His name was Luca
Ferrari boss di Montezemolo is out. We explore Maranello’s political machinations
Luca di Montezemolo has been ousted from Ferrari. What does this mean for Maranello’s cars? And how important are car
bosses anyhow?
The Ferrari of the modern era is a company forged by the direction and inspiration of one man. He took charge 23 years ago with Maranello at a historical low ebb. He isn’t an engineer, but he knows a good car, appointed brilliant engineers and designers, and empowered them to make the greatest pantheon of supercars on the planet. Under his tutelage, the F1 team took 118 wins. And he’s built the prancing horse brand into solid gold.
And now he’s of. It’s obvious that Luca Cordero di Montezemolo didn’t want to go. When we met him at the Paris show two weeks before the end, he was close to tears, saying: “Life is strange. Life makes surprises for each of us.” The following week, after factory workers had petitioned for a proper goodbye, he gave a parting speech to a mass meeting. Some of them were sobbing.
But his long-running discord with his boss, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) chief executive Sergio Marchionne, seems to have reached the point where Marchionne could bear Luca no longer. On 12 October, the day before FCA, of which Ferrari is a part, foated on the New York Stock Exchange, di Montezemolo’s employment terminated.
At Ferrari, Marchionne himself will take over the chairmanship. That’s another job to add to his already-packed roster: he’s global CEO of FCA and takes daily charge of Chrysler Group’s and Fiat Group’s North American operations – oh, and he’s chair of agricultural and industrial machinery giant Case New Holland. He is more of a fnance and corporate man than he is a car guy.
Of course, Ferrari also has a full-time CEO, Amedeo Felisa, who’s been in that job for some years and before that was chief engineer around the time the cars started getting seriously good, two decades ago. But Felisa is now very close to retiring. And the head of engineering responsible for the recent run of cars, Roberto Fedeli, has also recently left, for BMW. No one senior I’ve spoken to at Ferrari is at all keen to defend di Montezemolo’s ousting, or bother to line up shoulder-to-shoulder with Marchionne. On the ofcial Ferrari website, there are several pictures of di Montezemolo’s departure under the headline “An Enduring Love Story”, which is a pretty irregular way for a company to paint the sacking of its chairman.
To the car lover, it might seem an irrelevance that one individual happens to have gone from spending his days chairing one of the world’s great companies and most charismatic sports teams, to “picking up my young son from school”. What matters is his road-car legacy. Is it safe? From our perspective, the critical tenets of di Montezemolo’s philosophy were these. First, that the road cars were skilfully engineered – pretty much regardless of cost – to go, look and feel like a Ferrari ruddy well should. Second, that their production numbers were always held in check, and that there would never be a cheaper Ferrari or (and at this suggestion, Luca’s face would always crumple in horror) a Ferrari SUV. It was all to protect the name’s sparkle and keep long-term secondhand values strong.
By contrast, Marchionne has a great record of making fast turnarounds and proft – especially at Chrysler – through parts sharing and cost control, making attractive cars that are good enough rather than great. Speculation is rife that he’ll milk Ferrari, do populist cars and integrate it more closely into the product system at Fiat and Maserati. Di Montezemolo has always ensured Ferrari stands apart.
Marchionne denies both charges. “Luca and the team have done a phenomenal job of building the GT [road car] division. The cars’ performance keeps going up. I own an Enzo, and now a 458 would give it a fght. That tradition cannot be interrupted by a change of leadership. And the brand must be religiously fanatic about the number of cars it sells. We can’t be an easily available product. All that work on the uniqueness and the technical prowess needs to be preserved.”
In his presence, di Montezemolo even managed a joke on the subject. “Sergio Marchionne has an idea that, to be honest, I don’t agree with. He wants to do [pause for efect] a truck and a bus. I’ve convinced him not to do it, so he will do the same cars. I don’t think you will see an SUV Ferrari in the next years.”
And as to integration with the rest of the group, Marchionne was equally vehement. “Mixing the blood of FiatChrysler and Ferrari will be lethal to both,” he says, because it would make the Ferraris too ordinary and the Pandas too expensive. He says he and di Montezemolo always agreed on that matter, “regardless of the relationship that I’ve had with Luca on a personal level”.
And there’s a clue to the heart of the matter. The two of them just don’t get on. Right now, Marchionne has the perfect excuse to elbow di Montezemolo: Ferrari’s protracted failure in F1. As he said, minutes before joining di Montezemolo in the Paris show interview, “A Ferrari not winning Formula One is not Ferrari. We’ve got to go kick some ass, and do it quickly.” Marchionne got rid of Stefano Domenicali as race-team principal, perhaps because he was minded to make di Montezemolo look more culpable for the F1 disasters.
But many see the F1 issue as a false pretext. “Why did Marchionne get upset about not winning in year six when he was fne about it in year fve?” one insider asks.
“No one I have spoken to at Ferrari is keen to defend di Montezemolo’s ousting”
When Sergio and Luca were in the same room, the body language was telling. Marchionne paid forid lip service to di Montezemolo’s record in running the business, but when di Montezemolo was speaking, he paid no attention, instead ficking through a book of Ferrari leather samples and whispering to colleagues. It was abundantly clear his supplies of respect for di Montezemolo were entirely exhausted.
Di Montezemolo wasn’t the only boss to build a sports-car company to a very personal vision. And another one has now left: Ulrich Bez from Aston Martin. Bez’s strategy of building several models of one platform was learned in his years at Porsche (as an engineer, he fathered the 993), and the way Aston makes so much money from selling GT racing cars is another trademark, made authentic because he enjoys racing so much himself. Like di Montezemolo, he was always a visible fgurehead of the company to the customers. And the signs are clear about his legacy and the future direction of the company. His was a gradual and planned departure from the hot seat, as they recruited the right man to succeed him.
The new CEO, Andy Palmer, was previously efectively number two at Nissan, responsible for product, marketing and planning that vast multinational. He’s an engineer by training and oversaw the Leaf, but, more relevant for Aston, also got the GT-R to market, brought Nismo
“If Sergio and Luca are in the same room, the body language is telling...”
to prominence, ran Infniti and championed the BladeGlider and Zeod. Last year, he announced a full 2015 Le Mans LMP1 programme for Nissan.
Palmer’s enthusiasm for endurance racing is a snug ft with Aston Martin’s history and stated direction. But far more importantly, Aston Martin very much needs a man with Palmer’s wide industry experience and cred. In his old job he worked very closely with Dieter Zetsche to get Mercedes engines and platforms into Infnitis. That relationship is ideal, given Aston will be using Mercedes-AMG powertrains and electronics in its next V8s.
Aston announced in May that the DB9 replacement is well under way, and that it uses “a completely new architecture and technologies”. It will be made at Gaydon from 2016, and they’re already expanding the plant and installing a new chassis-building line in preparation. So Palmer the engineer still has time to have an infuence on the car. But it’s very unlikely the present shareholders would have engaged him if they thought he’d want to rip it up and start again.
A year ago, Aston Martin’s position looked wobbly. It had milked the last drop from its ageing engines and platform, and there didn’t seem to be the money to keep up with the tech of rivals such as Porsche or Ferrari or Stephan Winkelmann’s Lamborghini. It had made losses for years. But now, with Bez having done the AMG deal (and Palmer ideally placed to exploit that as well as bringing big-business experience to bear), things look a lot more solid for the British brand.
By contrast, Ferrari looked unassailable a year ago. But we can’t be sure what to read into this disorderly transition at the top. New management will come, and we don’t quite know what they will want to do. Maranello might remain the same sort of place, making the same sort of cars, or it might not. It has lost a fgurehead in di Montezemolo, and his replacement as chairman is too busy to play that role. “Life goes on,” says Marchionne, “Ferrari goes beyond Luca, and it goes beyond me. Our obligation is to ensure it survives the both of us.” But inattentive hands on the wheel can soon crash a legacy.