My understanding is that that's pretty common in that part of the car market. I know you can't get the really high end McLarens unless you've bought one of the cheaper ones already.
Also common in certain parts of the watch and jewelry markets.
If you go to the Rolex subreddit, it's full of people getting waitlisted for watches they want to buy and excitedly posting when they finally "get the call" from the dealer — sometimes years later — that they are now allowed to buy the watch. It's a common "strategy" to buy lesser watches to ingratiate oneself with the precious Authorized Dealer™ demigod so that one day you might be able to buy the watch you actually want.
Go search /r/rolex for the phrase "got the call" and prepare to cringe.
This is the exact same thing that’s happening for folks trying to buy a Porsche 911 GT3, GT3 RS, or S/T. Unless you buy multiple cars you don’t want, you’ll never get an allocation from Porsche. The end result is that most folks have to spend $100k-$300k over MSRP to buy one from someone who did get an allocation. The craziest part is it’s probably still cheaper to pay that insane markup than it is to buy the cars to get an allocation.
Isn’t the thing with Rolex that the cheaper watches are some of the hardest to get? You can walk in to a dealer and walk out with a gold or two tone watch, but ask for a plain stainless steel model and they’ll laugh at you.
>unless you've bought one of the cheaper ones already.
You don't even get a foot in the door with 1 from Ferrari.
I read a Reddit post from someone who had an acquaintance that speed-ran the process (clearly a 9 figure+ individual), and it was ludicrous.
I think it took him something like 3-5 years, while it normally takes double that. I think right out the gate he had to buy a few of them, then he could buy the nice ones, and the special editions, then he bought a used f40 or something like that which was 7 figures, and started participating in the racing experience they have, so there's a parallel track where you have to buy some track focused cars as well. Along the way he made sure to show up at all of the events, and it's important to, because to get on "the list" there is a scoring system behind the scene where everything that a customer does is assigned a point value, and only the customers with the highest level of points get the allocations. That includes things like maxing out options on every curve you buy, and paying up for the bespoke personalization services.
I think it was something like 3 years, 10+ cars, and 10 million dollars to get through the gauntlet.
The entire Ferrari Challenge "race series" is guys shipping their cars around the country and participating in "races" exclusively so they can stay/be on the list for future allocations. It's wild.
It's even a thing in a company as "downmarket" as Porsche. Which is kind of joke, because during the pandemic, practically every 911 sold was a high-margin "hard to get" GT3RS.
