What does it take to become a Ferrari VIP?

that is essentially Ferrari defrauding its highest value customers in 2014 I was sitting at my desk at Lamborghini Atlanta now through the window I saw a tow truck driver that we used a lot drive-by and on his bed there was a la ferrari no one else in the showroom seemed to notice that he was pulling in so I just wandered outside and walked up to him and he gets out of his truck he's like look what I got I'm like yeah what in the world how did you get this thing he said well they just flew it in and I got to drive it up to the dealership cuz Ferrari of Atlanta was a little bit north of us and I wasn't exactly sure why he had decided to bring it by for us to see but of course the first thing I did was all from $1,000 let me drive it around the block and he said man out would but I tried it and I revved it all I could but it's in some transport mode and there's some low limiter in it I said well let me try so he hands me the key and I jumped in the car oh it's still on his flatbed and started up and he's exactly right it just pings off like a rev limiter at about 2,300 rpm because it was in transport mode but the other thing that I noticed was that the car was filthy and I was like this is really strange I was like was it wrapped or anything's and now this is just how he pulled it off the pallet with the vents full of rocks and things like that it looked like they hadn't cleaned it up since it left Fiorano I looked around the car and I saw the badge on the center console that said it was one of 499 and at the time I didn't realize they all had that exact same badge and so wow this must be number one surely it's a press car or some demonstrator or something that they're just circling around but it turned out it was a customer car and that badge became kind of interesting because it's always been kind of rumored or thought that Ferrari builds a lot more cars than they say they do it's kind of like Jordan's two year vacation to go and play baseball rather than a two year suspension for gambling I mean everybody knows what really happened but nobody really talks about it and so there's always been these rumors about different cars or serial numbers that were duplicated or whatever the case may be and so one of the things that we included when we rolled out the VIN wickiup a couple of years ago was the ability for users to create lists of cars by Vince and what people frequently use that for is creating registries of rare cars but one of the early lists to kind of become prolific was a list of Enzo Vince and since they're obviously all over the world these can take a long time to compile but as of today there's over 490 Enzo's on this list now the factory claim they made three hundred ninety nine plus one for the Pope to auction off for tsunami victims plus a couple more for customers whose cars were totaled so this is 25 percent or so over production of a car that is essentially Ferrari defrauding its highest value customers now of course they can't really stipulate any damages because today in Enzo's worth four or five times for the original MSRP and it kind of begs the question of how people become qualified to get these relationships with the manufacturers to buy and continue to buy all these cars because certainly part of it is putting up with shenanigans like that but I used to get asked this particularly around 2014 and 15 because it's no secret that early in their lifecycle 9:18 S&P ones did not sell well they were begging for orders but as the model progressed they eventually sold out and now they've become quite popular in the market values or sometimes twice what MSRP was and the laferrari market is about three times what the original MSRP was so it seems desirable to be able to buy these cars but it's always been a little bit mysterious as to how people come about the chance to buy them and so I wanted to spend a little bit of time today talking about what it actually takes to become a VIP with your favorite supercar manufacturer because it's really not that hard and the easiest way to remember it for me is an acronym called love LOV e L is for loyalty o is for options v is for volume and E is for events if you master those four things with respect to your manufacturer you're going to get to buy whatever you want and it doesn't take as much time or as much money as it seems now when for I was allocating Enzo's the allocation was based on the number of new cars you had purchased from Ferrari but that evolved with the laferrari it was the complexion and the quality of your collection and with the other manufacturers obviously it varies but what you've got to start with is loyalty you need to be dedicated to a specific manufacturer and to a specific dealer and so you need to sell all the sports cars other than the brand that you really want to focus on of course if it's McLaren keep a Mercedes so if you actually have to get somewhere you'll have something reliable to get you there but regardless make your sports car complexion made of cars from that manufacturer as they look at allocating these cars they want people who are going to be strong advocates for them now that strong advocacy does not mean social media unless you're talking about Koenigsegg or Pagani these traditional manufacturers don't like forums they don't like people who get upset they don't like people who air out public grievances so never think that it's in your best interest with respect to being able to buy more new expensive cars to go out and be really public on the internet like this talking about how things work or how you're upset it doesn't do you any favors also be cool as you buy cars from these manufacturers loyalty involves being okay when some things go wrong these are handmade cars made by real people that can make mistakes now it's okay if something comes in and they messed up an option or there's a little bit of damage or whatever the case may be to bring it to their attention but that does not mean that you make a big stink about it at the end of the day this is a mutual relationship where you're giving them business and they're giving you opportunities to buy cars at below market value and you each need to recognize that that this is kind of a relationship that goes both ways and obviously don't do anything that might hurt the manufacturer like trying to limb in law car or joining some class-action lawsuit or saying bad things on an internet forum all these things seriously hurt your chances of ever getting where you want to go the next is options obviously you've got to order a lot of cars to get to the status that allows you to buy these other more expensive cars and so as you do that the easiest way to get on a manufacturers radar is to order the most ridiculously SPECT cars possible with as many options as you can in most cases the process of building a relationship with a manufacturer that allows you to buy a car that's essentially a or a half of what it's really worth involves you losing about a million dollars and that doesn't mean you're just gonna spend a million dollars that means that the cost of owning the cars as they depreciate and lose value is probably going to be about a million dollars now you could obviously if you want a p1 just go pay a million over sticker and get one today but if you want to be able to order one exactly to your spec and everything else you want involvement in the brand then you're gonna have to spend the money in a different way but to start with order the most undesirable car the manufacturer has and put all the options and more on it whether it's through MSO or TaylorMade or add personam with Lamborghini when Ferraris taking 10,000 orders a year they're not gonna know who goes with each one but if you order $200,000 worth of options on a Portofino they're going to pay attention and so as you got you expect these cars it's important that you do things that are unique and distinctive and when you get the opportunity to go to the factory and do something like spec a tailor-made order or go to MSO and spec out your new McLaren that will set you apart from the pack particularly if you do things like pay 50 grand for a special color that's named after you and if you order your cars in a consistent way it starts to let the people on the assembly line notice hey that's that weird spec that that guy from Georgia always orders options are all profit for manufacturers and sometimes for dealers so everyone appreciates when you up the MSRP of your car by a hundred or two hundred thousand dollars the next is volume you've got to buy some cars especially with somebody like Porsche where they're selling so many cars and they have so many desirable models you pretty much have to buy all of them and if they calling you and say I've gotten you a spot for this you don't ever get to say no they'll just go down the list to someone who says yes and they kind of supersede you in the lineup so you want your dealer to be advocating for you and they and have certain cars that they need to sell if you wanted to get attention with Ferrari you don't go in trying to buy a 488 spider and an 812 superfast going there saying you want those but also you want a GT for Lou so and you want to Portofino and you want them all in tailor-made specs if we'll spend all the money that you can and I promise it'll get you on the radar so that you can order the cars you want in the future but you may even want to buy some good pre-owned cars that the manufacturer will recognize due to CP o status and the dealer will sort of use to advocate as part of your collection and that can be a great way to kind of jump the line I mean certainly if you went out and bought a McLaren f1 today send it to the factory for an MSO refresh it would immediately give you whatever status you want you might even get a BP 23 or a speed tail whatever they've called it the last thing is events all manufacturers host events every month of the year they'll have racing schools and hospitality chalets at f1 events they've got dealer events rallies all these things and you're gonna start to get invitations for these as you order new cars go to all of them they're all very expensive and not a great value for money but its face time with the manufacturer and it's their ability to say that these events are successful it doesn't matter how many customers Ferrari has if they launch a new driving school in South America they don't know how many people are actually going to come do it as much as you can get to know them and the quality of the events you get invited to over time will become better the events also give you the opportunity to get exposure to the cars that the manufacturer still owns for instance when McLaren started to realize that the p1 was gonna sell fairly well they retained about 20 p1 chassis so that they could sort of refresh them rebonding them repaint them so for instance as someone might come in to order a highly SPECT 650 s or 675 LT they might get presented with the opportunity to buy a p1 now it's not gonna be at MSRP it's gonna be at whatever the market bears and there's gonna be an expectation that they spend more money on more options when that happens but it ends up working out very well I mean let's look at a hypothetical let's say that you want to be a mclaren VIP customer today it's fairly easy go to your dealer and say that you want a 7 20s coupe a 7 20s spider a 5 70s spider and a 600 LT and order all the new cars in the same spec personalized to you with at least a hundred dollars or so in options that will absolutely get their attention and then ask them say look I understand all the Senna's are allocated at its point but I imagine you've got a press car somewhere it looks like the markets three four or five hundred thousand over sticker let me buy one for around that and then add my spec to it so repaint it to match all my cars and if you want to deliver them all at the New York International Auto Show or the u.s. grand prix or really anything you want to kind of showcase what MSO can do I'm gonna be paying for those options and I'm happy for you to get some press for showing them all off and I want to be at every event you do every driving school every race you attend and I'm always gonna be wearing a mclaren shirt if you do that you'll be paying about a million dollars over what all those cars are worth but all of a sudden you're gonna have all the cars you want and when the time comes to order the p1 replacement you're probably going to get it so it's about that type of relationship building that type of forethought in the ordering process and at the end of the day even if they build more cars than they say they will or seem like they're taking advantage of you or do a few things that rub you the wrong way it is gonna be a beneficial relationship for you you're gonna buy cars that are worth a lot more and even though you can't sell them immediately they'll have their rules and their procedures that do allow you to occasionally make really good money in the cars and in the aggregate it's a great thing so if it's something that you really want to do by all means go ahead but just know it's not as hard as it always seems [Music] [Applause]

Channel: VINwiki

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Rating: 4.7937903 out of 5

Keywords: Ferrari, Enzo, LaFerrari, Supercar, Hypercar, V12, McLaren, P1, Senna, Speed Tail, Rare, Exclusive, Ed Bolian, VINwiki, Car Stories, VIP, Porsche, 918, GT3, GT2, RS, 911, Koenigsegg, Pagani, Aston Martin, MSO, Tailor Made, Options, Loyalty, Volume, Events, Driving School, Manufacturer, Exotic Car, Dealer, Atlanta, Georgia, Europe, Italy, Custom, exclusive, 288 GTO, F40, F50, BP23, Ordering, Relationship, Advice, Velvet rope, How to, Overproduction, Ad Personam

Id: BH7zY6kQ_Io

Length: 12min 57sec (777 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 05 2018