Ferrari cuts production

Ferrari orders look to be 50% down on expectations.

Ferrari are slashing production and laying off workers as orders drop for Maranello’s products by up to 50%.

It seems the global recession is still not over, with the news that Ferrari is starting to feel the pinch.

Bloomberg is reporting that much of Ferrari’s woes are caused by a lack of orders from Maserati. It would appear that Maserati’s sales are so poor that it’s taking just half the Ferrari engines it was. But that’s not the whole story.

Yes, Ferrari engine orders from Maserati were just 4500 units in 2009, around half of the 2008 figure. But Ferrari are also slashing production from 20,000 cars this year (2010) to just 11,000. Which tells us that Ferrari appear to be getting orders at about the same rate as Maserati.

So how are Ferrari going to cope with the Golden Goose suddenly laying bronze eggs? There are plans to cut almost 300 jobs at Maranello and Ferrari seem to be planning a series of one week shutdowns.

But this is Italy. Italian workers don’t pragmatically suffer because there are problems. They complain. And they’ve recently walked out for half a day in protest at Maranello. But protests can’t change the facts. There are currently far fewer buyers for Ferrari’s products than there were.

So it looks like Ferrari may be about to suffer in the same way other car makers have. Just a year or two later.

Così è la vita.