2.11: Playing the Game: Buying Your Way to the Top

Speaking of games, if you’re thinking about collecting new sports, exotic, super-, or hypercars there is a funny-not-funny nuance to actually getting allocations for the rarest — and thusly most likely to actually appreciate in value — cars. Perhaps unsurprisingly, access to the most valuable new “collector” cars is tightly controlled by manufacturers and dealers, often in ways that are entirely opaque to the buyer. While the big collectors I talked to during my research were hesitant to discuss this topic, likely for fear of retribution from their dealers or brands, in a 2019 blog post a collector known only as the “Secret Supercar Owner” details what buyers will need to consider if they are looking to purchase the most valuable Ferrari, McLaren, Porsche, Aston Martin, and a few smaller brands.

Insanely rare Ferrari Monza SP2 and F12 TDF.

It’s a fascinating read, and the gist is basically:

• Ferrari. If you haven’t been buying Ferrari for an awful long time you’re SOL. Ferrari controls access at the manufacturer level in Maranello with a “pay to play” model that rewards lifetime spend on Ferrari, participation in Corse Clienti, Ferrari Challenge, XX Program, and other expensive programs, and more or less buying every new model they roll out without regard to desirability or return on investment. What’s more, the SSO laments that Ferrari seems more focused on rewarding current purchase history with the ownership of historically valuable Ferraris and describes the process as “annoying and alienating.”
  
  Ferrari’s approach was also highlighted in 2017 when ultra-wealthy collector David Lee was told he couldn’t buy a LaFerrari Aperta, despite having played the game while assembling an estimated $50,000,000 USD collection of Ferrari. Lee’s story becomes a little dramatic — his social media presence insures that and may be part of the reason Ferrari turned him down for the purchase — but it does highlight the challenge even the most wealthy collectors face when they set their sights on an acquisition, that the only way into some of these cars is the way the factor dictates;
• McLaren. The SSO says that unlike Ferrari, McLaren seems focused on a combination of customer loyalty and providing cars to non-McLaren owners in an effort to bring them into the fold. Of course, the way to become a loyal McLaren customer is to buy everything they put out which, given the strong depreciation nearly all McLaren seem to be subject to, means that to be a local McLaren customer is to lose an awful lot of money before the payoff occurs. At least with Ferrari the higher-end cars hold their value a little bit during the first few years after the initial sale;
• Porsche. The SSO comments that Porsche doesn’t seem to have a particular standard or approach for their highest end cars, although I’m not sure that is the case. The only really limited releases from Porsche in the last five years have been the 911R, the 911 Speedster, and a few small variants on otherwise normal cars like the 991 Turbo S Exclusive, the Heritage Targa, and the 25th Anniversary Boxster. The 911R was, to put it lightly, a mess, with limited production cars allotted seemingly at random to buyers who immediately flipped them for as much as $1,000,000 USD only to see demand lessen when the company launched the GT3 Touring. The Speedster — essentially a soft-top GT3 Touring — was somewhat better allocated, as evidenced by fewer examples immediately hitting the used markets, and anecdotally the 1949 worldwide were more or less entirely spoken for at the point the model was formally announced.
  
  The small variants, I don’t believe, really amounted to anything more than an opportunity for Porsche buyers to pay more for a car for a smidgen of perceived rarity, and I’ll be honest I’m not sure how those cars were allocated. Perhaps of more interest is Porsche’s “Paint to Sample” (PTS) program which allows buyers to pick from a much broader color palette and even come up with their own color, for a fee. The PTS process is quite confusing given that Porsche has had PTS option on their online car configurator so that anyone could build a PTS car for some models — only to find out that Porsche had over-sold PTS and so the option would not be honored despite the company having taken deposits.
  
  Now Porsche is, of course, rumored to be building a successor to their 918 Spider, and that car will likely be the test of Porsche’s approach towards “the game.” I know at least one collector who has been buying and selling anything Porsche offers in an effort to get an allocation on that car — despite only the barest rumors of the car’s existence as of early 2021 — which is probably not a bad strategy, although he will have to compete with the few folks who bought 918 Spider’s originally and who are part of Porsche’s VIP program which was originally designed to allow 918 buyers first option at anything new and cool Porsche launched but, again anecdotally, didn’t work out quite the way everyone planned;
• Lamborghini. The SSO doesn’t address Lamborghini, I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps because he (or she) doesn’t buy Lamborghini because it will reduce their likelihood of getting rare Ferrari, or possibly because the showy brand just doesn’t speak to their sense of style. Either way, based on my research, Lamborghini seems to work much like McLaren, awarding “loyal” customers allocations to coming models, occasionally rewarding new buyers or influencers access to continue to expand the brand’s footprint. Given that nearly every rare Lamborghini has produced in the last decade has been small variants of the company’s V12 Aventador — ranging from the 690 HP Aventador J to the 690 HP Centenario to the 690 HP SVJ Roadster Xago Edition — well, you get the idea. The only collector I know buying new Lamborghini seems to keep them for about two weeks and then he ships them off to Southern California to be sold, likely for some small profit;
• Mercedes Benz. Mercedes Benz doesn’t really do much for limited production cars, with the exception being “AMG GT Black Series” cars and the company’s upcoming $2,400,000 USD Project One hypercar which is being limited to 275 units worldwide and was doled out based on applications to the brand itself. In terms of the GT Black Series car, which isn’t necessarily a limited production car in terms of absolute numbers built, it appears that dealers worldwide were only getting one or two units allocated to them and that it would fall on them individually to decide which of their customers would be invited to purchase the $400,000 USD machine. I personally inquired with my local AMG dealer and was told they expected only one and that it had already been allocated to a local collector. That said, cars have also been allocated to social media personalities so it’s likely that Mercedes is playing a similar game as McLaren;
• Ford. Ford basically has one super exclusive car, the GT launched in 2017 to allow them to update the legacy of their historic GT40. Ford made a big deal out of building a limited number of cars and allowing people to “apply” to purchase the $400,000 USD supercar, although the response was such that it appears that Ford decided to keep building cars, at least though the end of 2022. Ford made initial buyers agree to not sell the car for two years after taking ownership to prevent some of the issues with flipping that other brands see and that seemed to work pretty well for them. The few modern Ford GT you see for sale these days are going for well over MSRP, and it’s rumored that Ford has opened up allocations to buyers who may not have met their initial criteria of either being lifetime Ford customers, special friends of the brand, or influencers of some type.

Of course there are a handful of other super-high end brands — Pagani, Koenigsegg, Lykan, Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus, and others — that are super desirable but also produce cars in such small numbers that it’s as likely as not that anyone being offered a new model is an existing customer, influencer, or otherwise hyper-wealthy individual who has reached out to the manufacturer to make the case for their ability to purchase.

Don’t get me wrong: I do not fault the manufacturers or dealers for having to enforce some type of system when it comes to allocations of the rarest and most sought-after models. Given the amount of money in the world these days and the number of wealthy individuals who both want and can afford cars regardless of price, if manufacturers built as many cars as they could sell they would detract from the very thing that makes the cars desirable, rarity. A decline in rarity would, no doubt, result in a decline in desirability, which would lead to depreciation curves that resemble other, more banal automobiles. And nobody wants that.

This entire section is simply a warning to the few readers who pick up The Car Collector’s Handbook thinking that it will tell them what they need to know to buy a Mercedes Project One, a McLaren Elva, or a Ferrari Monza — it won’t, because I can’t. You needed to be playing this game a decade ago, committing to buy or lease “normal” cars even if you didn’t want them, all in an effort to hopefully be offered the opportunity to buy the most rare and most likely to appreciate models. Unfortunately you weren’t, but older, more wealthy folks were, and given the financial upside associated with being able to buy the most rare of these cars, they aren’t likely to stop playing the game anytime soon.

You got all that?