The Horse Whisperer speaks out over Ford's F-150 lawsuit

Ford has settled in its lawsuit against Ferrari, in which it accused the Italian car maker of infringing its trademark for its best selling F-150 truck. Ford dropped their lawsuit yesterday, although the terms of any settlement are unknown.

The lawsuit was filed by Ford earlier last month after Ferrari launched its 2011 contender for the F1 championship and named it F150 – where ‘F’ stands for Ferrari. Ford also complained that Ferrari used a logo that resembled the one which is used on the Ford F-150.

[two_columns ]

Despite the bemused lawyers at Ferrari suggesting it extremely unlikely anyone would confuse Ford’s best-selling truck with Ferrari’s state-of-the-art Formula One car – Ford was not amused.

To give Ferrari credit, they immediately proposed a solution, namely that Ferrari would only use the ‘full’ name – Ferrari F150th Italia – on their F1 car, but Ford wouldn’t budge, because the new name “still contained F and 150″…

So the name has now been changed to Ferrari 150° Italia and Ford have withdrawn their lawsuit.

[/two_columns] [two_columns_last ][/two_columns_last]

In recent years Ferrari have given voice to a blogger they call, The Horse Whisperer – the Charlie Sheen of Maranello, who calls ‘a spade a spade’ and says what’s really on Ferrari’s mind in a way that would not be possible in an official company statement.

Today’s blog article is no exception and joins other classic Horse Whisperer monologues such as when they called the Campos Meta 1 team ‘Serbian Vultures’ and Niki Lauda as one of the ‘Moralists with short memories’.

So without further ado, here’s what the Horse Whisperer had to say about Ford and their F-150 lawsuit:

The Horse Whisperer – The name changes but not the sense

It might seem like a Kafkaesque scenario, but the affair relating to the name of the car with which Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa will tackle this year’s Formula 1 World Championship saw its final and decisive episode played out these past few days with the concomitant withdrawal by Ford of the summons. Therefore common sense has prevailed.

In order to avoid the slightest risk of anyone confusing a Formula 1 car with a pick-up truck, for their part, the men from Maranello have decided that the car will lose the F that precedes the number 150 and which stands for Ferrari, as it has done on numerous occasions when it’s come to giving a car a code name, be it for the race track or the road. It appears that this could have caused so much confusion in the minds of the consumer across the Pond that, at the same time as losing the F, the name will be completely Italianised, replacing the English “th” with the equivalent Italian symbol.

Therefore the name will now read as the Ferrari 150° Italia, which should make it clear even to the thickest of people that the name of the car is a tribute to the anniversary of the unification of our country. Let’s hope the matter is now definitely closed and that we can concentrate on more serious matters, namely ensuring that our car that already seems to be pretty good out of the box, becomes a real winner.

Written By

Steve Davies

Steve is an investor, private equity advisor and former Partner at KPMG, PwC and Bain. Most importantly he's a life-long car enthusiast, mountain biker and active sports enthusiast. He designs and builds technology platforms and is the architect behind Transmission.