Ferrari Australasia president and CEO Herbert Appleroth revealed at the launch of the company’s new GTC4Lusso T shooting brake in Sydney that that company would add three more service centres to its current network both here and in New Zealand.

“We’re in the process of building and growing our service network,” he told journalists. “Right now we’ve got six service outlets around Australia and New Zealand. That will grow in the next two to three years to nine, because of that we need extra capacity.”

Ferrari has increased its sales markedly since local distribution switched to factory-owned status in 2013, recording 113 sales in 2014 and a record high 167 in 2015.

Sales to the end of October stand at 146.

The fix is in: Ferrari owners should not have to wait a month for a service, according to local management.

However, it is not just sales of new cars – including the new 488 GTB, GTC4Lusso and California T – but a drastic increase in the second-hand trade that is forcing the company’s hand.

“That’s important that when you want to go check in your Ferrari for service, you don’t have to wait a month. That’s unacceptable,” Mr Appleroth said. “That’ s also why I deal with investing so much money, not only just in brand new showrooms, but in brand new workshops.

“We’re just about to open in the south island of New Zealand. We’re currently building in Sydney and we haven’t yet announced where if it’s going to be Brisbane or Melbourne for the other.”

Mr Appleroth also indicated that more dealerships may be required as the brand’ s used car business picks up steam.

“Because we’re a new-car business and our pre-owned business has basically tripled since 2013, we need to have more space,” he said.

“There is the potential, there is currently the discussion that we’ll also expand our footprint when it comes to showrooms. It’s not yet announced, but they’re certainly investigating it very closely. Mainly for our pre-owned. We just don’t have enough space.

“For used cars, we’re tripling, and also remember, all those cars are then being refurbished and going through the service workshop too, so it’s not only more cars but we’re also circulating cars a lot more because there’s a lot more pre-owned cars in the official network.”

There are currently five dealerships in Australia which cover Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, NSW and Queensland.

Sourcing staff for the new service centres is proving to be a challenge, according to Mr Appleroth, who said the Ferrari sPa-owned company is looking overseas to fill local vacancies.

“We’ve already been bringing on new technicians and trying to find technicians who are experienced from all over the world, from the Middle East, the UK, from Italy,” he said. “We ran quite a big recruitment drive because of that capacity.”

Ferrari dealerships are not likely to spring up outside of the major population areas of Australia, despite strong sales in regional pockets like the Gold Coast in Queensland. However, Mr Appleroth said the company has a unique solution to cater for those clients.

“We have clients all over Australia. North Queensland, Canberra, particularly the south island of New Zealand, Gold Coast. As an example, 45 per cent of our (Queensland) sales are on the Gold Coast.

“We are certainly looking at expanding into those bigger secondary cities, but we already cover that by doing remote workshops. We’ve got some partnerships with some local operators there and we’ll take a caravan of engineers down there and service all of the cars in that network, in that kind of community. We go to them.”

By Tim Robson