Ferrari
From Acquired by Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
April 13, 2026 · 3h 59m · Season 19 · Episode 2
About this episode
The episode explores the unique coexistence of Ferrari's luxury car brand and its association with a popular sports team, revealing a complex narrative of value and customer bases.
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. Sponsors: Many thanks to our fantastic Spring '26 Season partners: J.P. Morgan Payments Vercel ServiceNow Statsig Links: Sign up for email updates , get out takeaways and research photos from each episode, and vote on future topics! Our Ferrari "episode preview" in WSJ…
Topics covered
- luxury
- automotive
- sports
- business strategy
Keywords
- Ferrari
- luxury scarcity
- F1
- Scuderia
- history
Sponsors
J.P. Morgan Payments, Vercel, ServiceNow, Statsig
Mentioned in this episode
Products: Ferrari, Travelpro, Altitude, Hermès, Rolex
Books & works: F1 & The Tragedies of Enzo's Life
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