned with flags, food stalls and sponsor's tents, Fiorano resembled a fairground more than anything else and for one weekend at least, the serious business of plotting Formula One victories and manufacturing high-performance cars took a back seat.

A commemorative Concours d'Elegance featuring some extremely rare historic cars was won by a 1954 375MM, custom-made for the director Roberto Rossellini. Meanwhile, the company's top engineers outlined significant technological advancements over the years.

The detailed technical debriefing included explaining how the company has succeeded in transferring technology from its race cars to its production cars and how new developments such as carbon ceramic brakes and lightweight composite materials have helped to reduce weight and improve dynamic performance.

Reducing the time it takes to change gears is an example of racing technology that has been given a near-seamless transfer to road car gearboxes, which now feature spectacular shift times (150 milliseconds in the F430 and an even more astounding 100 milliseconds in the 599 GTB Fiorano).

Ferrari's top brass - including company president Luca di Montezemolo and CEO Jean Todt - made an appearance to introduce the company's 60th anniversary car, a special two-tone, panoramic glass-roofed edition of the 612 Scaglietti flagship model. Only 60 units of the car will be made, and all have been sold at a 50 per cent premium to the standard model.

'We sell a dream, we don't sell a means of transport,' said Mr di Montezemolo, who first started working with Enzo Ferrari in 1973. 'It has got design, technology, passion and the emotion of driving something that's quick. Only by driving a Ferrari can you actually feel it. I learned two lessons from Enzo Ferrari - look ahead all the time, and never give up. We have tried to make cars that first and foremost are beautiful, but are also useful and usable.'

Mr di Montezemolo, who is 60 years old himself, added: 'My personal life is interwoven with Ferrari. I wanted to celebrate our 60th anniversary in our factory, to honour the men and women who are part of the extraordinary story of Ferrari. We will never lose sight of three things: our heritage, our rapport with our customers and our strong commitment to competitive racing.'

Mr Todt, who is director of the race team, said: 'The world out there is chock full of competition - what is true yesterday is no longer valid the next day. The people in Ferrari are the great wealth of this company. The founder of Ferrari always said that what interests us is tomorrow's car, tomorrow's race.'

For that weekend, though, the focus was on celebrating the past and looking to the future.

'Behind the dream of Formula One there is technical research, innovation, quality and the continual challenge to meet the future,' said Mr di Montezemolo. 'In another 60 years' time, perhaps, Ferrari will be a mix of car, satellite and airplane.'