
← Acquired13 apr · 3 u 59 min
Ferrari
Ferrari is the pinnacle of luxury scarcity — across its entire 79-year history, the company has sold just 330,000 cars at an average price today of $500,000. For context, Hermès sells that many Birkins and Kellys roughly every 2 years, and Rolex moves that many watches every 3 months. And yet this ultimate luxury product also lives under the same roof with a widely beloved professional sports team… one with 400 million rabid fans from all walks of life who live and die by the Scuderia’s performance every F1 race weekend! How is it possible that these two seemingly contradictory customer bases can coexist within the same company? And far from destroying each other’s value, only reinforce it? The answer, it turns out, is a beautiful, bloody, tragic and romantic opera that spans two families and three generations — and just might be one of the best tales we’ve ever told on Acquired. Buckle up for the story of Ferrari.
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Sign up for email updates, get out takeaways and research photos from each episode, and vote on future topics!Our Ferrari "episode preview" in WSJEnzo Ferrari by Luca Dal MonteSeeing Red on IMDbGo Like Hell by A.J. BaimeStephen Wilmot's great WSJ piece on FerrariFerrari factory tourWorldly Partners' Multi-Decade Ferrari StudyAll episode sourcesCarve Outs:
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Get email updates and vote on future episodes!Join the SlackCheck out the latest swag in the ACQ Merch Store!00:00:00 Start
00:01:08 Intro
00:06:11 Enzo Ferrari's Early Life & Tragedies (1898-1919)
00:12:39 Scuderia Ferrari: Enzo's Racing Dream (1920-1933)
00:25:08 The Prancing Horse & Ferrari's Branding
00:35:41 First Ferrari Road Cars & Le Mans Victory (1947-1949)