Ferrari sales on fire, but Oz orders outstrip supply

FERRARI will report a 50 per cent sales increase over 2006 when the sales tally room closes at the end of the year.

However, the significant jump in Ferraris sold this year has no direct correlation with new customers for the exclusive brand.

“With Ferrari, you have to distinguish between orders and sales,” said the public relations manager of Ferrari’s local importer European Automotive Imports (EAI) Edward Rowe.

The company holds orders out to three years for the F430 Spider and does not even have a production allocation yet for the 430 Scuderia, unveiled to Australian customers last week, and due to go on sale mid-2007.

The 430 Scuderia is billed as the fastest production Ferrari, but Mr Rowe said the announcement of the new model has not resulted in a rush away from other queues at Ferrari.

“The vast majority are additional orders, only a small handful have come from the F430 orders,” he said.

Since the $500,000-plus supercar’s unveiling in Sydney last week, the order bank has jumped from 50 to 63.

EAI managing director, Kevin Wall, began lobbying Maranello headquarters for more production last year.

“Volumes are looking like being up 50 per cent over last year, and I think we’ll double the previous year – 2005 – this year,” he said. “So we’ve been reasonably successful in acquiring more production slots.”

Left: Ferrari launches in China.

However there is no sign of a let-up in the order banks. A booming economy and a new product cycle are just a few of the factors in Ferrari’s long order bank.

“You could put your finger on all of those things and probably more,” Mr Wall said.

“We’ve been involved in this brand for two years – the order banks now, even after having success in improving our production runs, are still running at exactly the same levels they were two years ago, and that is largely to do with the success of the 430 model.”

Mr Rowe said volume was expected to reach an estimated 140 and 150 cars in 2008, but could not be more precise until EAI’s full allocation, including that for the 430 Scuderia, are known.

Australian customers may curse the long wait, but they can lay blame on the source of much of our economy’s current health – China.

The Chinese market only opened up to foreign imports in 2004, when Ferrari sold 42 cars. Ferrari is on track to sell 160 cars in China this year, up a third on 2006. It expects to sell 180 cars in 2008.

Clearly Australia is not as high up the priority list as China. According to Mr Rowe, China has been allocated more volume than Australia “because it is in launch mode”.

“If you launch a new brand, you don’t want to be in the position where you have nothing to sell,” he said.

The new 430 Scuderia is expected to go on sale in the China market in February or March, three months before Australia.

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