SUPER CARS FOR THE SUPER RICH
Hyper-personalized vehicles a trend that's gaining momentum
Ferrari NV'S chief executive Benedetto Vigna one day hopes to sell a $10-billion car. He is joking, but it is an idea based on a genuine industry phenomenon: super-rich customers prepared to pay sky-high prices to create their own unique supercar.
“This is a dream ... but this would be the extreme of luxury,” he said.
Until recently, options for personalizing cars such as a new Rolls-royce, Bentley or Aston Martin were limited to choices such as paint colour and the type of upholstery and wheels.
In the past five years, things have changed: wealthy buyers are willing to spend ever larger amounts to make their new cars highly personalized, sometimes even opting to redesign the entire vehicle themselves.
“If you look at Bentley 20 years ago, you chose your colour, the leather and the wheels and everyone was happy,” said Adrian Hallmark, the former chief executive of Bentley Motors Ltd. who is joining Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings PLC as chief executive this year.
“Now, you cannot get away with it. Demand (for customization) is through the roof, and maybe it's because people are able to express their own esthetic and preferences.”
This hyper-personalization boom is a major factor in rising profitability for those brands, such as Ferrari and Volkswagen Ag-owned Bentley, that can cater to the demands of the big spenders.
Last year, Ferrari was so profitable it increased its forecasts every quarter and posted a record C$1.8 billion of net profit for the year, of which about $675 million came from higher prices driven by customization.
Bentley, meanwhile, has had an almost 10-fold rise in profits since 2019 to $860 million last year, driven by what the company called “jaw-dropping ” levels of spending on customization.
At Rolls-royce Motor Cars Ltd., BMW'S luxury brand, a separate division has been set up to deal with personalized features. These regularly take the cost of the car — which has starting prices from $460,000 to more than $850,000 — past $1.7 million.
One of the most popular Rollsroyce features is a night sky scene of tiny dimmable fibre-optic lights installed in the roof of the car, allowing chauffeur-driven stargazing. But some customers want their nighttime view more personalized.
One requested embroidery depicting the moon's surface complete with craters. According to Rolls-royce, this involved at least 250,000 individual stitches, surrounded by 1,183 fibre-optic “stars.” Another couple in Shanghai commissioned a constellation based on their baby daughter and had an image of her footprints inlaid on the car's white dashboard.
Bespoke commissions have reached “record levels ... both by volume and value,” Rolls-royce boss Chris Brownridge said. Customization is often labour-intensive, but still earns carmakers substantially higher margins.
Some customers have special requests for the outside of the car to go with the personalized interior.
There are legendary industry stories about paint colours, from the Mclaren Automotive Ltd. team dispatched to a Swiss chalet to capture the exact shade of sunrise on the snow, to the engineer who returned to the Bentley factory in Crewe, England, on the train with his nails painted the customer's desired shade of pink.
One of the most recent trends is carbon fibre panels and accessories. As a material, it is strong, lightweight and very expensive. Used unpainted, its surface catches the light at different angles to create a shimmering effect.
“Our clients care because it is lightweight, but it's also beautiful,” Vigna said.
A carbon finish, both inside and out, was seen as another way of putting a personal stamp on the vehicle, he said, adding that Ferrari had been taken by surprise last year by the popularity of this particular option.
The company had to make changes to its supply chain to cope with demand, he said, adding this would have been unthinkable five years ago.
One Bentley buyer last year spent $585,000 replacing large sections of the bodywork with carbon fibre, spending so much that he doubled its price.
Another asked for wood from his own forest to be used in the interior of his new Bentley, a project that eventually took the price tag above $2.9 million.
At Ferrari, some customers even sit down with designers with a “base” vehicle — such as the $550,000 SF90 — and develop entirely new body shapes. One client, from a U.S. tech company, studied aerodynamics and opted to draw his own vehicle, which Ferrari made.
A number of auto executives say the customization trend is more pronounced since the pandemic.
“COVID left a clear message — you call it a YOLO effect,” Vigna said. “In Italy, we say carpe diem. You make money, you can make good investments in equity, bonds, real estate, but your lifespan is limited, so you also have fun.”
You call it a YOLO effect. In Italy, we say carpe diem. You make money ... but your lifespan is limited, so you also have fun.