"Affordable" Ferrari Makes a Glorious Noise
For some time now, there has been rumor of an "affordable" Ferrari. Affordable, as in you'll only have to sell one of your children on the black market to pay for it instead of the usual two children. Other than that, details have been a bit sketchy. There were some fake drawings a while back. Spy shots have trickled in. A video or two. But now things are firming up. It now appears that the vehicle will be christened with the alpha-numeric and sufficiently Ferrari-esque handle F149. It's also called the "GT" sometimes. It's expected to share its platform and significant chunks of running gear with similar grand tourers from Alfa Romeo and Maserati. Since all are owned by FIAT, it doesn't surprise me that there's a bit of badge engineering going on. It's just not that often that you see it happening so transparently at the supercar level. To that end, the debate has been raging as to whether this particular car devalues the Ferrari brand. Presumably, some of that debate has to do with who the consumers of same will be. Personally, building a car that some of us could one day hope to own doesn't seem like devaluation of the brand to me. Frankly, more harm is probably being done by the Ferrari theme park in Dubai, the hideous Ferrari-edition Acer laptop or the partying ways of F1 piloti Kimi Raikonnen. But then again, perhaps I am but an aspirant proletarian who doesn't understand his place in the world.
Moreover, I'm sure that some would say that I don't understand luxury goods either if I don't think that they can be devalued by merely falling into the wrong hands. And surely I remember getting into a rather spirited thrash a while back with a former Organic about whether or not rapper Jay-Z (net worth $400M) was damaging the Cristal nameplate by giving the brand hundreds of millions of dollars in free advertising by way of song. But I digress. This is an interesting one. Ferrari, at its core is supposed to be about the red-blooded passion of performance motoring. Which does more to reinforce that credo? Having hopelessly undertrained douchebag multimillionaires buy them as museum pieces or worse still, wreck them? Or, letting them collect a few paint chips on track days and backroads blasts. I say let the masses have a turn already. Or at least the top-earning one-tenth of one percent of the masses.
It will likely still be more than a couple of ticks too far into the Robin Leach zone for my wallet (once pricing is revealed), but just the same, one can dream, right? Indeed one can. As a visit to this URL proves.
The good folks in Maranello, as well as their digital agency of record, seem to have an absolutely perfect understanding of one of the core attributes of their brand that inspires these dreams: sound. From the early V12s of the '50s to the as-yet unreleased F149 GT, sound is something that Ferraristi prize. So, when building a teaser site for an unreleased vehicle, how brilliant is this? Virtually no pictures. But virtually the full range of engine noises. From startup to test track, there's some serious rip and snort. And most importantly, they are sound waves befitting the prancing horse. I also love the old-school Oscilloscope sound wave thingy. And the picture of the trunk lid. That countdown clock is an ominous signal to the bank balances of underfunded dreamers worldwide, but Ferrari gets some props for seeing the wisdom in putting product a little closer to the dreamscape of gearheads everywhere.
Daniel Turman
Strategists & Planners