# The $640,000 Ferrari Nobody Liked — Except the People Buying It
> Ferrari lost $5 billion of market value in hours after unveiling its first EV. We checked what changed: 52% gross margins, orders into 2027, a 5-year-low P/E.
- Author: Barebone Research, Barebone AI
- Published: 2026-05-29
- Canonical: https://barebone.ai/resources/ferrari-luce-ev-backlash-luxury-monopoly
- Publisher: Barebone AI (https://barebone.ai)
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## "Ferrari, Put the Cover Back On"
On the evening of Monday, May 25, under the white sail of Rome's Vela di Calatrava, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc pulled the cover off the first electric car Ferrari has ever made.
The internet's verdict arrived within minutes. By Tuesday's close, Ferrari shares had fallen **6.3% in Milan**, to €290.55. The US listing dropped **5.3%** the same day — US markets had been closed Monday for Memorial Day — and at the worst of the slide, coverage put the damage at **more than $5 billion of market value** inside hours. CNBC's launch-day story ran under the quote *"the market has spoken."*
The car is called the Luce. The reaction was so hostile that Italy's own transport minister piled on, and fan forums settled on a phrase that became the unofficial headline of the week: put the cover back on.
So we pointed Barebone at Ferrari the morning after the reveal and asked the only question that matters when a stock gaps down on a product launch: did something just happen to the *business* — or only to the chart?
Short version: the business that closed Friday, May 29 at **$340.23** per share still keeps **51.7 cents of gross profit on every euro of revenue**, still carries an order book stretching toward the **end of 2027**, and now trades at its **lowest earnings multiple in at least five years**. The gap between the internet's reaction and the order book's reaction is the entire investment question.
## A Family Car From the Drama Company
Start with what actually got unveiled, because the details explain the anger.
The Luce is a four-door, five-seat electric Ferrari — the first Ferrari with five seats, ever — priced at **€550,000, roughly $640,000**, with deliveries starting in the fourth quarter of 2026. Four electric motors producing a quoted **1,036 horsepower**, zero to sixty in around 2.5 seconds, a top speed near 190 mph, more than 300 miles of range, and a 600-liter trunk. It was designed with LoveFrom, the studio of former Apple design chief Jony Ive. Because electric motors don't roar, Ferrari engineered artificial engine vibrations and sound into the cabin.
Read that list again. Comfortable seats. A big trunk. Family seating. A simulated soundtrack.
The whole point of a Ferrari — the thing eight decades of brand equity rest on — is drama. Low, aggressive, loud, slightly antisocial. Cars that look dangerous standing still. The Luce is, by Ferrari's standards, sensible. And the faithful treated sensible as betrayal: critics compared the soft-shaped silhouette to a **Nissan Leaf**, CNN's roundup of fan reaction ran under the headline *"It's insulting,"* and former Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo publicly criticized the design.
Italy's transport minister Matteo Salvini summarized the mood of the mob:
> "Electric, outrageously expensive (550 thousand euros!) and, from an aesthetic point of view, it speaks for itself."
Ferrari's own F1 drivers were deployed for damage control. Hamilton called the car "very Ferrari" and praised the power delivery; Leclerc called it "very futuristic." Both appeared in a video produced by Ferrari itself — which is to say, the warmest reviews of launch week were the ones the company filmed.
## Five Sessions, Five Billion Dollars, Half a Round Trip
Here is launch week on the New York listing, in full:
| Date | Close (RACE, NYSE) | Day move |
|------|-----|------|
| May 20 | $341.81 | — |
| May 21 | $349.39 | +2.2% |
| May 22 | $348.24 | -0.3% |
| May 26 | **$329.91** | **-5.3%** |
| May 27 | $333.22 | +1.0% |
| May 28 | $346.35 | +3.9% |
| May 29 | $340.23 | -1.8% |
Two things stand out. First, the violence: at the post-reveal lows the stock was down as much as 8% from its pre-launch levels. Second, the half-recovery: by Thursday's close the shares had clawed back most of the drop, and the week ended just **2.6% below** the May 21 close. Analysts quoted in the launch coverage attributed the selloff to a mix of "design hate" and the old market adage of *travel and arrive* — the stock had drifted up into the reveal, and the reveal was the news.
A one-day, single-digit tantrum that half-reverses within seventy-two hours is not, by itself, a thesis. What makes the episode interesting is where the multiple landed.
## What Actually Got Cheaper
Ferrari earned **€8.96 of diluted EPS in 2025**. Against the €290.55 post-reveal Milan close, that is a trailing P/E of about **32**.
For almost any other carmaker, 32 times earnings would be an absurd luxury. For Ferrari, it is a discount bin. We pulled the trailing multiple at every quarter-end since late 2021:
The five-year average is roughly **45x**. At no quarter-end between September 2021 and December 2025 did the multiple close below 35. It touched **55.9x** in March 2024 at peak luxury euphoria. It now sits at **32-33x** — the cheapest reading in at least five years.
There's a version of this chart circulating as a bull case that says: the last time Ferrari got this cheap, in mid-2022, the stock tripled. The honest version is slightly different and slightly better. In mid-2022 the multiple bottomed at **35.6x** — today is *cheaper* than that episode. What followed 2022 is real, though: Ferrari's market value went from **$33.6 billion** at the June 2022 quarter-end to **$87.5 billion** three years later, a 2.6x move, with the shares printing **above $519** at the 2025 peak.
The de-rating that created today's discount didn't start with the Luce, either. Between the September 2025 and March 2026 quarter-ends, Ferrari's market capitalization fell from **$86.3 billion to $59.7 billion** — down 31% in six months — before a single fan had seen the car. The Luce selloff was the last leg of a compression already underway.
So the stock is cheap against its own history. Whether that means anything depends entirely on what kind of company you think Ferrari is.
## The Machine the Market Is Repricing
Ferrari shipped **13,640 cars in 2025**. Not because the factory couldn't build more — because the company chooses not to. Shipments in 2025 were actually *lower* than 2024's 13,752. Revenue rose **7%** anyway, to a record **€7.15 billion**.
That sentence is the entire business model. Run it across five years:
| | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cars shipped | 11,155 | 13,221 | 13,663 | 13,752 | **13,640** |
| Net revenues (€M) | 4,271 | 5,095 | 5,970 | 6,677 | **7,146** |
| Gross margin | 51.3% | 48.0% | 49.8% | 50.1% | **51.7%** |
| EBIT margin | 25.2% | 24.1% | 27.1% | 28.3% | **29.5%** |
| Diluted EPS (€) | 4.50 | 5.09 | 6.90 | 8.46 | **8.96** |
Revenue up **67%** in four years on **22%** more cars. Revenue per car shipped — total revenue divided by units, so it includes F1 and lifestyle income — went from about **€383,000 to €524,000**. Most companies cut prices to sell more units. Ferrari raises prices, restricts units, and demand strengthens. Economists call this a **Veblen good** — a product where the high price isn't an obstacle to demand but the *source* of it, because the price is what's being purchased.
The supporting evidence is everywhere in the disclosures. The order book extends toward the **end of 2027** — for cars, in most cases, buyers have never driven. Around **81% of new Ferraris go to people who already own one**. And the margins are simply not automaker margins: Ferrari's **51.7% gross margin** compares with **19.9%** at Toyota in its fiscal 2025 — the best volume operator on earth — falling to **16.7%** in the fiscal year just ended. Hermès-style economics, bolted to a V12.
Even the soft quarter proves the point. In Q1 2026, reported on May 5, shipments *fell* 4.4% year over year — and EBIT margin came in at **29.7%**, higher than full-year 2025, with guidance confirmed at roughly **€7.5 billion of revenue** and a **39% EBITDA margin** for 2026. When you undersupply demand by design, a slow quarter costs you volume you were never going to ship anyway.
This is why the stock commands a multiple no carmaker gets: the market files Ferrari next to luxury houses, not next to companies that happen to share its product category.
## Wall Street Read the Order Book, Not the Replies
While the internet voted on aesthetics, the sell side mostly didn't move. JPMorgan went into launch week at Overweight with a **$447 target** — raised from $407 in March and reiterated in late April. The analyst consensus tracked by TipRanks heading into the reveal sat at **$477**, about **40% above the May 29 close** (even JPMorgan's number implies 31%). In the launch coverage through May 29, we found no downgrades.
And the company's answer to the backlash was an order-book answer. CEO Benedetto Vigna told reporters the Luce was *"clocking up orders"* from both existing and new customers despite the criticism. Deliveries don't start until Q4 2026; the people actually writing deposits appear less offended than the people writing posts.
That's the dip-buyer's case in one line: nothing about the scarcity machine — the margins, the order book, the repeat rate, the pricing — changed on the evening of May 25. Only the multiple did.
## Where the Thesis Cracks
An honest read requires the other side, and the other side is real. Three cracks, in ascending order of importance.
**Tariffs are a standing tax on the largest market.** The Americas took **28.9% of Ferrari's 2025 shipments** — roughly 3,900 cars — and every one of them is built in Italy. EU-made vehicles have carried a **15% US tariff** since 2025; Ferrari answered with tiered price increases of up to 10% on some models, later trimmed to a maximum of 5%, and guided to around **50 basis points** of margin risk. In early May 2026, Washington floated raising the EU car tariff to **25%**. Ferrari has pricing power most companies can only envy, but tariffs test the Veblen logic at its limit: there is some price where even Ferrari demand is finite.
**The EV transition is unhedged brand risk.** This is the one the Luce week exposed. Ferrari has never sold an electric car. Nobody knows whether an electric Ferrari holds its value at auction, whether the waiting-list culture transfers to a powertrain with no engine note, or whether the company's first family car dilutes the scarcity mystique that justifies everything else. The artificial vibration system is the detail that gives the game away — Ferrari is simulating the very thing it built the brand on. If Luce orders soften between now and first deliveries, Ferrari cannot discount its way out; discounting is the one move the model forbids.
**Cheap is only cheap on one shelf.** At 32x earnings, Ferrari is inexpensive against its own five-year history and expensive against essentially every other company that builds cars. The premium rests on a category judgment — luxury house, not automaker — that the market renders continuously and can revise quickly: holders just watched **31% of the market cap evaporate in six months** before the Luce ever appeared. If electrification, tariffs, or a brand stumble ever push Ferrari onto the carmaker shelf, the low-30s multiple isn't a floor. It's a ledge.
## What This Means
The week of May 25 was a controlled experiment: a pure brand shock, zero new financial information. The result — down 8% at the lows, half recovered within three sessions, analysts unmoved — tells you Ferrari trades on belief in the scarcity machine, with earnings as an afterthought.
From here, three things are worth watching. First, the Luce order book between now and Q4 2026 deliveries: Vigna's "clocking up orders" claim gets audited by shipment numbers eventually. Second, the 2026 guidance — €7.5 billion of revenue, 39% EBITDA margin — under a possible 25% US tariff; that's the scenario where pricing power meets its ceiling. Third, the multiple itself: whether it climbs back toward the ~45x five-year average, or keeps sliding toward the shelf where ordinary carmakers live.
The internet spent a week deciding whether the Luce is beautiful. The order book gets the next eighteen months to answer the question that actually moves the stock: whether scarcity survives the powertrain.
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*Data: Barebone | Sources: Ferrari Q1 2026 results (SEC 6-K, May 5, 2026), Ferrari FY2025 results press release (February 2026), CNN and CNBC Luce launch coverage (May 26–28, 2026), Ferrari commercial policy updates (2025) | Prices as of May 29, 2026 close*