Got Money To Afford Rare Ferrari? Too Bad, You Still Can’t Buy It

They say that, aside from happiness, money can buy you anything.

Well, it can’t necessarily get you a Ferrari.

The Italian manufacturer, like other luxury automakers, routinely produces limited-edition vehicles that carry enormous price tags. Oftentimes, the production numbers for these models cap out in the low-to-mid hundreds. Of course, there are more than a few hundred people who can afford such vehicles, so how does Ferrari decide who gets the keys?

“We have much higher demand than the availability,” Enrico Galliera, Ferrari’s chief marketing and commercial officer, recently told Drive. “So what we do is identify criteria that is rewarding good customers. The limited-edition cars we consider a gift to our best customers.”

Galliera has the unenviable — though fascinating — task of determining who are Ferrari’s “best” clients, according to Drive. In the case of the LaFerrari Aperta convertible, which had a production run of 200 models and originally cost roughly $2 million, Galliera personally mailed keys and notes to 200 prospects. Unsurprisingly, all said they’d love to buy one.

Sounds easy, right? Unfortunately for Galliera, the job is much tougher than it sounds.

“At the very beginning, you receive applications from people who do not deserve, they simply have the money,” Galliera told Drive. ” ‘I am the king of something, so I deserve the car.’ I say ‘Yes, but you are not a Ferrari client.’ ”

Then, things reportedly can get a little nasty.

“That’s the easy part,” Galliera said. “Then you have someone who is still a very good customer but is not in the top 200, and I cannot offer him the car. Normally most of them understand. … Some of them that are not used to hearing ‘no’ keep asking.

“The most difficult part of my job is when I join an event and the person is there, and he becomes hard-headed, and he locks onto me and keeps asking and asking.”

Personally, we think it’s a bit absurd to forgo a typical application process in favor of one that’s rooted in vanity. But hey, when you’re a brand like Ferrari, you can pretty much do whatever you want.

Thumbnail photo via Ferrari