Ferrari Won’t Paint Your Car Pink, Might Blacklist You If You Try

Ferrari is Ferrari. It’s as simple as that. If you’re a Rolls-Royce customer you are buying a car made exactly to your taste. If you’re a Ferrari customer, you’re essentially buying their taste. That’s the deal.

The company is making it known, via a recent interview, that it’s not going to make you a pink Ferrari. It’s not going to let you lower the value of the brand. Sorry! There’s one notable exception to this, of course, but it’s going to cost you.

Porsche is another company that’ll basically give you what you want if you’re willing to pay for it, and they’d really like you to pay for it because the automaker sees a rough 2025 ahead. Mazda, on the other hand, sees a better year if it can cut down on expenses.

And, finally, the Supreme Court isn’t going to slow down consideration of California’s EPA waiver.

Ferrari Is The Taste Police

One of my favorite recent quotes was from the CEO of Rolls-Royce who, when asked about the company’s wide range of personalization options, said ‘We are not the taste police.”

Ferrari, I guess, is the taste police. At least according to CEO Benedetto Vigna, who told The Telegraph  that he was worried customers were getting a little too weird:

“We have been thinking internally maybe to pre-define the (colour) combinations. We have to pay attention because we have to defend the values and the identity of the brand. We will not make a strange car, for sure.”

Going further, The Telegraph says that Ferrari will even consider blacklisting customers who go too far with cars they already purchased:

Whereas a few decades ago almost all new Ferraris came in the company’s signature red – known as rosso corsa – only about 40pc do so today.

However, one colour that it still refuses to apply is pink.

As well as the current crackdown, the company also seeks to police its cars once they have left the factory, as customers risk being blacklisted from future purchases if they subsequently go too far customising their cars.

Pink is rad. A pink Ferrari would look great.

Why is Ferrari being so weird about this? Because Ferrari is always weird about this stuff. That’s the point of buying a Ferrari. This is the company that allegedly blacklisted both Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian. Jim Glickenhaus, once one of the company’s most treasured customers, probably can’t ever buy another new car from Maranello ever again. It’s why I was so happy to see an orange one at Pebble Beach last year.

Ferrari gets off on saying “no” and customers get off on being able to convince Ferrari to say “yes.” It’s a club, basically, and the more you spend to be in the club, the more you do the right things, the more Ferrari will let you have. It’s quite simple.

There’s one glaring exception to this, of course. I briefly worked for Ferrari as a vendor. It was great, actually. Ferrari was one of the easiest clients I ever had because they were always straightforward about what they wanted. Unlike some automakers, you weren’t trying to deal with 14 committees and 900 voices. They told you what to do and you did it, or you didn’t have Ferrari as a client anymore.

Most of what I did for Ferrari revolved around motorsports, which means that I got to go to a few Ferrari Challenge races. If you’re making a race car, you can kind of do whatever you want (up to a point), even if it has a prancing horse on the front. My favorite car was from a guy named Dave Musial, who created a Heath Ledger-as-Joker-themed car.

A Dark Knight-inspired Ferrari is either the most ironic or the least ironic thing anyone has ever done, though I suspect Musial knew exactly what he was doing. Also, not every Ferrari Challenge driver is, uh, super talented, but this guy could actually drive.

Why so serious, Ferrari?

Porsche Had One Of Its Worst Days Ever

Porsche will let you paint your car pink. That’s not in question. It makes a lot of money from its personalization program, though not enough to cover for the fact that its EV ambitions haven’t paid off in the way the company had initially hoped.

The company’s stock is near a historic low. Why? The company is expecting to have to lower its margins significantly in order to reinvest in hybrids and gas-powered cars. From Investing.com:

Porsche surprised investors late Thursday by forecasting a profit margin of just 10-12% for this year, falling short of the 14.4% consensus estimate and well below its mid-term target of 17-19%.

Porsche stock dropped as much as 8% in early trading before recovering some ground. As of 09:22 GMT, shares were down 4.5%. The decline extends a year-long slump that has wiped out over 30% of the stock’s value. Since its 2022 IPO, Porsche’s market capitalization has halved from its May 2023 peak of €109.5 billion.

Here’s a little more detail from Reuters:

The luxury automaker said it will take an $832 million hit to profits as it launches new combustion engine and plug-in hybrid models.

Porsche was valued higher than its parent company Volkswagen when it made its stock market debut three years ago.

But it has struggled to live up to that since then as EV sales have struggled to get going and its endured weak Chinese demand.

Like a lot of companies, Porsche spent a bunch of money expecting to sell a certain number of EVs as it started to wind down its mass-market gas-powered car business. That didn’t happen and now Porsche is probably going to have to create new powertrains for its next generation of vehicles.

Mazda Has To Cut Back On Spiffs

When I first started working at The Autopian, Jeff or Beau mentioned the idea of giving out “spiffs” to people. In auto dealer parlance a spiff is a bonus attained by salespeople for reaching certain goals.

I heard it as “spliff” and used it for a while until someone finally corrected me. It’s a California-based company, it didn’t seem that weird at the time.

Mazda was one of the strongest automakers in the United States, growing its sales to a record 424,382 vehicles in 2024. Much of this is due to the fact that Mazda makes desirable cars with a range of hybrid options. Some of it is also due to increased incentive spending.

Per Automotive News, CFO Jeffrey Guyton says this spending cut into the company’s earnings:

Operating profit fell by more than a third to ¥45.3 billion ($287.7 million) in Mazda Motor Corp.’s fiscal third quarter ended Dec. 31. Incentives totaled ¥20.1 ($127.6 million).

The three-month incentive outlays followed elevated spiff spending in the previous two quarters, but the costs are now trending downward, Guyton said at the earnings briefing.

“Mazda’s incentives peaked in September and began to decline,” he said. “Though spending continued to trend lower, third-quarter sales were the best in Mazda’s history.”

The timing of the incentives seems sensible to me given the struggles at Nissan and every Stellantis brand. Why not pick up market share while it’s there for the taking? Toyota’s production limitations probably helped a little, too.

Supreme Court Case Over EPA’s Waivers Will Go Forward

The current Trump Administration is pushing the limits of the executive branch power in its quest to, in a way, revamp the government. That doesn’t mean it’s getting everything it wants.

President Biden approved California’s waiver to enforce its own fuel economy standards, a provision that was given to it by Congress with the passage of the Clean Air Act and subsequent amendments. Oil companies sued, saying that California shouldn’t be allowed to do this.

The incoming administration asked the Supreme Court to delay this ruling since the EPA was going to probably roll back Biden’s requirements or, perhaps, make other changes. The court, without explaining why, said it was going to go forward with three cases related to the EPA.

What else did the court do? From Reuters:

The justices, however, granted a request to put on hold a dispute over a rule issued by Democratic former President Joe Biden’s administration that would make it easier for students defrauded by their colleges to have their loans forgiven.

Caveat Emptor, I suppose.

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

Kendrick Lamar will headline the Super Bowl Halftime Show this weekend and I don’t know what to expect, but watching the entire Grammys sing “A Minor” last week kinda shows where the Overton Window has moved on Drake. Has anyone lost a rap beef worse than Drake and lived? Either way, enjoy “Squabble Up.”

The Big Question

What color would you paint your Ferrari?