Hi friends,
Here are 3 ideas, 2 quotes, and 1 question from the life of Enzo Ferrari.
I.
There is a story — possibly apocryphal, certainly instructive — about a prince who visited Ferrari's showroom in the early days, pointed to his favourite car, and said he'd take it. Ferrari replied that every car on the lot was already spoken for. Six-month waiting list.
Not one of those cars had been sold. Ferrari was desperate to move inventory. But he understood that scarcity creates desire, and desire creates value: "A Ferrari must be desired. It cannot and must not be perceived as something that is immediately available; otherwise, the dream is gone."
II.
Ferrari inverted the logic of industrial capitalism: he did not build cars to sell them. He sold cars to race them.
The road cars existed to fund the racing. Customers were financing his obsession, and he treated them accordingly — which, perversely, made the cars more desirable, not less. The company that resulted has won 5,000+ races, taken 25 world titles, and is the only team to compete in every Formula One season since 1950. Market capitalization today: $80 billion, on roughly 13,000 cars a year.
When the product funds the mission instead of being the mission, the customer buys a piece of something that does not need them. That is what they are paying for.
This is Principle 1 of 12 in the full Enzo Ferrari playbook →
III.
The drivers died. Ascari in 1955. Castellotti, testing at Modena, 1957. Musso and Collins in Ferrari F1 cars in 1957 and 1958. Alfonso de Portago crashed at the 1957 Mille Miglia, killing himself, his navigator, and at least nine spectators — a disaster that ended road racing in Italy and put Ferrari on trial for manslaughter. He was acquitted.
The Italian press, surveying the wreckage of young lives, reached for the darkest myth available: Saturno che divora i suoi figli. Saturn devouring his sons.
He kept racing.
"Racing is a great mania to which one must sacrifice everything, without reticence, without hesitation."
— Enzo Ferrari, to The Times of London, 1962
"If there was one essential quality about the man, it was his ironbound tenacity, his fierce devotion to the single cause of winning automobile races with cars bearing his name."
— Brock Yates, Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine
One question: Is your product the mission, or is it funding one — and do your customers know which?
Cheers,
Alex
P.S. Every issue distills one playbook from the Research Library — 810 of history's greatest people and companies, sourced.
