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Why the Ferrari Enzo Ferrari debuted in Charlie’s Angels | The Car Stays in the Picture

The irregular series, The Car Stays in the Picture , covers the sometimes bizarre backstories of the real stars of movie favorites: the cars. In our last one, we covered the iconic Porsche 928 from Risky Business. This time, it's a homely hypercar's unusual footnote in history. The inelegantly named, and inelegantly styled, Ferrari Enzo Ferrari was, a technological triumph when it was unveiled in 2002 at the Paris Motor Show. The successor to the equally, but distinctly, unlovely F50, it was Maranello's latest ultra-exclusive supercar. It had a price tag and spec sheet to match: 6-liter V12, 6-speed Formula One-inspired electrohydraulic transmission, 660 hp, $650,000. It was also, at that fateful reveal in the City of Light, fresh off of a plane from Malibu, where it had just touched North American soil for the first time – or at least North American sand. It had been driven on a beach by a bikini-clad Demi Moore, in her star turn as a villain in the second filmic reboot of the 1970s Jigglevision TV show, Charlie's Angels, subtitled, appropriately enough Full Throttle. All of which begs the automotive question we love to ask at The Car Stays in the Picture: How the hell did something like this ever happen? "It was a combination between us having a very strong connection in Hollywood, and knowing the dealer, Giacomo Mattioli of Ferrari of Beverly Hills, that has always been quite prominent, used by a lot of movie directors," says Marco Mattiacci, the vice president of the Ferrari and Maserati brands in North America at the time. "But one of the things we were doing then was trying to find placements for Maserati. And we had to leverage that appeal of Ferrari." The Enzo was thus something of a Trojan Prancing Horse, with the re-launch of Maserati USA hiding inside – a carrot leading not a stick, but a trident, or maybe some slightly less familiar vegetable, like broccoli rabe. "In that movie, there was the Enzo. But there is also a 2002 Maserati Spyder. That was more of the key product placement. We had to place the Maserati," Mattiacci emphasizes.

Ferrari production to increase under Marchionne

The head of any company has to juggle the relationship between supply and demand. Of course, that applies to automakers too, even ones as high-end as Ferrari. And as with many other decisions, the way Ferrari has addressed supply and demand has come down principally to the principal.
Enzo Ferrari may have only wanted to sell as many vehicles as he needed in order to fund his company's racing department, but with the F40 - the last model made under his watch - Ferrari ended up increasing supply to meet growing demand. However, after Luca di Montezemolo took over in the wake of Enzo's passing, he started constricting supply. He figured Ferrari could sell 400 units of the F50, for example, so he built 399. More recently, Montezemolo undertook a course of action that spread Ferrari into more markets, while simultaneously constricting supply to increase demand and thereby profitability.
It's been a winning formula for Ferrari. Just days ago, the company announced record earnings up by 14.5 percent in the first half of 2014 over the same period last year, which itself had seen a 7.1-percent increase over the year before. Clearly the strategy has worked, but Montezemolo's successor is already eying a different approach.

Chief justice invokes 'Ferris Bueller' Ferrari in Supreme Court car case

WASHINGTON — U.S. Supreme Court justices on Tuesday wrestled with the scope of police authority to search vehicles without warrants, with Chief Justice John Roberts referencing the shiny red Ferrari taken for a joyride in the 1986 comedy film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" to make a serious legal point. The justices heard arguments in two cases in which convicted defendants are seeking to have key evidence against them thrown out because it was obtained by police officers through vehicle searches conducted without a court-issued warrant. One case involved a stolen motorcycle that was covered by a tarpaulin and parked on private property next to a house in Charlottesville, Virginia. The other involved a rental car stopped by police in Pennsylvania — driven by a man who was not named on the agreement with the rental agency — in which heroin was found. At issue is whether police in the two cases violated the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. In the motorcycle case, Roberts and other justices seemed concerned about issuing a broad ruling in favor of law enforcement that would let police officers not just inspect the immediate area outside a property without a warrant but also potentially inside a house if a vehicle is located there. Under the Fourth Amendment, police need a warrant to search a house unless there is an emergency situation. In the case of convicted defendant Ryan Collins, the motorcycle was a few feet from the house. In "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" starring Matthew Broderick, three teenagers skip school and take a ride in a red 1963 Ferrari Modena Spyder California that was parked inside a showroom-type garage apparently attached to a house. After mentioning the film's car, Roberts asked Trevor Cox, the state of Virginia's lawyer who was defending the police search, whether he was arguing that police "can just go in" to a house without a warrant because a car is "mobile and they got it in there somehow (so) they can get it out." Roberts also mentioned comedian Jay Leno, known for storing a large collection of cars. Other justices voiced similar concerns, including Neil Gorsuch, who seemed troubled about police officers being able to search garages and other outbuildings without a warrant. "Not many people live in their garage. Some people do, some people do, and in barns, but usually they're reserved for cars and for animals.