F80 Reportedly Having Issues Selling

I know I have to be careful on my ground here because I’m talking principles and have no direct knowledge of LDM, which you do have.

Your first point is exactly as it should be - if you take on board my belief that to maximise profit you have to add value, the value is in the brand. All of it. Anyone can build a factory or make a car, but nobody else has always been in F1, has a founder like Enzo Ferrari etc. Therefore, every management team has to use the brand and history to add value and derive profit. The only contentious point is how you do that. Let’s say Vigna and LDM may well have different ideas about that. But, it is empirically true that Ferrari have continued to make large investments into everything Ferrari, and therefore the brand. So the current management must still understand its value.

Your point 2 shows what a decent and good guy LDM was/is. I don’t know if subsequent CEOs have similar stories. But, it doesn’t necessarily mean that one understands what the brand needs better than the other, it’s ‘merely’ an exceedingly nice personal trait. Most customers are not from Italy anyway. I was at an event last year where Vigna was there and he was introduced to many customers. He seemed a decent guy, perhaps a little shy, but he was there. I only ever saw LDM on a motor show stand that I was almost bundled off of by security!!

For point 3, doesn’t the existing management have that? It’s just that some disagree with them. I dare say LDM would have suffered that too. He was certainly a great individual visionary though. I do have the impression more is done by ‘the group’ today, for good or bad (and people can argue either way).

Point 4, I know you’ve mentioned that before but it feels easier to reverse that. By far the worst and most obnoxious quality cars that we’ve owned have been from the LDM era - 360 and 430. The more recent ones are much more complicated but generally feel really well put together. On 360/430 I replaced so many suspension parts and numerous other things, which have not repeated on the modern cars. At the very least, I think it has to be concluded that we have always overpaid for cars that should have had better quality.

Point 5, when you get to 10,000 cars what then? Do you tell everyone, sorry folks, that’s all we’re doing? It’s really hard for a company to do that and usually, bad things happen when you do. Everyone gets lazy, good people leave, bad things then begin to happen, such as poor quality, terrible products etc. If LDM had got to 10,000, what would he have done to keep everyone moving forward and motivated? If he was insistent on 10,000 units maximum, he would have had to push price up.

Point 6, what was his idea to raise money to pay for Ferrari’s required investment to keep pace with regulations instead?

I don’t know LDM. But I know at least some things about business. It’s easy to criticise and I guess he had his fair share of people doing that too.

 

Hopefully ours wasn’t sent to the wrong place!

 

Plenty Puros here in Switzerland.

Marcel Massini

 

So absolutely true.
And LCDM said this rather "mildly" and very diplomatic.
He's a man with style.

Marcel Massini

 

LCDM is a leader. Current "leadership" are political puppets who have no clue of Ferrari, it's soul, and it's mystique.

 

I tend to think that like many things of the past, LdM's tenure in Ferrari gets glamorized as time goes by.
Before setting the 10,000 cars "limit", he was claiming that 4,000 was it... so there would have always been reasons to increase that (from 4,000 to 7,000, which he actually did, then to 10,000, then to 15,000, because of new markets, new wealth in the world or whatever).
When Ferrari had the opportunity to develop Maserati as a larger volume brand, to preserve the focus and exclusivity of Ferrari, they failed miserably and found easier to just use the Ferrari brand power to market additional car models - the 2008 California was just a precursor of the PuroSangue...

 

In 2014, when LCDM was sacked the factory produced 7'255 cars.
Ten years later it is twice that number.

Marcel Massini

 

Each will have his own view but I don’t think it would have been much different if LDM was still there. Set a limit comfortably ahead of current, then find a reason to increase it when you are near it. If LVP488 is correct, it already happened before. It’s a pretty usual thing to do.

 

Talked to 2 big NY collectors today at Cav who turned it down.

 

The V12 itself is special but Lamborghini also has a N/A V12 - hybrid model, which happens to be much quicker. The 12 Cilindri (not the engine) is a relic of the past.

Nobody does it better than Ferrari.

 

About the electric Ferrari that will soon arrive

The future of Ferrari is in the hands of two men, John Elkann, the wealthy heir chairman, and Benedetto Vigna, the physicist who had never worked before in the automobile industry. John Elkann, believing what LCDM said, seems to lead a company that appears to have no leader. In contrast, Benedetto Vigna is a visionaire that could become the new Albert Einstein?

The future will tell, but Vigna’s theory seems to be a fusion between that of relativity and that of electrification. We know that much of a Ferrari emotion is underpinned by the explosive vivacissimo of air and gasoline meeting spark ignition. When Vigna is asked, can an electric-powered Ferrari ever deliver such emotion? For him, obviously, everything is relative however, he believes it can and he replied. “For a start, electric Ferraris will not be silent supercars.” "Each electric engine... I like to say electric engine, not motor… has its own signature,"

Ferrari electric journey started in 2009 with F1, continued in 2013 with the LaFerrari, first road hybrid Ferrari, and now has its most electrified representative in the F80 Supercar. But the F80 electric reign will only be for a short time given that in 2025 the first 100% electric “Ferrari” will be presented.

Where will all this end? I don't really know, but I fear the worst.

 

Even the most powerful marketing and ideology couldn’t force passionates people to accept something « unnatural ».
We all know the outcome in fact ..
If the electric Ferrari is a commercial failure,Vigna should resigned.
That’s it..

 

questo e il collettore

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good, boycott this v6 turbo crap

 

Can someone buy my 296gts and then happy to boycott lol

 

I somehow think this will turnout like the SP1/2…lots of people declining because “it is too much money for a re-bodied 812 that is not road-legal in the US” and then everybody bought them in the second hand market when they realised that they couldn’t get the SP3. Also the car has lots of merit on its own which most of us couldn’t see at launch…
I think we have to wait until journalists drive it.

 

The drivetrain although not V12 is probably great and people may need to get used to the idea of a 6 cylinder halo car however I suspect if the car looked better it would be more desirable. The side and rear are good. The front, well…

 

Re the restorability and appeal of modern Ferraris like 296, just look to the mechanical vs quartz (vintage) watch market...quartz has been king in terms of performance since 1970s but there is still an huge, enduring market for mechanical watches at the high end, even after quartz itself has been rendered obsolete by smartphones and smartwatches in practical use.

Additionally, the floor for the necessary knowledge/resource/effort to diagnose and repair/replace the ECU, software, batteries is too high. Unless you want to spend a few million remaking a ASIC that will be out of production, reverse engineer the encrypted software controlling those ECUs, rebuild the battery....

Restoring today's classic cars needs some mechanical inclinations but the mainly requires one to be handy and persevering. To restore cars of today you also need a degree in EE with additional knowledge in signal processing, circuit design, and software. Unless you want to rip out the existing powertrain and replace it with contemporary components, in the same way people will replace the movement of vintage quartz watches that are too difficult to be worth repairing.

 

He’s pretty spot on I have to say, including that he will not be getting a press car anytime soon!

 

The 12Ci isnt selling either?

 

i don't get the sense the secondary market is anywhere deep enough to support the more expensive sticker prices so deprecation shld be more severe than what we saw 10 years ago. Once you remove the synthetic demand (people who thought they actually had a seat at the table) and you add in all the new tech that's unlikely to age well, i cant see who wld want to own an sf90/296 in 15 years

 

Would love to know what was the average out of the door price back in 2004 (When the market was already hot) compared to 2024 in constant $.
Not only are cars more expensive but the options are probably 2x/3x as many and more expensive themselves as well.
And they make probably 2x or 3x as many cars.

Not good.

 

You funny guy.

 

Or 5.