Ferrari

**Ben Gilbert** (0:00)
OK, David, so the question, do you have a favorite Ferrari?

**David Rosenthal** (0:04)
Ooh, that's a tough one. I would never actually want to get behind the wheel of it, but I think I got to go with the F40.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:13)
Of course.

**David Rosenthal** (0:13)
I remember just being like a kid in elementary school and getting a model of one and thinking like, oh my God, this is the most incredible machine that mankind has ever created.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:23)
Yeah, it's the defining supercar.

**David Rosenthal** (0:25)
Yes, yes. How about you?

**Ben Gilbert** (0:26)
I actually have two. One is the car from Charles LeClaire's wedding.
It's the 1957 250 TestaRosa and the car from Ford versus Ferrari. That 1966 330 P3 is just beautiful. It's got these curves. It looks like a spaceship. It's gorgeous.

**David Rosenthal** (0:45)
Ah, beauty and power. The story of Ferrari.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:48)
Yes. All right, should we do it?

**David Rosenthal** (0:50)
Let's do it.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:08)
Welcome to the spring 2026 season of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert.

**David Rosenthal** (1:16)
I'm David Rosenthal.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:17)
And we are your hosts. Almost everyone needs transportation. It is a giant market serving a huge human need, and it is one of the top three things that households spend money on along with their housing and their food. And the automobile has become the default way that humans move around the world.

**David Rosenthal** (1:36)
And that is not what we're talking about today.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:40)
And this episode has absolutely nothing to do with any of that. Today's episode, listeners, is about selling dreams.

**David Rosenthal** (1:46)
Oh, yes.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:48)
We are talking about Ferrari, one of the most paradoxical companies that we have ever studied here on Acquired. Ferrari ships very, very few cars, around 14,000 per year. That is approximately the number of Toyotas that are sold every 10 hours. But of course, we know Toyota and Ferrari are a silly comparison. So what about a company that we have covered in the past, Porsche? David Rosenthal Even Porsche ships 22 times the number of cars that Ferrari does. And yet, even though almost nobody owns a Ferrari, only about 180,000 people globally, they have among the highest brand recognition. I would argue that over a billion people know what a Ferrari is. Which means, David, that Ferrari has the highest ratio of people who know about their products to people who actually own their products of any company in human history.

**David Rosenthal** (2:48)
David Rosenthal I think we got to scope it to companies that make products that are nominally available for purchase by consumers.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:56)
But yes.

**David Rosenthal** (2:57)
David Rosenthal Yes.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:58)
Like the Space Shuttle is a product, but you can't go buy a Space Shuttle. So I would say Ferrari is the only ultra luxury brand that has reached mass cultural awareness. There's some fun numbers just to keep putting this in perspective. There are 10 times more Birkin and Kelly bags made each year over at Hermes than there are Ferraris. And there are 70 times more Rolexes made each year than there are Ferraris.

**David Rosenthal** (3:24)
Yeah, it's wild.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:25)
The paradoxes continue. People are dying for their SUVs and yet they limit them to just 20% of total volume.

**David Rosenthal** (3:33)
Wait, what is this SUV of which you speak?

**Ben Gilbert** (3:35)
I'm sorry, Ferrari Utility Vehicle because they would never.

**David Rosenthal** (3:38)
Yes, the FUV, the Ferrari Utility Vehicle.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:42)
Ford, here's another good one, makes 160 times the number of cars that Ferrari does. Yet Ferrari has a higher market capitalization. They're worth more than the Ford Motor Company. And Volkswagen, and Honda, and Stalantis, and Mercedes-Benz. This company is worth so much more than most giant manufacturers. Ferrari makes all of their cars mostly by hand, inefficiently and one-off in a single town, Maranello, Italy. And they have the highest margins in the entire auto industry. Of the very few cars that they do make, this is my favorite one, David, about 80% of them are earmarked specifically for people who already own a Ferrari.

**David Rosenthal** (4:27)
Right. Right.

**Ben Gilbert** (4:29)
So that means there's less than 3,000 new customers buying Ferraris in any given year.

**David Rosenthal** (4:34)
It's actually completely insane when you think about it.

**Ben Gilbert** (4:38)
This funnel narrows pretty tight. So how on earth did Ferrari manage to build this incredibly valuable business while selling their cars to almost nobody? Well, the answer is bloody. It is half a century of death and speed and love and feeling alive. And of course, there are some of the most clever business model mechanics that we have ever studied here on Acquired.