Sorry to hear about this . Re: Mucking with the tranny, not necessarily though, right? (Dave, I won't want to burden you by discussing the "hows" but--) A shift lock will guarantee the car was in gear; the rear axle is the drive axle; and the emergency brake applies to the back wheels only. So it could have been lifted from the back and pulled up onto a flatbed? (Or a non-flatbed too truck?) Was the steering wheel lock engaged? (Does it lock the front wheels straight ahead?)
Mike - You're absolutely right. Heck, a forklight could be placed under the doors and just lift the whole thing right off the ground. The sad reality is that if somebody wants your car enough, they'll get it... period. -Daniel
Dave, Sorry to hear about the loss. I've been trying to "google" the web and see if anyone posted anything on there (yeah, sometimes people are stupid enough to do just that). Will keep you posted if anything comes up. Your instinct is probably right - it's mostly likely a professional job. I'm sure your insurance company will do their best to minimize your loss. Good luck! John
sorry to hear about this. where in new castle was it stolen? you know, if the cops find the person and arrest them, they should question the person about an f50 that was stolen from algar i think about a year or so ago. perhaps its the same person. good luck getting it back.
Hopefully it can be recovered, but I am not for sure. I thought with the shift lock, it would prevent joy riders. For a professional thief, I thought it would be hard to resell due to its rarity. Also due to its rarity, I thought the car would be hard to part out. Also I thought with things like the shift lock a professional thief would go to easier and less noticable targets. I was wrong. If the car goes to a collector, he/she will probably want to replace the cracked windshield. I will contact Algor's to ask if Ferrari will notify the police and/or myself if anyone worldwide orders a windshield for a Mondial t. I would be willing to fly worldwide to identify the car. However, I doubt that Ferrari will care. Is there any way to defeat a flat bed? In this case the emergency brake was on and it had the shift lock which I thought could not be defeated. I had the only set of keys to the car and shift lock with me since I had not had time to get them duplicated. Of course a thief does not care about damage to a transmission or brakes. The only way I can think of to defeat a flat bed is to have the vehicle chained to something that cannot be moved. However, this is not practical with an every day car. Is there any way to defeat a flat bed? If the Mondial t cannot be recovered in great condition, I may or may not buy another Ferrari. The Ferraris are the most fun of any car I know to drive, but they are also much hastle.
Keep an eye on the impound yards for the police, sometimes their is a delay in processing the vin infos so a car that was parked and towed may be sitting in a tow yard for a few days or weeks which is a bad thing for not only fees but a Ferrari. I have had a service vehicle stolen that was for my business it was recovered 1 month later and a heavy truck also thats never been found so I have been all through this, the 75% of recovered vehicles are typically used by joyriders wanting some transpo they will usually dump them in crowded apt complexes when done, the rest are pros and if they did steal your car sorry to say they chop them up quick for parts usually the same night, they don't sell the parts on ebay but to those in the trade of selling used parts, wholesalers, bodyshops, mechanical shops etc. Good Luck
f40.com has a 1990 white /red Mondial Convertible for sale. It looks nearly identical to yours. I am sure it isn't your car but maybe you could contact them and tell them to be on the look out for someone selling parts to them. F40 Motorsports Route 66 / PO Box 269 Portland, CT 06480 860-342-5705 phone 860-342-1094 fax http://www.f40.com Here is a link to the ad in Hemmings: http://www.hemmings.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/dealers.detail/hmn_vehicle_id/188120
You can buy a pair of caster platforms for about $40 that you can easily slip under the rear tires after using a floor jack to lift the car. Then simply hook on a winch cable and haul it up on the ramp of the roll-back wrecker. No damage, and away it goes. Alot of cars get loaded onto shipping containers bound for South America. "Sixty Minutes" did a story about all the American cars driving around Columbia and Mexico. Some still had the American license plates on them.
What is your insurance company saying? Are they going to get you another car or pay the value of the one you had? Please don't tell us it was uninsured.
Unfortuniately it was uninsured. For someone as smart as I am, sometimes I am very dumb. I think it will be hard to part out. My guess is that it is on its way to South America. I am a very peaceful person; however I have my limits. I just hope I can find out who did it and who has it. This is now personal. I used to be an Army Engineer Officer, Special Forces, Paratrooper, Explosive Expert, etc. Just let me find out who did it and who has it, I will do the rest no matter where in the world they are.
i am so sorry......... but how to you legally drive with no insurance, bear in mind here in GA if you are caught with no insurance they impound you car on the spot. ( you must have not only a card on you, but be in the computer insurance database as well) i guess other states are different? i hope they find your car .
no insurance? is that a joke? if you wouldnt mind can you explain how you drive/drove a car every day without it? what would have happen if you have an accident?
Sorry to hear about your loss. I understand your decision to forego the insurance as the rates for collision may be excessive and most mature Ferrari drivers are the last individuals to get into accidents. Too bad no Lojack or other tracking devices. I'll definitely keep an eye out for your car or Mondial T parts. Good luck and I hope YOU get to them first!
I will keep my eye out for it. Man, I knew stuff was going to start happening like this when I saw them listing fire damaged Ferraris on Ebay.
Texas law only requires you to have liability insurance. I am sure most other states only require you to have insurance. Texas law does not require drivers to have collision and comprehensive (theft, vandalism, fire, etc). Lienholders will, however, require you to carry those coverages, in order to protect their investment. Hypothetically, if I went and paid cash for new F430, the only coverage that would be required by law for me to drive that car in TX would be $20,000 bodily injury liability per person, $40,000 total bodily injury total liabilityper accident, and $15,000 property damage liability. That coverage would not pay for my injuries in an accident, or pay for my car. It would only pay for bodily injury or property damage that I caused to others. Are there any states out there that require you to have Comp/collision insurance on your vehicles, in addition to liability coverages? I hope Dave is pulling our collective leg. Either way, Best wishes in your search for the car.
Farmerdave, to be even more technically accurate, don't most states only require one to have "proof of financial responsibility"? Which doesn't necessarily mean "insurance". Most average people can only meet that requirement with insurance. Some weatlhy people can post a bond equal to the minimum financial responsibility and never have to make insurance premium payments.
Yes, you are correct. However, in TX IIRC, It's a $50,000 bond admistered through the state and recieves little or no interest. The insurance premiums would almost always be less than the interest you could recieve in a relatively conservative investment.
Since the car is uninsured I would get proactive and start searching yourself for it, if you have a friend with a light plane or a pilots license fly around the areas of the city you can and look for it, it may be parked hidden somewhere and its easy to spot cars from the air, since 911 its harder to fly around the citys here where I live but maybe less restrictive where you are. Drive around various apt complexes or various high traffic spots such as parking garages etc., and look for the car also.
Is there any way to defeat a flat bed? If the Mondial t cannot be recovered in great condition, I may or may not buy another Ferrari. The Ferraris are the most fun of any car I know to drive, but they are also much hastle.[/QUOTE] Possibly a gravity type alarm (mercury switch) that would detect the car being tilted. Then the alarm could page you. By the time you got there the car could still be gone. Maybe a Lojack transponder could get it back before the device was discovered. A tragic event. Very sorry to hear this. Tom
Dave, sorry to hear about your loss. I'll keep an eye out for it too. The part of not having comprehensive insurance is just one of those things - you can't live life spending time worrying about the "I should have ..." things. Your story does make me nervous though. I use my 360 as a daily driver and it is parked in plain sight on a fairly busy secondary road while at work on most business days. Maybe LoJack is what I need too. Does anyone know how much it costs? I went to www.lojack.com and didn't see any prices.
I'd say to hold up before you question your decision to enjoy your car every day. After all, how bad would you feel if someone had stolen it and you hadn't even had a chance to enjoy it? For a daily driver, insurance is pretty much a faustian fact of life. Remember the first law of Thermodynamics: @#$% happens. I'll grant you, over the years, I've paid in way more in premiums than I've gotten back in claims, so it's a losing proposition -- until the car's stolen, or someone decides to sue "the rich guy" with the ferrari. (That's the point where the insurance company's aquatic predators, er, lawyers can work for you for a change.) I think a Lo-Jack install runs around $600-$700. I don't know about the recurring service fees (or if the up front price includes "lifetime" service during your ownership). I paid about $600 for a competing system that included lifetime service. Also, check with your insurance carrier: in MA, I got a significant (20% or so) discount on my comprehensive insurance because I had the recovery system, so it paid for itself in about two years. But remember that lojack is limited to the radio coverage area, so if it's out of the metro area (or in a steel container), it's pretty much gone. (The oddball one I got has a bit better range -- anywhere a pager works, but still has the container limit.)