theceomagazine.com | 179Y
ou could compare it with paying
US$1 million to hit a ball with
Sachin Tendulkar’s cricket bat, or
Björn Borg’s tennis racquet, but
it wouldn’t be quite right, because those
sporting artefacts are far less likely to kill you.
Realistically, it’s more like paying big
bucks to borrow the plane that Chuck Yeager
used to become the first man to break the
sound barrier, or an Apollo rocket.
What we’re talking about is the unique
and astronomically expensive experience
that Ferrari offers to a selected group of
crazed car enthusiasts, which it calls the
Corse Clienti.
There really is nothing else like this in
the world, because Formula 1®’s most
important and glamorous team allows
people not only to buy its hugely fast former
race cars, but also to race them.
Slapping down a seven-figure sum
doesn’t mean you get to take home, for
example, the particular car with which the
legendary Michael Schumacher won several
races. Ferrari prefers to keep these historic
vehicles in a big, beautiful shed at its Museo
Ferrari in Maranello, Italy, even when other
people own them. But you can drive your
investment whenever, and almost wherever,
you like.
And as part of your top-secret but surely
extortionate annual fees, Ferrari will fly over
not only the car but a whole crew of
engineers and their laptops to help you
actually get it on the road.
“It is an amazing, incredible reality, you
know, because we are alone in doing this.
No-one else can do anything like it,”
enthuses Antonello Coletta, a boyish 51,
and head of Ferrari’s Corse Clienti activities.
“We are lucky because we have a large
number of customers who are very sports
focused, so it’s quite easy to find people to
take part in this; we have more people
wanting to buy F1 cars than we have cars.
“This is a game, an expensive game, but
it is a game. We have customers who drive »
Ferrari ownership | INDULGE