Luca Di Montezemolo Quits Ferrari
It seems to be a very tumultuous time for any higher ups in the luxury car game. You have movement within Infiniti, Aston, Mercedes, Porsche, and now the prancing horse is losing one of its longest supporters, Luca di Montezemolo.
Over the past few years, di Montezemolo, the CEO of Ferrari, and FIAT’s CEO Sergio Machionne have, to put it lightly, clashed, but to put it more honestly, they hated each other with a passion that can only come from the Italians. Most of this animosity stemmed from how each man perceived the future of the Ferrari brand. While Luca wanted to keep it ultra-exclusive, only putting out at maximum 7,000 or so cars a year, and Sergio wanted Ferrari to compete with Lamborghini’s sales targets.
The two constantly clashed with one another over pretty much about everything, and lately that’s been both the exclusivity of the brand, and the current state of Ferrari’s Formula 1 program.
As some of you may know, Ferrari isn’t doing all that well in the world of F1 currently. They haven’t won any races in almost two seasons, and Williams just leapfrogged them in the constructors championship to grab third overall. It’s been a terrible season, and one that doesn’t look like it is going to end anytime soon. Rumors persist that Marchionne was putting enormous pressure on di Montezemolo recently, in so much that di Montezemolo fired the team boss and shook up the paddock a bit to see if they could do anything within the season to regain some points.
While personally I don’t like the egotistical di Montezemolo, I don’t think this is the best course of action at the moment for Ferrari. I tend to agree with Luca in that the marque needs that air of exclusivity. It shouldn’t be Lamborghini. It needs to be Ferrari. And those two things are completely different from one another. And one thing that Lamborghini has going for it is that it can spread R&D costs throughout VAG, Ferrari doesn’t have that possibility. What are they going to do, stick a V12 in Charger?
As of right now, the interim boss for Ferrari will be Marchionne, however as CEO of the entire FIAT group, I can’t imagine he won’t appoint someone to fill the role soon. What do you all think, should Ferrari remain exclusive, or fill the world like Lamborghini has done?