Tailor made for GTC4 Lusso

I am at TM on Friday and hopefully can answer any questions you may have when I return, but yes, wool and cashmere etc all available.

 

Hello done two TM cars now, they will do anything you wish, take samples and colours with you swatches or anything you have. even old jumpers or shirts.
The process is simple and they get what you want, some of it takes time.
All depends on what the request is.
Enjoy!

 

Can I come with you?!

 

+!. We were there in November for our F12TDF

Just to add....

1) as long as it's "legal" (i.e. meets any relevant safety or regulatory requirements, Ferrari seem willing to do what they can to accommodate you (example - African Elephant Ivory shift paddles would not be doable).

2) I have heard nothing of a "minimum spend level" requirement, but then again, just about any of these options are going to be quite expensive

3) They did comment that they do reserve the right to say "no", something about compliance and respect for the ferrari brand, but have not heard of anyone being declined for much

4) all TM options are what I'd call "vanity" options - paints, materials, finishes, coatings - nothing mechanical or functional.

5) the lead times can vary, as sourcing the materials (eg. finding that specific fish skin upholstery), fabrication (dyeing, or staining and building that fancy teak boot liner) and installation are highly variable. Much/most TM features are installed in the regular assembly sequence, though some require fitting off-line.

Paul, IIRC you recently did a Hermes-lined Cali-T, you're perhaps best positioned to correct any of my assumptions/experiences. In our case, we did not do any TM work, but we did load up on Extracampionario and "Special Requests", a couple of which could have been considered TM except the items were available somewhere in the supply chain already at OEM spec.

Good luck and enjoy it

 

Dang! The LaF is in the shop for repair!

 

I'll share what I THINK, I'm unsure (even after 9 cars) that I'm clear where one starts and the other ends....

SP - Special Projects - just for reference, this is essentially where you get to design your own car, 1 of 1. I think they limit to 1-3 cars a year, and very pricey - but then again, priceless I'd guess.

Tailor Made - this (as stated above) is primarily focused on finishes, materials, customizations (eg. painted pin striping on interior trim), bespoke paints....I would imagine again that "anything goes" as long as 1) it's possible 2) it's legal and 3) it fits within Ferrari's brand sense. So, while semi-anilina leather IS a "regular option", I'd imagine if you want it custom dyed, it would likely be TM. (hence my reference to Paul's recent Hermes-lined Cali). One thing about TM that is cool is beyond the materials, you can have a lot of lattitude on little details.

Extra Campionario - "special tailoring" - in my experience, this is when you ask for combinations of standard options, but that are not listed or generally offered. Example, on our 458, we asked for the front center section to be painted body color; the rear fascia of our F12, we wanted a custom alcantara carpet for the F12, etc. In some cases, you can pick stitch colors and styles that are non-standard (but do not require serious engineering, like in TM). Another common EC item is customized stitching in the headrests; the horse is an option, but you can get a lot of things stitched. We had the steering wheel and console on our Speciale trimmed with the NART colors; some people get the italian flag stitched, etc.

Special Requests - to me, this has been a bit of "everything else" we've asked for, and they've done. Again, I think this is where they will do combinations of existing items and finishes, or do something a bit special. In our case, we have had additional color trims on carbon, the air vents a different color, had a bit of leather color switched in the seats. A common request is to have the production workers sign the engine bay....generally speaking, 90% of what you might ask for has already been done once, in fact you'll probably be surprised at what they are willing to do; on the other hand, asking for that last 10% of stuff is sort of fun because it requires a bit of a conversation...

My personal view is Ferrari's assembly process is a superb operation, considering each car is custom spec'd and the mix of options is overwhelming. I also get the sense that Ferrari want more of their clients to "mix it up" (i.e. go with something other than red-and-tan), as it's both profitable for them and adds diversity to their fleet. BTW, while Ferrari standard options are always expensive, I've been surprised (knock on wood) that some of the EC and SR things we've asked for have been so...reasonable.

Hope this helps - others who have done this process more than me might have a more complete picture. Also, FWIW my view is that while my dealer is awesome, there is nothing to replace actually being at the factory to stimulate thinking and explore possibilities.

 

I also plan to do TM in the near future. Thanks for a very helpful details.

 

Excellent writeup!

 

Spot on in in my experience (at similar count). When we specced out FF, little we wanted was much outside what has been done before, except we wanted all the grill work in the vents at the rear and on the sides to be black, not the normal grey mesh. The factory asked us to approve that it was outside their usual, but would do it if we were willing to accept that what they did might not be as much up to potential wear as the normal finish they used. We signed the doc, they did the deed, and in the end, we love what they did for us, and its wearing just fine at almost 40K miles.

Our advisor at Maranello also helped us to delve through all the materials possible for interior finishes. We went fairly conservative, but only because that's what we wanted: not that there weren't other options offered. The only limitations were completely self-imposed, with only slight nudging and judicious guidance by our guide.

Not exactly Tailor Made, but more than Atelier. Truly, aside from the SP world, I think the rest is a bit of a sliding scale and its all good. Not sure how one would define our level of interaction with Ferrari in speccing our car: probably mostly Atelier and Extra Campionario. The label was not important. what mattered was that our assistant in Maranello helped us realize the car we wanted.

Our dealer experience has always been top notch and first class. But the experience we had in Maranello was beyond our wildest expectations.

So just go and forget what the label is: what you end up speccing will be somewhere in Entropy's sliding scale of experience, and more importantly, all yours.

 

Yes our delay on the Hermes was Hermes not Ferrari, they where unsure to allow us to use the leather on a car. even a Ferrari.
Took about two months of back and forth, TM Hermes and the wife.
But eventually she got what she wanted.
But still does not get ahead in any line for Birkin bags.

 

Supposedly there are no waiting lists anymore for Hermes bags, only for special custom versions...

 

Some very interesting info here. Thanks guys.

 

So I guess "Atelier" is basically a configurator but being there? You choose from the standard options and some basic extracampionario features, right?

And so, could it happen that you're there for the Atelier and you get carried away and end up with a Tailor Made order?

 

More like the configurator at your local dealership on steroids. Many many more samples of fabrics, leathers, and accessories. I saw a rubino CF steering wheel there, and that led us down the path of colored CF. Most dealerships will have one CF steering wheel to show you, but in Maranello they had a dozen different flavors of steering wheel and other interior components we could look at. And of course, they escorted us through the assembly line and finishing area for a few hours to look at cars in progress. We were able to walk up to cars being assembled and later, detailed, check out the build sheets, and poke our heads inside the cars in progress on the line to see the different details. That can't be replicated anywhere else.

 

if only.... go try buy one

 

Having just returned from TM, here is what I posted on the tdf thread which might help:


For now, I am going quiet on where I actually ended up in detail as there are still a few unknowns to be resolved and the matter of price to be discovered, but a brief overview of the process for those that are interested and might find it informative.

TM has been slightly revised and now it appears you have you 'dealer'(I always felt that an appropriate description), a lead designer, a photoshop guru(PG) and a general advisor. Your first sight is the maze of probably 200 colour samples hanging on the wall, compare that to your dealership. To me, the natural starting point was to seek out from this harlequin of colours a shortlist. We ended up with about 6 to start with including a new very white silver, inevitably some greys and a few blues. We then finally reduced this to three and then returned to the configurator. Interestingly, our lead designer personally felt this car looks best in blues and greys or maybe I was just being encouraged and flattered due to my selection.

PG then opened a far superior configurator on a larger TV, both a marked improvement over what the dealership offers. Initially we very briefly looked through to see what others had specified to see if there were any outstanding ideas or concepts and all I can say is that there are some really brave and different schemes taking cues from everything from the FXXK back to the 60's, and in a vast range of colours, stripes, crease line highlighting, whatever, a huge variety. To those wondering about where are the more elaborate and exciting schemes and that all we have seen so far have been fairly standard, I say just wait, you will not be disappointed, there truly is something for everyone coming.

We then started on the exterior and interestingly, the PG had to manually mix the colour purely from sight whilst holding the colour swatch. And so the car gets coloured in and adjusted like a painter mixes their paints on a palette, and then you add all the external detailing from wheels to exhaust. I would suggest, at this stage, to do this for a couple of body colour alternatives.

With that basic envelope established, we turned to the interior and here you can find yourself going down various paths only to find that even at TM, some things are just not possible. For example one of our paintwork options was this bright silver, but to my eye, black alcantara was too strong a contrast and Blue Scuro too grey. The perfect navy we chose would have looked great but it turns out it was only the black alcantara which was approved for use on the airbags, so the perfect navy was out and thus the new silver with it. Including a typically Italian slightly late start, and a visit to the launch spec car, we had now already used up half our allotted time and so far were not even close to a scheme. I was becoming concerned as I knew we had to nail it within the next hour, an almost impossible concept given how I had failed to reach a conclusion in the last 6 months.

Time threatening, silver gone, the knee jerk reaction was to fall back into my grey comfort zone with a new, as yet unnamed grey, a sort of clean Ferro. Apparently a triple layer grey is currently not possible. PG painted that in and naturally the car looked great. So we then looked at the interior. A safe staring point was seat style, and for me, even though every modern Ferrari I have owned I have specced with Daytonas, they are just a little too GT for this car and so a style of racing seat was selected and naturally the entire interior was in black alcantara. We then tried different stitching, baseball, heavy and even smooth concealed piping, and many other alternatives, none of which was achieved by a simple configurator like 'click' but by painstakingly manually rubbing out and removing and adding. We tried contrasting panels on the seats, grey, cuoio etc, in an effort to break the monotony of the interior. In desperation we even looked at half and half but that meant the entire top line in leather and thus a leather top dash and this car has to have an alcantara top dash. Tick tock.

Then our lead designer, understanding my brief and my requests, started producing alternative materials, some you would never find elsewhere, including ultrsuede and others and for a bit we experimented. One of the others was a delicious natural fabric with historical connotations which provided a perfect contrast and PG painted that in. This time, again in a slight nod to the past when the seat was the highlight, we made the entire seat in this material and added minimal detail. Looking good. Then we added some additional cockpit details to reflect our seat material elsewhere, threw in a splash of additional carbon and looking good(expensive). During this entire process, endless manuscript notes are made and crossed out on a large paper tdf schematic by the assistant keeping track of all the minutiae and changes we have agreed.

It's looking good, very good but then it's still not quite right primarily because it's grey, again. Not only is it grey again but I am going to be paying a substantial amount of money for a special grey that only I know is special, whereas to everyone else, it will simply be grey. My third colour that no one seems that interested in, is still left.

I ask PG to colour this in for a third option and as it appears, cries of 'bella'. Now we were cooking. Out to the street to see all the samples in natural light, TM being in the basement, and the streets of the Factory are now coming awake as its lunch time. Tick Tock. In theory our time is up.

Back to TM, agree this is the colour paint, that it works well with the carbon and especially with the special materials and so back to the interior. Another 15 minutes of detailed changes, changes again only possible at TM, and finally, against all the odds even 45 minutes ago, after 6 months of consideration and indecision, we have a scheme, subject to a few details. Coats are on and the girls are reaching for the door and I could have spent another half an hour just going over things, but I was excited with where we had arrived against all the odds just an hour ago. A USB stick with some images, albeit with a very poor representation of the colour, and we were off for the rest of our personalised tour, the Lusso and lunch on TM.

So a brilliant day, so very well worthwhile. My advice would be go there with a distinct brief and outline proposal, certainly on body colour, as otherwise the sheer panoply of choice will overwhelm you. As I said, from being in a panic at 12.00 asking myself how would I ever reach a decision and knowing there was only a theoretical 30 minutes left, 50 minutes later a six month struggle had been resolved but it would not have been without going through this tortuous process of evolving a scheme as you slowly home in on a result.

Did I spend more than I wanted? I think so but naturally no price yet, you just can't ask whilst going through this process and I wait to find out before I push the button. Will it be a special car, for me yes and certainly worthy of being Tailor Made, a true one off, and simply put without this visit I would never have reached this spec, never. I would never even had known what we were were doing was possible. And that is the point, it is only worth doing TM if you take advantage of all their options and facilities, otherwise stick to the Atelier or showroom.

Would I do it with a standard production car, no, simply not worth it unless you were keeping it for a long time, but on a limited car, an incredibly helpful and thoroughly professional operation, but for me perhaps 30 minutes too short. Special mention should go to our lead designer, Helena, who was truly excellent, understanding my brief and really thinking about it, owning it and making many excellent suggestions, some from left field.

I hope this is helpful to anyone considering Tailor Made.

 

Sorry for the confusion, you will have a hard time to get a bag, still. What I meant is that Hermes stores should not have lists anymore because they cannot order regular bags unless they are special and custom made... You might be on a list but since they can't order bags, you probably won't get what you wanted...

This is first hand information from a european store manager who has sold us several bags in the past but I would take it with a grain of salt...

 

I can confirm to you about the Hermes lists- there are really no lists- you're either part of the family or not. Does that sound familiar?

 

Thanks Traveller, a great insight into the process. I'm sure the colour will be 'bella' indeed.