Some thoughts: Most youtubers only seem to be good at making popular youtube videos Turbo chargers are not a bad thing - the F40 seems to be a real/cool/exciting enough Ferrari, right? Complaining about cylinder count is only meaningful if you could notice a difference without being told how many cylinders the engine has first Stock price depends mostly on the opinion of gambling addicts; it is not a particularly accurate measure for how well a company is doing If a car brand starts to sell strap-ons (as someone suggested earlier in this thread), a good selling point would be to take their shape and dimensions from one of their racing drivers. Perhaps this is the real reason for some of recent driver changes that don't seem to make a lot of sense performance-wise.
It’s an epic brand but totally going astray. Hate the suv, can’t stand the new v12 look. Released a pathetic hypercar w a v6. Turning into a Tesla style supercar brand. Looks and technology for example. Happy owner of a real Ferrari v12 but literally zero interest in anything they make now for a few years. Losing customers for sure.
I think the storied legacy marques are struggling to position themselves (beyond price) in a changed world. Jaguar is the obvious example, because it was deservedly an epic brand in the 1950s and 1960s, making competitive engines wrapped in sensuous designs. But advances in technology leveled the playing field. Building electric motors, batteries, and digital displays in aero packaging just isn't very Jaguar. Ferrari is arguably better positioned with its ties to F1, an extremely technology-focused sport: As F1 goes hybrid and the driver interface is digital, Ferrari can take that path with its road cars. The problem is Ferrari is not unique in this expertise, and the sense that these modern cars will appreciate over time is increasingly hard to rationalize. As a former multiple Ferrari and Porsche owner, I'd also say Porsche has emerged as a formidable sports car marque in what was the Ferrari market segment. I see prospective GT3 buyers queuing up to pay six figure premiums and waiting for cars. I also have acquaintances who drive these cars hard on the track and mountain roads here in Southern California, so Porsche has kept its reputation as a serious competition marque as it has moved upmarket. Frankly the modern GT3 RS, with wings, vents, and graphics, looks exotic, and the window sticker is in house territory. It looks absolutely menacing, in the way a Countach or Boxer did in the '80s. And... it benefits from a huge dealer network and reputation for durability. If I'm spending $300K+ on a sports car, this is reassuring. As I've posted before, when I was growing up there was Ferrari, Lamborghini, and then normal cars. You could put the 911 Turbo and Lotus Esprit Turbo in that group, but Porsche had more affordable 944s, and Lotus was just weird and fragile. Now I routinely confuse Huracans and C8 Corvettes, and Romas and Aston Martins. If I needed a street-legal track car, and had endless budget, Porsche is likely where I'd go. So, yes, I'd say the market has changed around Ferrari. Still a revered brand, but no longer unique.
I think Doug is pretty smart and tends to be on point. His question regarding whether Ferrari has lost its luster based on the perceived lack of interest in the 296/SF/12C isn’t an unfair question. His question is fair but I think his perspective is too focused on the immediate versus the big picture. Again, I think we are at an unprecedented time in the world where automobile makers are being forced to manufacture a product they probably aren't overly excited about. They’ve been forced to change the way they’ve done business unbelievably successfully for generations, and I personally believe there will be a correction based on market response. There always is. Every manufacturer has had a moment that wasn’t their best and the great ones learn from it and come back 10X stronger. To think Ferrari won’t is a bit absurd based on their history. The doom and gloom around one of the most iconic brands in the history of our planet because of a mid response to their first foray into a complete relaunch of their product is a bit laughable.
100% Fchat as the data source and sentiment check. Some is accurate, but ultimately not investigative or detailed, no new thought put into it. If you have been a regular follower of the sf90 and 296 pricing threads, his video was just a pov TLDR.
That's in the very short term, not in the long term like a 10-yr period. Being public is the ultimate test of business performance. No company has its stock go up over time unless the performance AND the future outlook, is solid.
It will be interesting to see what happens with the US government moving away from strict mileage standards and no longer requiring EV vehicles in the near future. Can/Will Ferrari build something that use the changes to be more interesting to buyers? Or is the risk of another 180 turn too high given development lead times?
Art is a funny thing. And what Ferrari makes is art. There's no real purpose to it other than how you react emotionally to it. Functionally, its worthless to most people. You can't even get close to what its designed and engineered for on city streets. And art needs to be controversial to stand out over time. Its why Picasso took time to understand and appreciate, even by himself. Van Gough the same. In modern times Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. Same for fashion, photography, cinema, food, music, etc So its not surprising that designers try to push the boundaries which make us uncomfortable. But over time, we get an acquired taste. I'll give you an example of the 458. When I first saw it I thought it was fantastic -- except for the gull wing front bumpers. I thought they looked awkward and out of place. Then, everyone started copying this gull wing form into there cars. Now we think that shape was fantastic and I rather agree. Its the one thing on the car that says "458". I thought the Enzo was the weirdest thing ever. Today its a classic of design. The 12 Cilindri will be the same way. Give it time -- it will grow on you. Good design should shock at first, and appeal to your senses long term.
I forgot unreliable, unaccountable, sticky , can’t get rid of it when you want to and a lot of maintenance
I don’t think that Doug and the other two guys spoke as people fully acknowledgeable about business, sports cars and Ferrari in particular. I feel that they just set up something to collect visualizations, as usual on YouTube. The YT content creators rarely have a true competence and interest in what they make. Some people like me and many other Fchatters are truly interested in the technology, the design, the style, the weldings, and above all the feelings and the driving experience a car is giving us. Yet most buyers, if not all, in any car segment just buy the brand attributes: you want an unexpensive service, then you get a Toyota or similar. You want to look extravagant and be noticed, you get a Lamborghini. You want to be seen as well off and reliabe, you get a Mercedes. You want to be part of the most incredible motoring dream that humans, and possibly anyone else in the universe, have ever made? You get a Ferrari. Any Ferrari. The one you like among those you can afford, and for many people the brand new model just has a basic appeal because they prize the newness as in any other consumer sector. Now, in a world with a constantly growing population of millionaires and billionaires, Ferrari will never have any problem in selling the cars. Some models will be less popular than others? It always has been so: GTC4, GT4, Mondial, 400, etc. Some people may burn a bit of money for trading the new car after the first few years of depreciation? Many won’t care, they can live with it. The final points in my opinion are different from those mentioned in the video, but I also understand why this video fuelled a lot of frustrated comments: 1. We perceive as a bit unfair that the new pricing strategy is just favouring the new riches and that the new customer selection is more and more based just on spending capacity than affection to the brand - they say that Enzo used to receive his prospect customers in Maranello and that he made some wait for hours in an empty room (without a smartphone!) just to check their motivation. 2. Most, if not all, miss the Pininfarina styles, because beauty has always been the key driver for car choice, and I personally believe that if a model like the 296 was designed by Pininfarina to look irresistible as only it could do, then no one would have attacked the V6 or the turbo or the batteries etc., because we all know that a V6 already equipped the 206 and 246, the turbo the 288 and F40, and that batteries are not impossible to be made as aftermarket. Instead the 296 was designed as a Frankenstein made of a 250 LM rear and a hammer fish head, so many cannot dream it despite being a technical marvel: in fact I’d like to underline that for same displacement an engine with less cylinders has more torque, and now that gearboxes have become incredibly quick and have lots of gears it makes sense to reduce the number of cylinders. I love my 328’s V8 and I’d love to have a traditional V12 too some day, but I must recognize that the 296’s hybrid turbocharged V6 today is a technical marvel. Same with the 12 Cilindri: it certainly is a technical marvel (weldings still to be checked) even if a V12 nowadays is not really needed or ideal for performance, yet we all are mostly confused on the need to copy the Daytona nose having no better ideas. And finally I must report that when a couple of weeks ago I told Matteo, the 10 year old boy of some friends of mine, that I just got a 348 TS he heplied for my surprise “oh, that old Ferrari is really s***! Some day I will have a SF90!” Guess: we all know that little Matteo will live until his 30s or 40s with the Cavallino dream and that possibly his first one will be a 296. With age he’ll learn to appreciate the “dinosaur models” like a 360 or a 458 or a 550, but he will feel inevitably distant from those just because they belong to a time when he did not exhist, a time that feels abstracted to him - the same exact way I at 47 feel towards a 246 or a Daytona: wonderful cars, especially seen from up close, but out of my inner child mind and then not so irresistible as a Testarossa or a 288. What Doug and the other two haven’t understood is that in any person’s life there’s a long time, more than 20 years long, where the child, then the teenager and finally the young adult, keep dreaming everyday the same exact thing, that the Ferrari synapsis are forming in the frame of two good decades, and that they can never be changed - same reason why we keep liking the 20 something girls until we are 90. So my conclusion is just that Doug and the other two folks are simply… getting old. Bye all, Nic
I think you make valid points. I am waitlisted for my first Ferrari and ordered it new 296 GTS. I am a driver so I am okay with the technology although the 458 Italia is a great car. The brand has definitely changed in the the 812 Superfast is nice versus the 12 Cylinder. Depreciation is definitely and issue; however, I take my cars to the track so never been one to care about that. Also I will never buy enough to earn allocations for special cars new. The only way I would maybe get there is if I raced Ferrari Challenge which is on the bucket list.
I disagree to those who say it is no difference today than it has been. The IPO was a game changer. Ferrari is just another car company. The passion is gone. Then again, I'm an old grump. Ferrari is not going to lose any sleep over my concerns.
Production spool gun in poorly trained hands. That's why spool guns are know as the "caulk guns" of welding.
Again, every older generation(I’m 45) says things like “the passion is gone” about what the next generation loves and holds dear. The passion isn’t gone. It’s just gone for you. Personally I’m skipping this class of F cars. I have driven the SF quite a bit and really enjoyed it. I’m one of the few that likes the ability to turn the engine off and take a business call. That said, Im sticking with my 812 GTS and Pista spider for now, but there is no doubt in my mind that they will knock it out of the park again and when they do I’m in.
The newest Ferrari I have spent any significant time driving is a F12. My impression was the car was perfect. It did everything perfectly. The only driving skill you needed was understanding a man has got to know his limitations. Want to run at 160 mph? Easy peasy, with one hand on the steering wheel. Truthfully, the car didn't start to wake up until you were going at least 130 mph. That's too fast for me. I prefer to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow.
I fully agree there’s a difference in the Ferrari spirit of today, as well there was a change in Luca’s time and in the Enzo’s early time and Enzo’s Fiat time. The purest, most mythical spirit was surely in the beginnig, when the only concern was to win races and selling few cars was enough to fund the mission. Those were times when a garage was literally enough, if some F1 assemblers used to build their cars in their country barns. Then things got more complex and the company had to find a truly industrial partner, Fiat. Like it or not, Fiat in the ‘60 to some might have meant the same disappointment of the IPO today. And by widening the customer base the road cars and the company changed. Think for a while: the Testarossa. I love it, it is considered by many the most iconic and recognizable Ferrari ever made together with the 308, but in 1950 if anyone suggested that 34 years later the company’s survival would be tied to the sale of such a beast, so racing ufit (this is what I heard), so flamboyant in the design to attract cocaine addicted customers (not all of them), what would have Enzo or the early enthusiast said? But then the world went that way, and Ferrari followed and fluorished. Today it’s the same: I am horrified by the IPO and the images of Ferrari world in Dubai with all those millions screaming like crazy chickens on the rollercoaster. Whenever I get into the 328 I jump back in time, but a time that was happy just for me because I was a child. In fact today’s children are different, and today’s people are different, so Ferrari is following. Today’s people are consuming faster than ever before, have no interest in going deep with things, to be deep. Faster, bigger, bolder, softer, easier, heartless, are the average people’s desires and so have become the Ferrari cars. We have become as shabby as never seen before, really ugly to look at in the streets, all sneakers, shorts, t-shirts, accidental beards, lazy in one word. Has anyone seen the videos of Manhattan in the 50s and how the people were dressed? So the Ferrari cars now are for the new lazy drivers that can use them while holding their phones in the right hand to text mom (I believe that today’s generation is less interested in the stick shift because their right hand is chained to the phone) while wearing that sort of s***ty Moon boots like UGG that the frigids wear. Have a nice sunday. Nic
You are exactly right but nobody at Ferrari cares as long as the have a 2 year waiting list,unreliable is the biggest problem for me and the ripp off dealership is a close second
Ferrari still is an aspirational brand but they are doing their best to run it into the ground and piss off their best clients. IMO they jumped the shark with their SUV and as a result watered their brand down for increased revenue. The fact that they whore out their logo to crappy merch doesn’t help as well. Bottomline IMO is they make too many cars now. Seeing one is no longer an “occasion”. Maybe it’s just south Florida but they are everywhere here. I can go to Mizner Park any day of the week and see at least half a dozen. I see on average probably 2-3 just daily driving. I like most of the modern Ferraris but I no longer go to any of the events to see them. It’s just not special anymore. They are everywhere.
Hi, can anyone direct me to the "10-page" post on Ferrari Chat that Doug DeMuro references in his podcast about buyers turning down their 12Cilindri allocations because of the high cost and depreciation? Thanks!