Italy's Austerity Leads to Ferrari Sell-Off

The €204,000 ($250,920) Ferrari 458 Italia has never been a common sight, even on the autostrade of its native Italy. Today it’s becoming even rarer as austerity measures spur owners to export supercars by the truckload. A tax crackdown on luxury goods, combined with budget cuts that have pushed Italy deeper into its fourth recession since 2001, is souring demand for sporty cars and other symbols of the country’s fashionable lifestyle. The number of secondhand high-performance cars exported from Italy nearly tripled to 13,633 in the first five months of 2012, from 4,923 a year earlier, according to auto industry group Unrae.

“Italy is one of the strongholds of supercars, and those vehicles are now disappearing from the streets,” says Giuliano Noci, associate dean of Milan Polytechnic’s business school. “This has a huge symbolic value and shows how deep the crisis is.”