As people without stupid amounts of wealth, we all might equate the splurge of buying a one-off Ferrari with, say, getting a nice watch that isn’t on clearance. But while that watch will either come home with us in a shopping bag or arrive at the door in a few days, a one-off Ferrari can take more like a few years.
So, if you’re looking for instant gratification at Ferrari, you might as well tell your chauffeur to turn around and find a new destination.
The look into Ferrari wait times, for those of us not receiving order updates via email, comes from Autocar, which wrote Tuesday that Ferrari’s chief marketing and commercial officer, Enrico Galliera, said the company’s most “unique models” have the longest waiting list in the product line at four to five years. One-off models are a growing trend, Galliera said, and they take a long time.
Some cars take two years to build, others up to three, according to Autocar:
Despite growing demand, Ferrari will only produce two to three one-offs a year, to ensure the access to such models remains exclusive and because production capacity won’t allow more.
The P80/C, based on the 488 GT3 race car, has the longest development time of any Ferrari one-off made to date. Galliera said a typical one-off takes 18 to 24 months to complete, but this took between two and a half and three years.
It wasn’t clear in the Autocar story whether that “four to five year” wait period includes the wait to begin production as well as production, or if it takes that long to start building them in the first place. Either way, Jalopnik asked Ferrari for clarification via email, and we’ll update this story if we hear back.
The track-only P80/C, which Ferrari published photos of earlier this year, was designed for one buyer and has been in the works since 2015. Before that, there was the one-off SP3JC, which debuted in late 2018 with no roof and a face that could have replaced Jigsaw without anyone noticing.
Each of those followed a personal build process, via Autocar:
“The client has not only a unique car but a unique experience working with the designer in the process. It’s the pinnacle of Ferrari,” he commented. [...]
Unique Ferrari models are not available to anyone, explains Galliera: “It is offered to top clients only. We receive requests from clients, and it won’t be considered unless they are in a pool of our top 250 clients or so.”
Jalopnik asked Ferrari about production timelines for its “everyday” cars and how those compare to the several-year periods for personalized ones, and will update this if we hear back. Until then, if you really want to, you can compare it with the timeline on the undated How Stuff Works entry titled “How long does it take to build a Ferrari?”: three weeks, for a Ferrari California, apparently.
There’s also the fact that Ferrari reported 8,398 car deliveries in 2017, which probably couldn’t be done if each of them took several years to build.
But, when it comes to spending money, it’s much more enjoyable to receive what it was spent on several days after the purchase than several years—at least, that’s a good retort next time someone reminds you that there’s not a Ferrari in your garage.