In the latest display of blatant desperation and utter cravenness, Ferrari is now picking a fight with a charity over the name of its upcoming SUV, the Ferrari Purosangue. A charity.
A small Italian sports charity, the Purosangue Foundation, and Ferrari are engaged in a legal battle over use of the word, according to the Financial Times. Ferrari says the charity hasn’t made “sufficient commercial use of the name to warrant exclusivity.”
The charity, in its defence, claims:
… it registered the word as a trademark for clothing and other products in 2013, and had sought talks with the carmaker, but blocked Ferrari’s registration to trademark the brand in Europe when no agreement could be reached.
Alessandro Masetti, a lawyer who is representing Purosangue pro-bono said: “This is David versus Goliath.” The brand has been in constant use, he said, including in a partnership to produce branded sneakers and clothes with Adidas, a sponsor of the charity.
Ferrari wants the registration “removed” because of its apparent insufficient use over the last five years, but Masetti says, “[We] have plenty of proof of our activity.”
The case will go to court in Bologna on March 5.
It’s deeply funny to me Ferrari is getting this worked up over the name of its SUV. First of all, Sergio Marchionne once said you’d “have to shoot [him] first” before he’d allow it to be built. But now that it’s happening, it really feels like Ferrari is bending over backwards to convince folks the car is A Real Ferrari™.
It’s called the Purosangue, for shit’s sake. That literally translates to “pure blood.” Desperation aside, the name also carries extremely questionable Aryan connotations. Ferrari isn’t even the first boutique automaker to lean into pure breeding terminologies. Bugatti has also used the phrase “pur sang.”
This is a perfect case of Ferrari arse-showing: create an SUV nobody wants, give it an over-compensating, sorta-racist name that’s already been used and take a charity to court over it. Cool, guys.
via The Drive