Yahoo Autos How Do You Make the List to Buy a Supercar? Be Like These Guys
Every man needs a place to rest his arm. Among Kris Singh's armrest options is his Lamborghini Veneno coupe, one of only three sold.
The List is not some 1920s fraternity handbook. It doesn’t include written qualifiers or pictograms for a secret handshake. That would be gauche. (It might also be illegal.) Instead, its rules are unspoken and unshared, like the discretionary door policy of a hot nightclub. Because, for those queued up, every movement brings them that much closer to the absurd opportunity to write a check that exceeds many well-off people’s retirement portfolios.
In fact, The List determines the precise scale of that opportunity, meaning the number of cars included in any limited-production run. The core goal of the manufacturer is, of course, to ensure that demand outstrips supply such that every car has an owner before it’s even built. So, for example, when the application process for McLaren’s P1 opened and 1500 people with gold bars singeing holes in their pockets begged to be lightened by $1.15 million, this provided the company with a basis for settling on a final output.
“Realistically, the general rule is 50 percent of people are going to end up flaking,” explains John Paolo Canton, head of public relations at McLaren North America. “So that brings us to 750. And then you get to the point where you say, all right, if there are 750 serious people here, we need to keep demand higher than supply for two reasons. One, it’s the smart brand thing to do, but two, the fewer we make, the more committed the buyers will be.”
By only producing half of what the brand knew it could assuredly sell, or just 375 cars, McLaren added gratification for those blessed with a car. And it created unfulfilled demand to entice potential buyers for future specials. The List thus ensures a win-win for everyone.
“I can be blunt and say the specials, as we call them, they’re profitable,” says Matt Clarke, Aston Martin North America’s director of marketing and communications. “Otherwise we wouldn’t make them.” But in today’s market, where these brand-new, extremely limited vehicles no longer go through a cycle of depreciation before escalating in value, the profit motive also exists for buyers.
“I was looking this morning at the Vantage GT12, and they’re already selling well above list,” Clarke says, noting that prices on the 2015 model have increased by well over $100,000. “They’re a very safe investment.” The rich do get richer, just for parking their assets.
So how does one get added to The List? First, acquire money—preferably Panama Papers quantities of money. Then evince a willingness to reflexively flush vast amounts of it. “The rule that we follow is first come, first served,” says Vittorio Gabba, head of Lamborghini’s One-Off and Ad Personam programs. “Meaning that the first customer who puts down the deposit is the first to get the car.”
Beyond being oceanically liquid, it is important to be appropriately connected and vocal. After being wowed by the radical 2012 Lamborghini Aventador J, Kris Singh, a 38-year-old Miami-based investor, let his interest in future Lambos be known. “That car really resonated with me because it highlighted what Lamborghini is the king of: crazy,” Singh says. “So I reached out to everyone I knew there, and I said, ‘Listen, the next time you guys do something like this, I want to be a part of it.’ ” The subjects of his outreach included the company’s regional sales manager, its research and development boss, and its North American division president.
List of The List: Recent Releases for the Extraordinarily Privileged
Left to right: Ford GT, Lamborghini Centenario, Lamborghini Veneno coupe/roadster, McLaren P1, Porsche 911 R
Singh didn’t just Google-stalk and cold-call these executives. He had already built up relationships with them over the years by buying Gallardos and Murciélagos and by being active in owners’ groups. All of this is germane to List placement. While there is no overt requirement for prior purchases, brand representatives all say that being a consistent buyer helps. Singh was eventually rewarded in 2013, allowed to purchase one of three $3.9 million Lamborghini Veneno coupes, sight unseen. Recent asking prices for the roadster have been in the $8 million to $11 million range.
“There’s not a formula, per se,” says Aston Martin’s Clarke. “But you always start with your loyalists before you cast the net any wider.” This is especially true for collectors with a pedigree in ultra-exclusive purchases. “If you’ve got some credit in the bank in terms of buying prior specials, then we’re absolutely going to go to you first,” he says.
Unlike most love matches, these brands do not require monogamy. “We know that the customer who owns a Bugatti, they own a LaFerrari, they own the McLaren P1,” says Lamborghini’s Gabba. But the marques are always looking for ways to gain converts. This is another way to jump ahead on The List. Canton says McLaren will often reach out to “somebody who, maybe there’s a budding relationship and they’re driving a competitor-brand car.”
This is how California investment manager Mark Lindee ended up in a P1 after spec’ing a Ferrari 458 Italia. “McLaren was a relatively new retail brand when they conceived of the P1,” Lindee says. “They had a dealership in Beverly Hills, the general manager of which had been the general manager of a local Ferrari dealership whom I’d built a Ferrari with. And when they announced the P1, he called me and said, ‘We have to do this car.’ ”
Movement up The List can also happen through good deeds. This could entail loaning the company a special vintage car for an event, but it can also include something as simple as demonstrating appreciation for an elite vehicle’s capabilities beyond that of an appreciating asset. Speaking of the brand’s recent $2.3 million, track-only Vulcan, Clarke says: “Ideally, we don’t want them all disappearing into collections and never seen again. We do want it to go to people who would actually race it.”
This generosity can even extend to actual charity. Michigan performance-shop owner Ken Lingenfelter has an extensive private collection of cars, containing myriad limited-run exotics, which he opens to the public for events and fundraisers. “My name, our brand, is kind of known worldwide,” he says, careful to enunciate a Midwestern humility, “and it provides a really great venue, a great opportunity for someone to get exposure for their vehicle in a kind of exclusive way.”
In this same vein, fame sometimes helps. Rock star Eric Clapton was able to get Ferrari and Pininfarina to build him a one-off tribute to the 512BB in 2012, and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler requested a custom build for the first Hennessey Venom GT convertible. Likewise, social-media presence plays an increasingly important role. “I think a lot of companies are looking for guys who are followed on the internet and tweet and post,” says Glickenhaus. “Use any advantage you have. Nothing is sacred.”
Nothing, that is, except money. Though profit is a core motive for buyer and seller alike, every manufacturer and customer with whom we spoke decried the practice of flipping cars. In the bizarro world of the ultra-rich, cashing in on your List position is a shabby violation of the tenets of automotive nobility. One doesn’t buy a Picasso to sell it. One buys it to own it.
Like us, Ken Lingenfelter parks all his red special-edition Ferraris together in reverse chronological order: LaFerrari, Enzo, F40, and 288GTO.
Singh certainly found the limit when he tried to get to the top of McLaren’s list for the BP23, the triple-seat successor to the famed F1. “They basically told me, ‘Register your interest.’ And they said, ‘You’ve never owned a McLaren.’ They’re like, dude, we can’t say no to P1 owners and F1 owners to give you one. And I said, ‘You know, I actually respect that.’ ”
Still, at times these companies take great pleasure in saying no. “I mean, if Justin Bieber is putting his name down, I would definitely say no,” says Aston’s Clarke. “But we don’t tend to attract those people that we’d like to say no to.”
Of course, testing the limits of no can cut both ways. “One time I asked Lamborghini to put a rocket launcher on my car,” says Singh, chortling at the obvious joke.
“I was like, ‘I want an actual rocket launcher coming off the back. I want to be able to shoot lasers at people.’ And, they called back and said [affects Italian accent], ‘Kris, we have heard back, and we cannot do the lasers or the rocket launcher. For safety reasons.’ ”
The Blue-Oval List: The Maker of the Tempo Gets Choosy
Exotic carmakers have cultivated relationships with exclusive clients for decades. Not so at Ford, which for the most part has spent the past 114 years peddling mass-produced affordability, from the Model T to the Taurus. As the $450,000 GT supercar comes to market, the most expensive model in the current catalog is a $78,000 Super Duty F-450—not exactly lustworthy unless you have a decommissioned battleship to tow. So the company faced a dilemma in allocating the first 750-car batch of GTs (out of a promised total production run of 1000). Ford did not want to just ship the cars to preselected Ford dealers, as it did with the 2005 GT, and see them slap on huge premiums. Nor did it want to sell its new halo car entirely on a first-come, first-served basis.
“When we sat down and looked at the numbers, we thought, ‘How do you do this fairly?’” says Henry Ford III, Ford Performance marketing manager and the great-great-grandson of the guy who first put his name on the building. “How do we get these cars in the hands of those we think are true Ford brand ambassadors and will really go out and enjoy this vehicle and use it in a way we think, and they think, helps celebrate the Ford brand and the innovation and technology behind the Ford GT?”
