Faster production but no increase in volume

I will see my dealer later this week, can you let me know where you saw this? My dealer recently said they still plan to get only 1 to 2 458's a month. Thanks.

 

I guess it's possible to make a year's supply in 9 months instead of 12. Then lay off workers and idle the plant. Save money.

 

This one is actually pretty easy. Total production is increasing but the total of a model is not increasing. This is how you can add production of the California without having to build additional capacity. 599 production will stay flat, 458 production will be similar to 430 production, 612 is flat so where does California capacity come from. It was not an issue when 430 production was in the build-out phase but now that 458 is ramping up they have to speed up the line. This will change a lot of things in the system for Ferrari and their suppliers, keep an eye open for quality issues.

 

What happened to Montezemolo when he said Ferrari would not produce more than 4k cars per year

 

I'm thinking Ferrari is talking about the customer waiting time. Guys wait so long that they start look else where like Mclaren lets say or Lambo or even now the R8. There wait 4 or 5 years is not going to work with the new supercar market so they need to speed up the wait time to please the customer. There production has all ready jumped from the other years they have no choice but to up production to stay alive. Soon they will have a 5 model range cailf, 599, 612, 458, new Enzo and not encluding all the limited edition cars. So do be fooled I'm sure not they need to produce. Mclaren and porsche are not playing around there all going to be building some bad cars in the coming years and others such as aston and so on.

 

And..... little 'old' Lotus, too.

 

This is Ferrari marketing speak for "we are laying off workers but maintaining production by being able to make cars more efficiently."

If you read between the lines it also means that the market for their product has slowed significantly so to maintain the brand (and it is all about the brand) they are building fewer cars more quickly than before.

 

Brillant idea if quality does not slip. For sure the 458 and CA are easier to screw together.

I expect that production in 2012 will be made up of a lot of 458 spiders. The quicker they can make them, the quicker they can make up the pent up demand.

 

When I was at the factory on May 3rd I was surprised that the ratio of Calis to Italias was around 4:1. Clearly the demand is the opposite. Although I asked more than one rep why there were more Calis being built I never did get a plausible answer. My guess is that the Scaglietti plant was not turning out the chassis to meet demand.

To cure the wait time for 458s the 8-cyl production line needs to swap the ratio to be 4:1 in favor of Italias over Calis.

That would be the answer to shorten the time w/o increasing overall production numbers. By the way.....few 12s were in production. Mostly GTOs.

 

My apprehension is quality control. Ferrari is already an Italian car that is still not as reliable as a mass-produced domestic or Japanese car.

 

Quicker production means less cost per car to the factory and more profit. Porsche went through the same process a while back and brought in Japanese efficiency experts. The man hours to build a 911 dropped like a rock with no loss in quality. In an economic downturn, a good move and one likely to keep the bottom line healthy.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

And those are the 911's no one wants as much...maybe the initial buyers like them- lots of lease for 3 years then dump, but then the resale drops on them drops like a rock- good cars for the value, but much of the "original" distinctive Porsche personality is gone and as such the value to many of the old school porsche fans. The japs started with the rear suspension on the 993 (1995-1998), but by the 1999 911 it was over- plastic interiors, thinner gauge sheet metal, not to mention poorly made motors...became more like a "regular" car.

I don't mean to say the porsches aren't good cars, but there is a reason I went from driving 10 year old 911's for the past 20 years now to ferrari- something was lost.