Massimiliano Di Silvestre spent nearly two decades at BMW. Starting July 1, he’ll be selling Ferraris — specifically, the most polarizing lineup Maranello has ever assembled.
Ferrari announced that Di Silvestre, until recently the President and CEO of BMW Italia, will step in as Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer. He replaces Enrico Galliera, who spent more than 16 years in the role and presided over a period when Ferrari more than doubled annual deliveries and ballooned revenue.
Galliera’s departure is notable on its own. He helped build the modern commercial architecture of Ferrari — the waiting lists, the allocation strategy, the velvet-rope psychology that turned a car company into a luxury empire. Replacing that institutional knowledge with an outsider from Munich is not a lateral move. It’s a signal.
And the timing says everything.
Ferrari just launched the Luce, its first fully electric vehicle, into a market full of skeptics who question whether an EV can carry the Prancing Horse badge with any credibility. The Purosangue SUV, meanwhile, continues to stretch the definition of what a Ferrari is. The brand is expanding in ways that would have been heretical a decade ago. Someone has to sell that story without cheapening it.
Di Silvestre’s BMW tenure maps directly onto the German brand’s own electrification push. He oversaw BMW Italia during the rollout of the iX, i4, and the broader pivot toward plug-in models — exactly the kind of transition Ferrari is now navigating, albeit at a far smaller scale and with far higher stakes per unit sold.
The challenge is fundamentally different, though. BMW sells roughly 2.5 million vehicles a year globally. Ferrari delivered just under 14,000 in 2024. At BMW, volume absorbs mistakes.
At Ferrari, every allocation decision, every customer touchpoint, every marketing image either reinforces exclusivity or erodes it. There is no middle ground.
Ferrari’s brand value — estimated north of $10 billion by some measures — is arguably the company’s most important asset, worth more per car than the engineering itself. The new marketing chief inherits a machine that prints money precisely because it says no to most people who want to buy one. That calculus gets complicated when you’re asking loyalists to accept battery packs and SUVs alongside naturally aspirated V12s.
Di Silvestre also walks into a company that has been emphatic about certain boundaries. Ferrari has publicly rejected autonomous driving, insisting the experience must remain human. CEO Benedetto Vigna has repeatedly said combustion engines will not disappear from the lineup.
These aren’t just engineering decisions — they’re brand promises that the marketing operation must reinforce every single day.
Hiring from BMW rather than promoting internally or pulling from fashion or luxury goods tells you something about where Ferrari sees itself headed. This isn’t about lifestyle branding or Instagram aesthetics. It’s about managing a product portfolio that is getting wider and more technically complex while keeping the mythology intact.
Galliera made that mythology commercially devastating. Under his watch, Ferrari became the most profitable automaker per vehicle on earth.
Di Silvestre’s job is to keep that machine running while the fuel changes underneath it — literally. He starts July 1. The Luce arrives shortly after. The honeymoon will be short.
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