Australia One Of Ferrari's Best Performing Markets

Alex Rae | Oct 16, 2017

Australia one of Ferrari’s best performing markets with models selling out before even arriving on our roads.

Ferrari Australia will be celebrating more than just its 70th anniversary this year when it climbs ‘well and truly into the top ten’ best performing Ferrari markets around the world. According to Ferrari Australia chief executive Herbert Appleroth, Aussies are enjoying new found wealth by buying supercars – particularly of the Italian kind.

During Ferrari’s 70th anniversary celebrating its $12 million LaFerrari Aperta supercar unveil at Motorclassica this weekend, Appleroth told Drive the famous prancing horse had never been more popular Down Under.

“We’ve never seen a point in time where it has been this successful,” said Appleroth.

“We obviously closely limit the number of cars that come into the marketplace but the market is extremely buoyant,” he continued. “I have no problems telling you it will be another record from Ferrari this year. But again, a measure of increased (growth) year on year,” he explained.

“Our focus is on resale value of our client’s cars… that is increasing dramatically but there has never been a moment in time when Ferrari has been as popular as it has now. In Australia and globally,” he said.

Appleroth explained to media that most of that wealth came from the east coast of Australia where home owners have enjoyed rapidly increasing house prices.

“There’s a lot of wealthy people, there’s a lot of new wealth. Also, it’s more about level of confidence - nothing helps Ferrari sales more than confidence,” said Appleroth. “Obviously the building industry and real estate has certainly been a great level of improvement for confidence. If people see their family home or investment property going up in value they become confident,” he said.

“Australia has one of the highest home ownership (percentages) in the world so there’s a lot of people making a lot of money. The great thing about the real estate boom on the eastern seaboard is that a lot of money is being put in the hands of many people,” he said.

For Ferrari, Australia’s sudden penchant for supercars and the Italian brand has led the way to the Australia arm having more clout with the factory back at home. Long waiting lists and early sell-outs have allowed Ferrari Australia to gain more allocation than it ever had before.

“The first true surge was with the 488 ($468,988) and immediately we had a two or three year waiting list. The California T ($409,888) kept on that momentum and of late, the 812 Superfast ($610,000) where we didn’t just sell out our first year’s allocation we sold out our entire life cycle before the car came here,” Appleroth said.

“We’ve never seen that level of enquiry and sales ever before,” he said. “We’re growing up the ranking of volume around the world. Every year we’re going one or two places higher and higher.”

“We’ve been allowed to grow from our factory. Our factory isn’t producing that many more cars each year but we are able to get a larger share,” stated Appleroth.

Even the highly-exclusive $12 million LaFerrari Aperta has sold out but Appleroth says a few of its owners are Australian too, although it’s possible they will remain in garages overseas unless changes to state legislation allow the left-hand drive vehicles to be registered here.