The secret to being a preferred Ferrari customer

It is arguably the best problem to have as a global car-maker. Ferrari, despite plans of expanding its annual output of vehicles to nearly 10,000 cars by 2019, continues to have a long list of aspiring customers that comfortably outstrip its relatively modest global production.

In short, the Italian marque chooses who buys its cars and (hardly) no-one seems to care.

That trend was reinforced this week at the Paris motor show where, upon announcing details of its new LaFerrari Aperta along with some new special-edition liveries, stakeholders revealed that for the foreseeable future, every car it builds already has an allocated owner.

All 209 convertible versions of the $2 million-plus hypercar are already spoken for, while a further 350 vehicles commemorating special moments in Ferrari’s 70-year history have also found owners before being made public.

It begs the question: what does it take to be a preferred Ferrari customer, one that is given first dibs on a car that is often yet to be publically disclosed?

Ferrari’s global chief marketing officer, Enrico Galleria, revealed the Italian car-maker is quite accustomed to rejecting high-flying customer requests. But there is method to Ferrari’s madness.

“The only way we have tried to manage this potential problem which is unhappy clients is to be fair in the allocation rules,” he said.

“What we do when we decide to launch a limited series car, for every limited series car we identify some rules in order to select the customer based on their history with the company – not only their purchases but how much they come to our events, how close they are to our events.

“Once we identify the rules these are approved by our board of management including the chairman. So the list of people who become eligible for the car comes from selection criteria that are developed from inside the company.

“Whenever we have to explain why you never got the car but [somebody else] did, we have elements to point to, which are quite easy to manage. Of course you will always have someone who is wanting to have the car but is unhappy, but at least we can prove the allocation order.”

Of course, not every aspiring Ferrari customer is happy about their requests falling flat. The manufacturer recently endured a high-profile but ultimately unsuccessfully lawsuit in the US, where a disgruntled customer claimed damage to his reputation because his bid for the new LaFerrari Aperta had fallen flat.

And even for those who are successful in their bid for Ferrari’s flagship models, orders are often subject to a two-year wait.

“We cannot satisfy demand, and that is fine, otherwise we go in the exact opposite direction which is we want to have, which is keeping the exclusivity,” Galleria said.

Whether or not Ferrari breaks its self-imposed production limit of 7000 cars annually, there is evidently nothing stale about the Prancing Horse's cachet value – even at 70 years old.