Ferrari is considering a crack down on super-rich buyers demanding flashy customisations to their sports cars.
The Italian luxury car maker is drawing up plans to limit options for garish colour schemes or bling designs amid fears they are damaging the brand.
Influencers, celebrities and ultra-rich buyers have been commissioning unique paint-jobs and vinyl wraps which include emojis and in some cases graffiti.
Meanwhile the percentage of Ferraris painted in the company’s signature Rosso Corsa red has dropped to around 40 per cent. This is down from nearly 100 per cent just a few decades ago.
Ferrari’s chief executive Benedetto Vigna said, according to The Telegraph: ‘We have been thinking internally maybe to pre-define the (colour) combinations.
‘We have to pay attention because we have to defend the values and the identity of the brand.
‘There are some combinations that are not liked or loved by the second potential buyer,’ he added.
He used the analogy of trying to sell a football shirt with someone else’s name on the back.
Moreover, the regulations are not due to stop once the cars leave the factory.
In 2014, Ferrari went so far as to issue dance music artist Joel Zimmerman with a cease-and-desist order after he personalised his sports car.
The dance music artist, also known as Deadmau5, had applied graphics of the Nyan Cat internet meme flying through space with a rainbow behind it to his Ferrari 458 Italia.
Ferrari is also known to pick and choose its clientele.
The latest models are promised only to dedicated return customers who already have cars with prancing horse motifs on their bonnets – or are long-time clients with a history of Ferrari ownership.
Its most bespoke cars – the special editions built in the most limited numbers – are often sold by invite, with Ferrari tailoring who can own and drive its most special vehicles.
The Italian car company was founded by Enzo Ferrari in his name in 1947 but the firm can trace its roots back to 1929 when he formed the Scuderia Ferrari racing team.
Enzo was inspired to become a racing driver at the age of 10 when his father took him to his first race outside Bologna – his other possible careers were sports writing and opera singing.
In 1919 Enzo moved to Milan to work as a test driver for Costruzioni Meccaniche Nazionali and made his debut as a racing car driver that year.
The advent of World War II put a pause on Enzo’s racing – at 42 he was too old to be drafted – and instead he made grinding machines and machine tools at an auto factory he set up in Modena, including under German occupation.
After the war finished, Enzo expanded his auto factory and recruited old friends to form his own car company, Ferrari, with plans to make a 1,500cc engine, which at the time was the new battleground in racing.
The prototype of the Ferrari 125, the first car to bear his name, had its test drive in late 1947 after two torturous years of development.
That year it won the Rome Grand Prix, Enzo’s first victory, followed by the famed 1,000 mile Mille Miglia in Italy the following year and the 24 Hour Le Mans race in 1949.
By the 1951 Grand Prix season, Ferrari’s Tipo 375 Ferrari roared to the company’s first World Championship victory, causing Enzo to ‘cry with joy’.
And by this point Ferrari was winning another race: to sell cars around the world.
The company had built 70,000 road cars which were bought by the rich and famous including the Aga Khan, the Shah of Iran and the Dulles and Du Pont families.
By 1961, Ferrari began to achieve the kind of success that Enzo craved thanks to its Tipo 156 Grand Prix car, a rear-engine machine, something that he had long resisted even though others had found success with such machines.
The year was one of ‘constant triumph’ for Ferrari but the season ended in tragedy at the Italian Grand Prix, which has been dubbed Formula 1’s Darkest Day.
German driver Wolfgang von Trips died as he crashed into a fence and killed 15 spectators and in the wake of the accident Enzo stayed out of the spotlight.
In reality he ‘cared little, if at all’ for von Trips’s death, Yates writes.
Soon after von Trips was laid to rest, Enzo remarked to a priest he knew: ‘I think I did a good job of faking my sadness’.
By then Ferrari had 500 employees and Enzo was a ‘megalomaniac’ at the factory with them. Anyone who was too successful was deemed a threat and was gotten rid of – only Enzo could have the spotlight.
