The Montreal real estate entrepreneur already owns 42 Ferraris. He said he felt “lucky” to be allowed to buy yet another.

“To be chosen by Ferrari for one of their hypercars is a true milestone for any collector,” he said.

Money isn’t enough to buy a top-of-the-range Ferrari. You need to be in a long-term relationship with the company.

By leveraging the rabid fandom of its customers through a business model based on uber-scarcity, the storied Italian company is enjoying a new golden age. Following an almost tenfold increase in the stock since its initial public offering almost a decade ago, Ferrari is now worth $90 billion, making it the most valuable car company in Europe—despite delivering just 13,752 vehicles last year. 

Volkswagen, which sold more than 9 million cars last year, has a market capitalization that is roughly $40 billion lower. Most of Europe’s auto industry is plagued by a weak domestic market, a costly transition to electric vehicles and new competition from China.

ike Tesla, which became the most valuable U.S. carmaker by attracting a tech-company valuation, Ferrari has won the European prize by channeling similarities with a more reliable peer group: French handbag makers.

“We are not—we are not—an automotive company,” said Chief Executive Officer Benedetto Vigna in a recent interview in Maranello, the city in northern Italy where Ferrari is based. “We are a luxury company that is also doing cars.”

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IN Mark McCormack's What They don't Teach You at Harvard Business School, he was having lunch with the CEO of Rolex Ejurope. A friend wandered to their table and inquired, how is the watch business?  The Rolex CEO replied, I have no idea!  Cearly like Ferrari which is no tselling cars, Rolex is not selling watches.

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At the time of Ferrari’s IPO, in 2015, many analysts were skeptical that a luxury business model would work for a carmaker.

Former CEO Sergio Marchionne used to draw comparisons with Hermès—a parallel now widely accepted. The French fashion house limits supply of its coveted Birkin handbag, leading to waiting lists at its stores and a huge resale market. Customers buy all manner of other Hermès baubles to move up the list.

Ferrari’s blossoming into a luxury leader has restored the fortunes of founder Enzo Ferrari’s son, Piero Ferrari, and Italy’s Agnelli family, which took control of the company decades ago through its Fiat brand. In the IPO, both families retained stakes that are now worth billions of dollars.

Another group that has profited from its Ferrari investments: savvy collectors. Most cars are famously depreciating assets—including most standard Ferraris. But the value of rare Ferraris has soared in recent years.

A well-preserved example of the previous-generation Ferrari hypercar, dubbed LaFerrari, fetches $3.8 million, according to Hagerty, a specialist auto insurer based in Traverse City, Mich. When the model was released in 2013, in a production run of 499 units, the list price before options was $1.4 million.

LaFerrari was the company’s first roadworthy hybrid, combining a 12-cylinder “V12” engine with an electric motor to deliver what was then Ferrari’s most powerful production car. The F80 builds on that hybrid tradition, which originated on the Formula One racetrack more than 15 years ago, to deliver even more horsepower—1,200, five or six times that of your average family car—through an eight-speed, twin-clutch automatic transmission. With big butterfly doors and a tiny cockpit, the F80 wears its racing heart on its sleeve.

Last spring, a Houston real-estate broker bought one of Ferrari’s much-hyped Purosangue models, the company’s first four-door vehicle. The list price is close to $460,000 but can approach $1 million with add-on features. When the broker flipped it, the dealership that had sold him the car sued, saying that he was in breach of a contract giving it right of first refusal for 12 months after the sale, according to the plaintiff’s petition. They recently settled without disclosing terms.

Playing Ferrari’s game

Anyone with a few hundred thousand dollars to spare can buy a regular Ferrari as long as they are willing to wait a couple of years. While the standard models aren’t subject to strictly limited runs, the company still lives by Enzo Ferrari’s scarcity dictum: “Ferrari will always deliver one car less than the market demands.”

Limited-edition Ferraris are even scarcer, and you can’t just walk into your local showroom and buy one. These range from special versions of regular models to the design-oriented “Icona” and, most exclusively, once-in-a-decade hypercars like LaFerrari and the F80.

Such models help keep orders flowing for the company’s entire product range even though they account for a fraction of deliveries—just 7% last year. Collectors had on average bought 10 new Ferraris before qualifying to buy LaFerrari or an Icona, which means icon in Italian, according to Hagerty.