Should I buy my "totalled" 456 6 speed?

Tim, I think you have a great strategy/opportunity here. No one knows the car better than you, and if you can live with the stigma (and price hit) of a salvage title, I think it could be a really sweet deal, depending on how much you have to fork out to buy it back.

The misfire detection on the early Motronics was crap, hence on the later models, Ferrari installed the Cat overtemperature protection system to guard against exactly the scenario you described. Some have disabled it, and some have had their cars catch fire.......

Hopefully you can get it back for the low $30's or 40's?

 

Tim, the people who disable the system do so because it's unreliable and causes many false alarms. Even the later systems on the 550's and 575M's are renowned for causing spurious alarms and shutdowns.

The solution is not to disable, because as you well know, it serves a very important function, but the proper thing to do is improve its reliability. A couple of us have taken stabs at a new solution, but to date, there's nothing readily available that can be recommended.

If you're getting a check for $57K and they're going to sell it for $10K to $15K, I would be all over that deal!

 

Buy it! Or let someone here save her from some shady dealer.

 

id take the 57k and run.....

 

but try to milk them for some addtl $$$ first... first offer ?

 

This.

Never settle for the first offer with insurance companies.

Find CURRENT auction results for similar cars. I would imagine you should be able to net more than what they're offering considering it's a manual transmission 456.

There's a 95 manual with almost 35k miles on it on eBay asking $74k.

Primary focus should be on getting the maximum payout, then from there you decide if you want to buy it back and drive the hell out of it.

 

Sounds like a good solution to buy the car back. You know the car, it's condition and what was already made on it. If you can buy it back at an interesting price (…as mentioned), there's some big money left to cure the issues...

 

I'd assume you get to buy it for that salvage value, so if you decide to keep it you get 57k minus the estimated salvage value? I'd take that if that was below 15-20k or so. 40k goes a long way in tackling issues - though it won't take away the salvage status.

As said, the valuation might not be fair in current market conditions so perhaps some wiggle room. The insurance company on their part may decide it is worth more in salvage then too.
I would leave parting out to professionals unless you have the room and inclination to keep its carcass around for a long time until everything is sold. Personally I'd prefer to have a cool Ferrari to drive around in even with a little history.

 

LOL! that is a great way to end up with a 456. The cats are about $20K. Add in all the small stuff like the 2 new SDECU's for $1000. Add in the cost of just dripping some driveline to replace some burnt insulation $$$$. That is how these perfect cars get totaled. For pennies you can have a perfect car with ding on title. Who cares about the ding since you buy it back for nothing on the front end? Drive the heck out of it and enjoy. You want cheap cats you can cut the old ones open and recore them yourself. Fabspeed was doing this to mimic OEM Ferrari cats. They may have a program to do that way cheaper than stock and use good quality low cell metal matrix Cat cores. Burnt but intact insulation can be covered quite cleanly and nicely with sheet aluminum for even a better an oem look without taking a lot of driveline out for access. The OEM wiring is lame which is part of what got you there. So a non-oem rewire will actually be better than original. But you have to do good diagnostics and not just replace parts. There was a fault that's why the fire. So repairs are needed. Often if you go back and look at records of repair you can see the fire the ultimate cause of just part replacement.