When the US Government handed Ferrari a $3.5m fine for failing to report in haste alleged defects and complaints, it handed out the largest fine imposed on a carmaker. Ever.
One can imagine the management at Ferrari shrugging their shoulders and saying, “ehh! i’ll file tomorrow”.
Long time enemy of carmakers, America’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, cited the failure of Ferrari to report in time a number of incidents.
These incidents included a 2005 crash of a F360 Spider to a 2009 crash of a F430 Spider and also three fatalities that were never logged with the NHTSA.
The US traffic safety board was further irked by Ferrari’s lack of submitting anything since 2011, the NHTSA require constant tracking of all defects and warranty recalls and relies on carmakers to catalog and update any known safety related issues.
Two US Senators wrote to the Italian marque in July outlining their concerns, Ferrari has conceded that it did indeed act slowly and would put in place new measures to ensure less shrugging of shoulders and finger pointing.
In the US car manufactures have to submit reports about any known injuries, deaths, warranty repairs or customer complaints, failure to do so is breaking safety transportation laws introduced in 2000.
Ferrari never fail to submit their annual accounts on time, in the third quarter of the year the company recorded a 13.3 percent pre tax profit on a revenue of 662 million euro’s. The company enjoyed bumper sales in the US, with 2,053 cars sold during 2013.