minimum amount of $-options?

I have heard this as well. It may be dealer driven. They don't get that many allocations and want to make money on the options. I don't think I have ever seen a low option 458. Especially an early allocation one.

 

Not exactly true no... your dealer may bump you down the list for others with more options unless you are a preferred customer but FNA / Ferrari doesn't prescribe a certain $$ amount.

 

i heard this as well dealers giving allocations to higher optioned orders but only on the Speciale not a regular order

 

My Speciale is a average build and I got a very early car and so is my future 488. I would guess if your new to the Ferrari relationship they may try to get a more optioned order. just a guess though....

 

I don't know about this. I seem to usually take just about every option on the list so I've never had to find out. I'll ask my dealer about this when I see him Wednesday as it'd be interesting to hear if people will get bumped for that.

 

No minimums here in Europe I ever heard of. When you say that Ferrari told him so. Do you mean Ferrari SpA or Ferrari North America? Ask him about it. Seems fishy.

 

Sounds like nonsense. Ferrari does not require any minimum amount of ordered options. You can order a stripper if you want to. The dealer here is just lying to advance their goal of higher profit per order.

 

There was an article in Jan-Feb of this year, near the end of Speciale allocations that stated only highly optioned cars were being accepted by the factory. Not sure where that journalist got their information because I was at the factory to spec my Speciale a month or so after that article and I got absolutely no pressure to add options.. in fact, Anna saved me at least $60K since I originally wanted triple layer paint and a carbon difuser which she talked me out of. If the whole game was to increase the price.. she is working against orders. I think whoever told you that is full of it.

 

Interesting to know. What was the reasoning behind recommending to drop the carbon fibre diffuser?

 

Dealer told me that Ferrari was requiring $30k in options on the Cali T for the cars to be delivered in their first few months.

 

I ordered a 458 coupe late, they actually had to call Ferrari to see if they could get me an allocation, they never once mentioned that I needed to put a certain amount of $$ in options. Now that may be because of such a late build, but before that I was on the list for the 488, and we spoke at length about the order process, and they never mentioned this. I would think that this is just rumor, or the dealer is doing this on their own, and saying it's a factory mandate. I would be interested in the truth though.

 

This is NOT a Ferrari / FNA requirement - just your dealer wanting to look better based on increasing the price per car sold.

 

Certainly within Europe, F SpA does not require minimum option specs from the dealers. Dealers are incentivised by F SpA with an average option value per car target within a time period, which if the target is met, results in a dealer entity receiving a bonus.
If F SpA required a minimum option spec to order a car, in EU that might be considered retail price maintenance or other anti-competitive behaviour, which may produce some difficulties with a competition regulator.

 

It just didn't fit with the overall design and theme we were trying to achieve. I started with the all the 'normal' options: colored calipers, carbon everywhere, yellow hub caps, yellow tach... etc.

Anna spent the time to understand what I really wanted to achieve in the design and what I wanted to stand out, which was the custom stripe. With that as the goal we eliminated anything that would dry attention away from it. We didn't want your eyes darting all over the place distracted by flashy bits. So everything went to matte black including the front air and rear aero flaps, which is normally painted the color of the car.

I couldn't be happier with the way it turned out..from the side, you see the whole car without a bunch of yellow (or other color) distractions and from the back or front your attention is drawn to the stripe.

 

I have heard (no direct knowledge) that dealers have a built-in incentive to pump up option orders from Ferrari, in that they get a large percentage of the mark-up. This is supposedly to ease the "pain" of having to sell new cars at list. If true, this would only apply to U.S. dealers. And yet, according to European F-Chatters, Euro cars are often sold at discount. European dealers seem to have a different mindset. It's all very mysterious, and in keeping with the myth of Ferrari inscrutability. Fred

 

Let me clarify this 100% (For the UK market) I had a bad experience with this.

I don't know how it is in the U.S. - But on my first Speciale I was the first person at my dealership to have my name and deposit on the Speciale long before it was even confirmed. Then when it was launched I put the full deposit of £25k/$50k on the car and finalised my specification, paint, options etc. The options totalled a car worth £230,000/$350,000 and at the dealership I signed an official order confirmation document confirming my spec and then waited many months for my build to start.

On the week my car was leaving Red 10 - my dealer called and said I HAD to put another £20k/$40k worth of optional extras on my car or else the factory would not build my car. WHAT THE F**K? Yes this actually happened.

So I contemplated my options and discovered that to put that many more extras on the car would have altered the look of the car to something I did not want. So i pulled my order and moved dealerships.

I now have one of the last RHD Speciales ever to be made arriving in about 2 weeks. I had a much much better experience with my new dealership who are fantastic and I could not be more excited about FINALLY getting a Speciale.

But yes - the rumours are in some cases true and I experienced it first hand - the hard way. After digging further it is a 50/50 problem from both the dealer and the factory. On the one hand the dealer wants to meet options targets so by leveraging options of important cars it helps to reach this, however my new dealer said they sometimes order their own super heavily spec'd car to put in the show room and drive sales off - just to her make up their options targets. They don't put it on the customer. On the other hand the factory were aware of this option presented to me because I took it to the top! And still no resolve - so while in some cases the route of the issue may be the dealer, the factory doesn't exactly care if that is their choice it seems.

I don't know if this was the case on 458 but I would not be surprised if it was the case on early 488 - it's like their added tax for a priority build slot basically. It's like - yes you can have an early car - BUT - we're going to take every penny off you for it! ha ha

Anyway - viva Scuderia - they make bloody brilliant cars!!!!

 

^This is basically correct.

 

Makes sense - thanks for the response

 

Wow I've never heard having minimum options can delay or even have your car rejected by factory. My first 2 Fcar's (599 GTB/458 Italia) had over 65K USD and the last 2 Fcar's (F12/Speciale) had about 25-30K USD in options. I guess its the relationship you have with the dealer. My cars have never been held for minimum option restrictions. *fingers crossed*