There are two things you should know about the Ferrari F50. First, no one we know in all of the world has measured its performance. Second, it doesn't matter if you're richer than Ted and Jane; you can't buy one.
This is true. And to make sense of it, we slogged slowly through a veritable Ripley's fun house of politics, behind-the-scenes arm-wrestling, and lifestyles of the rich and famous.
So why can't you buy an F50 outright? Well, it isn't because all 55 of the U.S. allotment has been spoken ton. It's because the whole passel of F50s was offered only via a two-year lease whose various articles and codicils were fashioned by Ferrari North America (FNA). Even if you possess the requisite $240,000 down payment for the lease (not to mention sales tax and luxury tax), and even if you also are sufficiently affluent to swing the 24 payments of $5600 per month, you'll still have to summon a $150,000 final payment—again, two years down the cash-littered road—before you can truthfully refer to yourself as an F50 owner.
According to Ferrari North America, this lease-it-or-leave-it scheme is in place simply to weed out avaricious speculators—the quick-turnaround artists who, you may recall, jacked F40 prices to as much as $1 million when that car was introduced in 1988. Mind you, it has historically been tricky even for Ferrari to identify those speculators. For instance, whose motives for buying an F40 could brie truer or bluer than former Ferrari driver Nigel Mansell's or, say, Princess Caroline's husband's? Yet both of these customers almost immediately liquidated their F40s into a stack of Euro-dollars slightly taller than Enzo's headstone.
Even if your savings account, gravy-wise, is relatively undamaged by the $560,640 that you'll eventually spend on an F50 lease program, you still may not qualify to wrap your sticky fingers around this particular car's carbon-fiber shift knob. And that's because Ferrari North America will lease you an F50 only if you're on its "A list" of customers.
More hoops to clear? Fine. But how?
"There's this long questionnaire that Ferrari sent me when I first tried to buy the thing," explains a current F50 lessee. "FNA makes you answer stuff like, 'What Ferraris do you currently own? and 'How many Ferraris have you sold in your lifetime and for how much? and `Have you raced any Ferraris?' and 'Do you plan to race the F50?' And so on. If your answers satisfy someone at Ferrari, maybe then your name goes on a list of guys they'll consider leasing an F50 to."
In the previous 13 months, C/D has spoken at length to 11 Ferrari F50 lessees. Most expressed annoyance at FNA's questionnaire and leasing scheme. "I always pay cash for my Ferraris," said one. "This time, I couldn't do that, so the car doesn't feel like it's mine. Throughout all of this, I've felt as though Ferrari was questioning my motives—me, a guy who buys another of its cars every single year."
"I admit [the questionnaire and lease] were kind of a screening process," says Ferrari North America spokesman Giampaolo Letta. "The F50 became something of a reward to customers who already had three, five, ten Ferraris. We looked at the cars they owned. If they already owned an F40—hadn't sold it to make a profit—that was important. But we [FNA] did not decide who got an F50 and who didn't. That decision came from Maranello."
Says longtime Ferrari dealer Rick Mancuso: "The [leasing] theory isn't wrong, but the execution is painful. They [FNA] have controlled an inordinate amount of the transaction on this car."
He's not kidding.
More than a year ago, when C/D first asked FNA if we could measure an F50, it told us, "No, there is no press car." Fair enough. Not many companies regularly hand out half-million-dollar machines to writers who will thrash them on a track.But a funny thing happened as we began contacting the 11 men who had F50s parked in their garages. Either they recited what sounded like a prepared FNA public-relations speech, which always began, "Numbers have nothing to do with Ferraris. The cars are about soul and emotion and a rich heritage." Or the F50 lessee enthusiastically replied, "Sure, let's do it, where do you want to test?"
Then, among those who said yes, one of two things would happen in short order. Once we'd reserved a track and the test drew near, they'd stop returning our calls and faxes. All contact would cease. That happened four times. Or an even stranger response would manifest. The lessee would sheepishly call to announce: "I'd still like to let you test my car, but I can't. Ferrari doesn't think it's a good idea."
Well, okay. But why would wealthy, independent men care what Ferrari thinks?
Explained one: "I buy every new Ferrari that comes out. It was suggested that if my F50 got tested, I might not be on the list of preferred customers, which I think is necessary to get the first new models."
"There are perks for being a loyal Ferrari customer," said another lessee who had initially been keen on having C/D test his car. "Things like personal factory tours in Maranello and private drives at Fiorano. Maybe I have a big ego, but those things mean a lot to me. So, to be told I might lose those perks, well, you know. . ."
And that was the end of the discussion. No owner was willing to reveal the name of a man at the distributor, at the dealership, or at the factory who had uttered these intimidating persuasions. So we asked Ferrari North America whether it had recommended that its customers not lend us an F50. Replied spokesman Letta: "It is true that we didn't want a customer's car to be tested, because you never know what condition it is in, or how it has been maintained. But Ferrari North America never threatened a customer.