WARRANTY OR NO WARRANTY | FerrariChat

WARRANTY OR NO WARRANTY

Discussion in 'California/Portofino/Roma' started by doccharlie954, Aug 18, 2016.

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  1. doccharlie954

    doccharlie954 Formula Junior

    Jul 27, 2010
    256
    I'm sure everyone has been following my transmission issues. My cali is a 2012 with 6k miles 2 owner car. I bought the ferrari warranty for 1 year. It's saved my arse about 30k. My friend has one of the first cali made, 12k miles and never a problem. My friend works at the ferrari dealer in Greensboro and says they sell more ferrari cali then any other car and hardly see a problem. So I would like to know how many of you have a cali and do not have the warranty and never had any issues with your car. It would be interesting to sample the cali owners on this issue
     
  2. BillyD

    BillyD Formula 3
    Silver Subscribed

    Feb 28, 2004
    1,774
    Pacific Northwest
    Full Name:
    Bill
    I think this is a good subject for some kind of poll such as:
    - 10k miles and it failed
    - 20k miles and it failed
    Etc or something like this, I suppose year of car is important too
     
  3. Dohangs

    Dohangs F1 Rookie
    Owner Rossa Subscribed

    Oct 31, 2008
    3,089
    Florida
    Full Name:
    Spiro
    That's a good idea BillyD. It would be nice to see if there is any correlation of miles driven, MY vs DCT issues. At first, it was thought that the early MY Cali's are the ones with the problematic DCT. It seems that there have been reported instances that newer cars, and not just Cali's have reported the same issues , such as F12 and 458's
     
  4. good2go

    good2go Formula Junior

    Feb 9, 2016
    939
    I have a California T 2015. It's still under warranty. It had the entire engine replaced at 1500 miles, right before I bought it. I have never had any issues. My car now has 5000 miles.
     
  5. anunakki

    anunakki Seven Time F1 World Champ
    Owner Rossa Subscribed

    Oct 8, 2005
    72,512
    Las Vegas Nevada
    Full Name:
    Jerry
    2010 California. 26000 miles. No warranty at this point.

    Currently having engine mounts replaced but thats the only problem its ever had. $2000.

    Every product has a few lemons. Its all about weighing the probabilities and then determining the best Risk/Reward.

    Californias are not problem prone so while there is a chance of a $30k bill, the odds are low.
     
  6. arizonaitalian

    arizonaitalian F1 World Champ
    Owner Silver Subscribed

    Oct 29, 2010
    19,897
    Wyoming
    What's interesting is some "context" for the odds. Sure, they are "low". But, one could view the odds of a $30k repair across all cars and deem the odds for a cali having a $30k bill as high. Its the same way I (and many others) view the repair/replace costs of the old single clutch transmission pumps etc going bad. Same with the convertible tops in 430s. The exhaust in 360 and 430 for the failing pre-cat issue. And so on. Heck, I didn't even mention the $000's to fix the inevitable sticky interior. Sigh. Point being, from my pov, the odds of $10-40k repairs on these cars are actually relatively pretty high (especially if one actually drives the damn things).

    Add this all up and its easy to see why the vast majority of ferrari owners don't keep their car very long and hardly drive them...but that reality is likely not welcome discussion here...

    [I've put over $25k into my CS in the past 9 months just for so-called "wear" items + one failed exhaust manifold. Meh - these cars are expensive to keep on the road...next topic!]
     
  7. MDEL

    MDEL F1 Rookie
    Rossa Subscribed

    Feb 24, 2016
    3,557
    Southern Europe
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    Mario
    My Cali is from the early 2010 and had 11000 miles when I bought it. The previous and first owner maintained her in top condition and had several extension warranties. One day suddenly the DCT had an issue and I felt a kick when it changed from 2nd to 3rd at very low speed. The problem happened intermittently three or four times and I asked the dealer for an evaluation. They had to drive her for more than a week in order to replicate the fault and when they finally did Ferrari factory stepped in. They ask the dealer to do all kinds of tests and reconfirm them and one month later they validated the problem as being a fault on the DCT main shaft speed sensor. Because there is an extended warranty Ferrari factory authorized the repair which will have an estimated total cost around 11000 USD (8000 USD are just labor costs). The DCT was repaired by my dealer which has the Ferrari certification to perform this operation and talking with the mechanics who do the repairs I was told the following. The idea that Cali's DCT issues apply mainly to cars manufactured from 2008 to 2012 is not true. They've done DCT repairs also in more recent Cali's as well as other Ferrari models like the 458, FF and F12.

    As I've mentioned on the other post here called "Bad Transmission", where I live the cost of 1 year extended warranty is less than 3000 USD which means that this single repair bill for of my Cali's DCT issue represents approximately the cost of four years of extended warranty.
     
  8. 4th_gear

    4th_gear F1 Rookie

    Jan 18, 2013
    4,425
    Full Name:
    Michael
    #8 4th_gear, Aug 19, 2016
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2016
    OK, so we have some interesting new data here to consider and discuss. Let me cobble together some numbers from assumptions based on what we know. Hopefully, this will be one step towards figuring out the DCT failure rate.
    Assumption 1: Dealers, Ferrari and Getrag, know what the DCT failure rates are.
    Assumption 2: Dealers, Ferrari and Getrag use their knowledge of DCT failure rate to make sure they still make money after warranties are honoured.​
    Based on the numbers your dealer provided on DCT repair costs ($11000), labour component ($8000) and cost of a 1-year warranty ($3000) I have created some basic mathematical formulas to simulate a simple profit model that the dealer/Ferrari may follow. Based on this model and the cost that the dealer/Ferrari may incur to perform a DCT repair, we can get an idea of just how frequently a DCT may fail.

    Here is the basic simulation. I assume what profit margins the dealer uses for labour and parts. From that I can determine the overall profit margin for a $11000 DCT repair and how much it costs the dealer/Ferrari. I also assume the $3000 warranty is 100% profit if no repairs results during the year. I also want to point out Ferrari's reported gross profit margin was 48.5% in the 3rd quarter 2015. This of course comes mainly from vehicle/merchandise sales but for convenience's sake, I will assume 48.5% profit margin in my model.

    In this 1st example, I assume the following:
    labour profit margin: 48.5%

    parts profit margin: 48.5% (since you say $8000 of the $11000 repair was labour, the parts component would then be $3000. 51.5% (costs of goods sold) of $3000 would be $1545 and this must pay for the sensor(s), fluids, sundry parts as well as shipping costs and any overhead)​
    These assumptions result in $5665 being the calculated cost to the dealer/Ferrari when they repair a DCT. This $5665 when compared to the $3000 warranty is 1.89 times the price of the 1-year warranty. Put another way, the dealer/Ferrari would need to sell 1.89 warranties in order to pay for each DCT failure, just to break even.

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    Of course, as we assume, the dealer/Ferrari knows the failure rate and wants to make a profit so it cannot be that there is 1 DCT failure for every 1.89 warranties in a year. Following this logic, I made some additional simple calculations to determine how frequently DCT have to occur if the dealer/Ferrari has built in some specific profit margin goals when they sell extended warranties. Here are the results:

    As a control simulation, if profit goal is 0% (here shown as 0.001%), DCT failure probability does indeed work out to 1 failure per 1.89 warranties. So my calculations appear to be consistent.

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    For a profit margin goal of 48.5%, the dealer/Ferrari must ensure only 1 DCT failure in 3.67 warranties.

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    Finally, please keep in mind this is a very simple simulation. It arbitrarily only assumes 48.5% gross profit (extended warranties are high profit margin sales items) and doesn't factor in many details. For instance warranties must also cover other component failures as well as labour costs like towing/transporting, legal costs. So DCT failures in reality would represent only a portion of the costs covered by extended warranties and hence the DCT rate of failure should actually be lower than what is being estimated in this simple model.

    BTW Mario, if the extended warranty works out less than $3000, the DCT failure rate assumed by the dealer/Ferrari would be lower. For instance, if the warranty costs $2000, the failure rate calculates to 1 failure in 5.5 warranties, assuming a profit margin target of 48.5%.
     
  9. MDEL

    MDEL F1 Rookie
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    Feb 24, 2016
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    Mario
    Michael, your mathematical profit models are excellent because they explain in a relatively simple way how the cost of a extended warranty might be worked out by the dealers. I've always wondered why my dealer charges less than 3000 USD for my Cali's extended warranty when one of the biggest european Ferrari dealers in Europe, located in Germany charges around 8000 USD. My idea as always been that an extended warranty works more or less like an insurance policy and the failure rate is certainly one of the main factor of the equation when calculating the price to charge to customers. Despite of the fact that roads are in general very good in Germany, there is another factor which they probably take into account and no one else does. Because there is no speed limit (one of the few countries in the world) in the majority of motorways you can drive as fast as you wish and race your Ferrari around if you want and this type of use increases substantially the probability of cars having issues.
    My dealer serves an entire country where there are speed limits everywhere and from what they tell me the rate of DCT failures in proportion to the number of cars they assist is very low. That's probably one of the reasons why we pay a lot less for an extended warranty.
     
  10. 4th_gear

    4th_gear F1 Rookie

    Jan 18, 2013
    4,425
    Full Name:
    Michael
    Yes Mario, you are probably right about the situation with Ferrari extended warranties in Germany ...my sister lives there, not far from the Nürburgring. :D
     

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