Ferrari Is Getting Sick Of Customers Customizing Their Cars

The customer is always right, right? Not with Ferrari. According to a story from The Telegraph, the company is going to take back some control over how its cars from the Purosangue to the SF90 are specified. Apparently, it’s becoming worried some of the more outrageous combinations are hurting its image and the value of its cars. It may seem a dictatorial decision, but Ferrari has never been a democracy, and what it says, goes.

Cutting Back On Customizing And Restricting Colors

The Telegraph spoke with Ferrari’s CEO Benedetto Vigna, who summed up the company’s feelings well with a single sentence: “We will not make a strange car, for sure.” He and the company are worried that allowing customers to pick especially unusual colors, options and combinations of all those items, results in unappealing vehicles that hurt the value of them in the secondhand market. That would in turn hurt the perceived value of Ferrari in general. We suspect that there may be an element of pride, too. The company has very clear ideas of what its cars should be and how they represent the brand. Letting people run amok with personalization can dilute the, for lack of a better word, Ferrari-ness of the car.

The solution for the near term will be restricting color options and combinations more in the near future. It seems it also will be looking at not permitting as many high-end, unique customizations. The Telegraph noted that this will be a difficult balance to achieve, because 20% of Ferrari’s revenue last year came from customizations, and it was a significant booster of profits.

Furthermore, Ferrari will be keeping an eye on what its customers do with its cars. It can’t stop a new customer from taking their car to an aftermarket shop to have custom paint and interiors installed, among other things. Not only that, but it can’t control who buys Ferraris second hand. But if it learns that someone has customized a car of theirs in a way they don’t like, Vigna told The Telegraph, they can blacklist that person from buying a new car from Ferrari in the future.

This Is Ferrari

If you’re familiar with Ferrari, none of this is especially surprising. It’s extremely protective of its products and image, and always has been. Around a decade ago, the company was particularly upset at musician Deadmau5 wrapping his Ferrari 458 Spider in a design based on the viral Nyan Cat YouTube video. It sent a cease-and-desist letter threatening the musician. In response, Deadmau5 brought the car back to stock, sold it, and promptly bought a Lamborghini Huracan and wrapped it the same way. Presumably, Lamborghini never bothered him about it.

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The Nyan Cat is back!

Ferrari also has kept tabs on its customers in the past, especially when it comes to selecting who gets rare special edition cars. As a recent VINWiki video explains (embedded below), they have to go through remarkable amounts of hoops to be considered worthy of receiving one of their special cars, having purchased enough vehicles and even attending brand events and such.

There are other examples of Ferrari’s stubbornness. One of the most famous is the story of Ferrari’s dealings with Ferruccio Lamborghini. As the story goes, Lamborghini was having problems with his newly purchased Ferrari, and Ferrari simply dismissed his complaints. This then lead to Lamborghini deciding he would start his own sports car company to take on Ferrari. Another is a much more minor example, but still amusing: Ferrari won’t build a pink car. This is something that Vigna even brought up to The Telegraph, mentioning that rule still stands. Even though we understand Ferrari wanting to be choosy about options, we think they should maybe reconsider the pink choice. Stellantis has shown that there are some pretty amazing pink colors such as Panther Pink for the Dodge Challenger and Tuscadero Pink for the Jeep Wrangler.

Source: The Telegraph, VINWiki