Martin Buckley Backfire
‘Once Enzo had gone, Fiat not only milked the brand for every merchandising opportunity, but also built increasingly extreme cars’
Enzo Ferrari was noted for the contempt he reserved for his road-car customers, a ‘treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen’ philosophy that has served the company well. But while the founder was still alive, his factory at least built beautiful cars about which there is no place for cynicism. Then or now, to own a Lusso, a four-cam or a Daytona remains an expression of connoisseurship and good taste, not a way of showing the world that the size of your private parts is in inverse proportion to the number of zeros on your bank balance…
Once Enzo had gone, it seemed as if Fiat felt entitled to give free rein to its commercial impulses and not only milk the brand for every possible merchandising opportunity, but also build increasingly extreme cars. In his final years, the Testarossa and F40 were hints of the excesses to come and marked the beginning of the end of my interest in the firm’s output. I don’t care how good these Ferraris are to drive, to me they are just unattractive objects that haven’t become any more charming with the passage of time.
Sneering at things you can’t afford has always been a good source of entertainment. But even taking into account the jealousy factor, the biggest 21st-century problem Ferrari has is its customers. Too many of us assume that anyone who drives one of a recent vintage is a twit, with extra points awarded for open-topped variants with antisocial exhausts. The owners seem to come in two variants: permatanned, baseballcap-wearing octogenarians (whose far younger lady friends have more plastic holding them together than their 348’s bodykit), or the youths who provide endless fodder for those ‘Ferrari fails’ videos I enjoy so much on Youtube. Longterm, that perception cannot be a good thing.
Neither can the fact that there are too many Ferraris around now. In the 1970s and ’80s you could go years without seeing one, but now they are an almost daily sight. Ferrari itself seems to be aware of this: when I was on a junket at the factory 15 years ago we were under instruction not to take pictures of the production line, which stretched for what seemed like half a mile.
When it looked as if the idea of coachbuilt one-offs funded by billionaires might make a comeback a few years ago, part of me wanted to believe we might return to the exclusivity and glamour of the ’50s, when an actor or a European royal – or just a really rich person with taste and imagination – would commission a special car.
In fact, quite a number of very short-run cars have been built in the past few years. Some of them are even passably attractive, so perhaps reports of the demise of the Italian coachbuilding industry have been a little premature.
If your pocket doesn’t quite stretch to such things, there are always the limited-edition cars for ‘specially chosen’ customers. I like to think there’s a group of Italians sitting in an office in Maranello, laughing themselves silly, specifically tasked with coming up with cash-extracting special editions. A $3m car you can’t take home? It takes some beating as a marketing concept.
A new low for me was reached with the Monza SP1 and SP2. With their cartoon looks inspired by ’50s sports-racers, the SPS have the feel of the generic kiddy-sized racing cars you see bolted to fairground roundabouts. Some might say that, as a single-seater, the SP1 is the perfect specialedition Ferrari because most of the owners of such things don’t have many friends: to get that wealthy you have to step on a lot of heads…
The best bit of the Monza buying experience is the ‘pilot suit’ tailored to each customer. I met one such victim recently and could not control my mirth when he proudly flashed a picture of himself at the fitting, dressed in what looked like a grey blanket with a matching oversized flat cap that would have done justice to Colin Crompton, The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club compère. Not the analogy the Monza’s creators were after, but then I’m not the target customer.