Driving a Ferrari

I had the fine opportunity to drive a Ferrari F430 just like this on Wednesday last week, and let me just say that you don’t even have to be into cars to enjoy doing this. I promise. Let’s just say that it’s extremely difficult to quit grinning when your sitting behind the wheel of a $190,000 Italian driving machine, and you can accelerate from 80 mph to 120 mph in seconds. Top speed in this car is 196 mph.

So what’s the marketing lesson?
Somewhere along the way Ferrari turned into a product that became untouchable. Despite the price tag, there is still a two-year waiting list to buy an F430 unless you want to pay $40,000 to $60,000 above MSRP to buy one off the street. The Ferrari Enzo, which sold for $643,000 and could only be purchased by previous owners of a Ferrari, now sells for more than $1 million on the open market. How?

Supply.

The simple manipulation of the supply side of the economic formula for Ferrari is always supply < demand instead of supply = demand. When the demand gets high (and it always is) they keep the supply steady, and the natural reaction of the general public (and the press) is to create conversation about how the product is so difficult to obtain. I guess I’ll have to write another post explaining how i ended up getting to drive a Ferrari.