Luca di Montezemolo

And this is really where the feelings about technology change, where Ferrari went from a late adopter of technology when it's sort of proven.

to really pushing the bleeding edge.

And today, Ferrari spends a good amount more on R&D as a percentage of their revenue than most other car companies.

It's become sort of a signature of the company.

Yeah.

And this just checked every box.

Amazingly, it was modestly priced.

So it was a $127,000.

So modest by Ferrari's standards anyway.

It was much more sort of user-friendly to drive.

It actually made sense if you weren't a track car driver to drive this car.

It was really the workhorse of the turnaround.

And by 1997, it accounted for 70% of sales.

Wow.

Wow.

The 355, I would put it in the category of like a Rolex Submariner, of this thing that is a signature of the brand, is perfect product market fit, is priced perfectly, and just deeply understands why the customer is buying it.

The other thing to note before they launched the 355 is Luca massively cut production.

So I mentioned that in 1991, Ferrari had made 4,500 cars, which is just this giant inflation.

By 1993, just two years later, Luca brought this down to 2,300.

So cut it almost in half in those two years.