Ferrari is entering a challenging new era (RACE)

Hollis Johnson

Ferrari reported second-quarter earnings on Tuesday, and they were a beat. The company thinks it's going to have a record year, after the luxury car maker was spun off from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles in an IPO last year.

Shares didn't go crazy — they were up 2% to $47 in trading — but on a call with analysts after earnings were announced, CEO Sergio Marchionne (he's also CEO of FCA) explained that Ferrari was guiding toward 8,000 deliveries in 2016. 

That's important because Ferrari had for year capped its production at around 7,000 cars per year. It could have gone higher — there was always enough demand — but it wanted to preserve an aura of exclusivity.

Marchionne wanted to change this, and so now the process had begun. Presumably 8,000 more Ferraris in 2016 leads to 9,000 in 2017 and possible even 10,000 by 2018.

The obvious question is whether this move undermines what has made Ferrari, well, Ferrari. It isn't supposed to be easy to get one of the gorgeous, fast, red machines. Really, it's supposed to be the fulfillment of a childhood dream, the end of a long road full of lust and desire.

But that was the old Ferrari. The new Ferrari, independent now from FCA (it had been owned by Fiat for decades), has to makes its own way in the world, and if it can sell more $200,000 California Ts and $300,000 488 GTBs to the well-heeled residents of the globe's affluent regions, especially in Asia, then mission accomplished.

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