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#1
10-25-2005, 04:04 PM
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Buying, owning and selling a 360 Modena.
So, my 360’s gone, and here’s the story:
I bought it on an impulse. I was at a dealer getting a horrible mess of a car fixed up (they were actually really kind to work on it, most folks would have turned away when they saw me roll up, shedding parts on their forecourt) when I saw this red/black 360. It was beautiful. “What’s the story?” I asked. “Not sure, it only arrived ten minuets ago, I’ll go see.” I had bought a Mini the day before so I half wondered if I was becoming an automotive shopaholic. Is there a Jungian therapy for that? Is buying cars cheaper than the therapy? If so it would that would explain why you Woody Allen isn’t known for his automotive skills. Still, the twin purchases worked out well: There is a guy in the same office building who mentally weighs your wallet every time he meets you, his estimation of folk is almost linked to the Dow. I ran into him in the elevator two days later. “So you’ve got a new Ferrari I hear,” he said, briefly rotating his mobile away from his chin. Christmas! I thought. How the hell did he know about that? I only just darted in with it this afternoon. “Sure, it’s great.” We walk out together and pass my parking space where the 360 sits, exalted by the dealer’s detailing. “Christ! It’s a Ferrari!” “Well, er, yes. That’s what you said.” “I’d heard that you’d got a Mini! I was just saying that to......I didn’t think that...... that you were.... So, how’s business going?” It was a good example of the model. The last owner had loved the for its untouched Ferrariness, perfection to him was a lack of human stain. The manuals were still covered in plastic and everything extra had been thrown at the car, right down to an exhaust that was LOUD LOUD and some after-market chips for the motor and gearbox. (A standard silencer soon went on. If Ferrari got the shock absorber settings right then they probably got the exhaust right too. Ask any judge.) CSI would have had a hard time finding anything about the last owner, the car was clean-room clean, save for two Polaroids. They were pictures that a couple of girls had taken of themselves and probably slipped through the driver’s window where they had fallen into a seat/floor crevice. Just shots of girls with their phone numbers written on them. They flew nicely into a bin. First the good things. The car was easy to drive - at any speed, other than in reverse or moving off from a stop, but more about that later. It looked great from the inside, it looked great from the outside. It was fast, and it lifted its skirts and ran without the engine sounding as though you were doing bad things to various moving parts. It started, it stopped, it was easy to park, and it got good parking. The F1 Tranny was great once you were rolling, allowing you to concentrate on braking and steering, rather than right-angling through the traditional Ferrari gate for the needed gear. While it didn’t handle that well the car gripped the road with overkill. Anyone who spins a 360 on a dry piece of public tarmac is doing something that deserves jail time, or at least a spell in the boobie hatch, white coat and syringe supplement included. For that I loved it. Next the *****ing: The Daytona seats never fitted me very well, the driver’s chair sort of hunched up my shoulders no matter how I adjusted it or wiggled about. The passenger seat was marginally better, but just marginally. The F1 gearbox drove me mad in slow traffic. It would burn the clutch every time I pulled away, no matter how I fed in the throttle, and I’m fussy about things like that. ‘Go to the dealer and have the computer adjusted,’ this site advised (others), but I was reluctant to go. I was unimpressed with the dealer in that whenever I checked his work I found it lacking. When a panels had to be unbolted it came back missing bolts. When electrical components had to be changed the replacements came scarcely grounded, they were only hand tight in their brackets. Once when the car was returned the fuse covers were misplaced, one was soon found in the glove box and the other emerged from under the driver's seat, odd places for plastic shrouds that should live under a cover littered with Allen screws. It struck me that perhaps the dealers tend to play on the owners’ belief that a Ferrari is so at the edge of performance it can’t be reliable. If it is badly serviced - but always washed - the owner won’t complain about poor reliability, he will put it down to the nature of the product. Did I mention any of this on FerrariChat at the time? No way, with such a small pool of cars where I live I think the dealer could work out who the whiner was and cut him off, and with even the oil car specific, who would want that? If nothing else it might suddenly take three months for the service department to do the smallest thing..... They were nice people, but they were so caught up with the image of the product they forgot to check the work. While the car had bags of grip it perhaps didn’t have the best handling. It was a heavy creature, prone to understeer when one overstepped the charity of the tires, not the sort of machine that danced from corner to corner, more of a point and squirt machine. Mind you, I’ve happily driven much worse, and I’m sure I will again. The very worst side of owning such a machine? Some of your pushy friends. On a long car journey when they took the wheel they became cliché type A males, the bad Ferrari driver, flashing headlights lights at slower cars, overtaking on the inside, even giving the finger as they motored past innocents who were just trying to get from A to B before this loud car came along. I hated that. Why were they good drivers in their own cars? So, why did I sell? I took my family abroad for a year, and before I left I looked at this machine in the garage. Would it become more valuable sitting there for a year? No. Would it become mechanically more reliable? No. Would they never make anything as beautiful or powerful again? No. So away it went. 
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#3
10-25-2005, 10:07 PM
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THAT was a story of epic proportions. Thank you.
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#4
10-25-2005, 10:16 PM
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Quote:
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#5
10-25-2005, 10:18 PM
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Mark, excellent read. So tell us, did you keep the Mini?
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#6
10-25-2005, 10:52 PM
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Great story......I think you did the best thing by letting her go to another home.....I bet you had just as much fun (or even more fun) with the Mini!
......Mark
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#7
10-25-2005, 11:08 PM
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yes, great writing skills, but sort of a sad story. What are you going to buy to replace this wonderful beast?
gordon
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#9
10-26-2005, 01:28 AM
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I think this guy needs a 456M with a manual transmission, that should cure the melancholy
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#10
10-26-2005, 01:34 AM
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That dealer is sure to cut you off in the future after this.......
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#11
10-26-2005, 04:56 AM
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Good Lord! The typos - I blame the red wine; sorry.
I love the Mini! I have ended up with two in Canada and one here. Pretty women in matching cars smile at me, kids on the street wave, and I tell myself that it is really me they are looking at. Not the cardboard cutout of Orlando Bloom glued to the windscreen. Not that. As for the Ferrari dealer, good luck to him. If he wants to find me well, no problem; I’m only eight or twelve hours away by jet and the front door is sometimes unlocked. If he wants to cut me off right now then I guess he had better buy the local Mini dealership. If I get a 430 and he has a long memory then I’ll wear a dress and use the wife's credit card at service time. Hey! It's covered.
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#12
10-26-2005, 06:06 AM
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Great read... love your writing.
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#14
10-27-2005, 03:04 PM
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Quote:
Get a used SRT10 Viper. They've taken a large hit already and your loss would be minimal if you ever sold it. Mechanically they are tanks and the maintenance is just like a regular car, except rear tires. When the small bits and allen head screws start to fall out you'll just laugh and set them on your tool box.
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#15
10-27-2005, 04:14 PM
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Superbly stated. Nice work.
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#19
10-31-2005, 08:55 PM
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If it had a 6-speed, non-daytona seats, and you had a good shop to fix it would you have been more inclined to keep it? I love the lines of the 360- more than the 430, 612 scag. or any of the current crop of lambos/supercars. And I'd only get a 6-speed myself... Just curious....
-Andrew
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#20
11-01-2005, 08:58 AM
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As for the mechanics, I'm a litany of disgust for my ex-Lotus guy so you're not alone.
I'm with the others that perhaps you chose the wrong car? I mean, if the car was more to your liking and you had better dealership support, would owning a Ferrari be a concept you embrace? Maybe you'd prefer an Aston Martin or a more "refined" exotic, or go the other way and get a Lotus which is much more of a driver's car than a Ferrari, but at the expense of comfort? You write far too well to be a Lambo guy ;>) Ken
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