Ben Gilbert: preference

Transcript context

…I think so. Or at least he started it. It was really important to him that the factories be first rate. So he brought in great architects to redesign the factories. And this is when, if you look at video or photos of Ferrari factories today, they have trees in them. He brought in the trees. Hmm. Yeah, they're absolutely beautiful. We'll link to some factory tours in the show notes. I think my favorite thing about Ferrari is the manufacturing process, and it's both because of how cool it is from a nerdy perspective, but also the business model that enables for them. So after 1994, Ferrari does not have a stock of cars. They're not just sitting there at dealerships. They're not just sitting there at the factory. They don't manufacture them and then find buyers. It's the other way around. So for every single car, they only start manufacturing it after you order and you customize it. And it's important to know that by this point in history, every Ferrari is unique. There's so much customization that starts happening that every one that rolls off the lineup is actually its own custom car. I mean, maybe just a little detail here or there is different, but you will not find two that are identical. Yep. So Ferrari factories are vertically integrated to the nth degree. Most car manufacturers these days are systems integrators. Kind of lame. They're just buying from a network of thousands of companies that make common parts that basically go in all of our cars as contracts to the big brands. And yes, the brands do some specification and then they take whatever it is, some long time frame, 5 to 10 years to actually build out the full supply chain, source the thousands of parts from all the suppliers, and then integrate them into a car. Not Ferrari. They have trucks that roll up to the factory with raw ingots of aluminum and they are casting entire engines themselves right there in Maranello. Everything happens on one plot of land. They build engine molds out of sand. They have 700-degree Celsius furnaces, and they operate an entire foundry right there on site. They do the same thing for body panel work and stitching the seats and more. Yes, it really reminds me of Rolex in this regard. And there's another dimension that it that's different from just about every other car manufacturer out there. Most other car companies, even the Porsches and the Audis and the Lamborghinis, a lot of the models that they're making are based on shared platforms. So like, we'll get into this more toward the end of the episode here, but the Lamborghini Urus, the Lamborghini SUV, that is the same platform as the Porsche Cayenne, which is the same platform as the Volkswagen Touareg. Touareg. When you buy a Lamborghini Urus, you are buying a car that is essentially a Volkswagen Touareg.…

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