Saratoga tops: observations, questions, & prices

Depends I think. Someone could make a new one in a similar style, but try to enhance it in a couple of subtle ways. For me, I don't need or want an original, but I love the function and design of it. Plus the inside of my stock top is a little tired so I have the option to restore or replace...

 

Jimmy, sorry for the delay. Here's mine. #816873.

You guys have the bag/case for it?

As you can see in the last picture, my head touches the top.

Make note to self, go less on the hair jell.
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Chris, I had my local upholstery shop made me two pouches for my top. Here's what they look like.
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Mine is 817644.

Rgds

 

get it while it`s hot


Ferrari 308 Original Sarartoga Top from the Early 1980s | eBay

 

Maybe someone wants to contact these guys to see if they can make some up. I have seen some of their T-Tops for the older Corvettes and they look very high quality.
Melrose T-Top Intl.

I had the tinted top for my 96 Corvette and did not like it. The sun made if very hot in the car. If I want the sun in my 328 I will just take the top off. I would rather have the stock solid top than the Saratoga tinted type.

 

Jim, sorry I forgot to check back in.

Mine doesn't have a number on it. Not sure why.

 

If i would reproduce them how many of you would buy one and what price range it would have to be.

 

I'd buy one in that price range.


Concur on the "survivor" appeal thought. I'd want one and the 'basket handle' spoiler just because they were available at the time.

My car never had either.

 

Sign me up for 1500 range.

 

Definitely interested. Not sure if I could do it as I have my hands in a few different fires, but would love to see then more available.


PDG

 

Maybe I'll sell my original Saratoga and and get the repro.

 

You missed off:

"......and make it look like a professional production piece as per the original Saratoga top, rather than a homemade, DIY piece,....."

Sigmacars:

I suspect that this is like the folding soft-top targa panels for the 348/355's - In theory it seems simple enough to make, especially if you have an original to reverse-engineer it from, but the more you look into it, the more you find that it's more involved than you thought!

A lot of very clever, knowledgeable and skilled people on Fchat, some who have the engineering facilities to carry out this sort of job, have looked into the re-manufacture of these tops (Saratoga style tops and folding tops), and in the end they have all decided that it's simply too involved and complicated to be worth doing (and in most cases, it's been found that by the time you've engineered the tops and built them, to recoup your investment you'd have to charge as much, if not more, than original versions sell for!).

I also suspect that in reality, the market for Saratoga style tops is simply too small to make it worth doing.

I reckon that at best you'll sell 10 tops, and at the suggested price of $1500 each, ten will obviously get you $15,000, but are you really going to design, engineer, manufacture and ship these 10 tops for $15,000? - I seriously doubt it!

If you could do it for $30,000, then you need to charge $3,000 per top to break even (and I suspect you'll already lose a couple of orders at least at that price), and if you want to make a small profit then you'd need to charge @ $3500 ~ $4000 per top (but you'll lose even more orders at that price!).

A far better seller I would have thought would be the re-manufacture of folding soft top roof panels for the 348 and 355, plus, creating one for the 308/328 market, as loads of tall owners have to leave their targa tops at home when they go for a drive.

However, as previously mentioned, whilst this seems a simple thing to do, it's more complicated than you imagine!

It's a nice idea remaking these tops, but ask yourself this: "Why has no one else gone to the effort of re-manufacturing these aftermarket roof panels?"

 

The most difficult part would be the latches. Although these are currently still available from Ferrari there would be no guarantee they would continue to be.

Other people have made alternative tops for these cars in the past but they didnt come with latches:

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/308-328/402173-looking-carbon-fiber-targa-top.html

 

That appears to be a single piece carbon-fibre molding, which is far easier to produce than a Saratoga style top as it requires no separate frame pieces to assemble it.

Used latches are going to add @ $660 to the cost of any top for 2 latches, new latches will add @ $900 for 2 latches (if you can get them!), and the pins will add @ $60.

So your costs are already $720 ~ $960 just for the mounting parts.

The only way to keep the cost down is to fit the pins and latches from the cars original roof (as the manufacturer in your link has done).

Next you need the correct seals for the roof which will add @ $200 to the cost.

Even without the cost of the pins and latches, I still can't see anybody manufacturing Saratoga style tops for @ $1500 each!


As I've previously posted, there's a reason why no one else has ever bothered to re-manufacture these tops!

 

Mike, that's czazy talk.

 

All you have to do is change the existing latches over to the new top 8screws that is it and you can go back to the origional when ever you want,
The poly is vacum formend so tooling is cheap but still there has to be more then50 made.
When i made the folding keys i had to sell 100 to brake even, this is not going to be a home made part this would be OEM standard,s i do $20-25mil with them now so i know what quality
The have to be.

 

The latches are easy to work around by swapping them over, I agree (the point I was making about the latches was that the cost of the latches would rule out making a complete, "ready to go straight on the car" top).

To build these tops you still need to fabricate a frame, fit the correct seals and other trim pieces and make and fit the Lexan outer panel, which all adds to the cost of manufacture.

Added to that, not only do you need to make more than 50, you need to sell them as well, and I'm not convinced that there will be 50+ buyers who really want a Saratoga style top.

I would have thought a far more lucrative business would be in creating a folding soft top for the 3*8 GTS series for tall drivers who have to leave their hard-tops at home, but as I have already posted, there must be a good reason why nobody else has ever bothered to manufacture a folding soft top or re-manufacture the Saratoga tops after all these years.

If you decide to go ahead then best of luck with it, but if I were looking into it, I would check very carefully that it's a viable project numbers-wise!

 

It would technically be possible, the frame would be relatively easy to make a mold for, the Lexan not particularly difficult to shape (trimming it after shaping would likely be very tricky though).
The large foam pieces on the sides are extrusions so not especially tricky, not sure about the aluminium side trim but the "P" shaped rubber lip is a standard part.

But Phill is right. As I found with my re-manufacture of the front targa foam seal, there might be a clamor on this forum for the part but once the relatively small initial demand is satisfied, sales suddenly dry up. I didnt intend to make money from it and have just about broken even. This is despite the item now being a genuine Ferrari part sold under their part number and thus does not detract from the cars originality.

The demand for these tops will likely decrease as the cars become more valuable and fewer people want non-original items for them.

 

I probably come across as a bit of doom-monger and a major pessimist on this subject, but in all honesty I'm just trying to realistic about the whole project.

[Not a 3*8 GTS and not a Saratoga top but.....]

When I bought My 348 TS I knew that I really needed a folding soft-top roof to take with Me in the car because I'm too tall to have the targa panel behind the seat.

These tops are hens-teeth rare and cost a fair bit of money so I looked at the hard-top and weighed up making a soft-top myself. In theory it seemed pretty simple but I quickly came to the conclusion that it was a lot more work than I'd initially imagined (and could easily end up looking crap!).

Having read up on these tops I'd noted that some of the members on here who had far better facilities to make them than I have, had already weighed it up, including some who went as far as looking into reverse-engineering a top that they already owned, with a view to selling them to other Fchat members.

In the end though, they came to the conclusion that with the amount of work required, the outlay required and the size of the market for them, it simply wasn't a viable proposition.

Luckily for Me a folding soft-top came up for sale in the USA before I actually bought My car and so I snapped it up immediately. It wasn't cheap (no where near the cost of a 3*8 Saratoga top mind!), especially once the import duty had been added on, but it's been worth the money to Me (especially when I got caught out in a surprise downpour that came out of the blue!).

As others had done, I looked at the construction of it and it seemed simple in theory, and it looked quite easy to reverse engineer it (again: in theory!), but I quickly figured out that there was a reason why the others decided not to go ahead with the project - It just wasn't viable.

If I were rich enough not to worry about making a loss on this sort of project, then I would look into making Saratoga style tops and folding soft-tops for the 3*8's/348's and 355's, to sell to Ferrari owners at an affordable, sensible price so that owners could enjoy their cars even more (if the big lottery win comes in then I'll look into it! ), but I wouldn't do it if it had to make money to support the business.

I'm sounding like an old broken record here but, the companies who originally made all of these various tops stopped making them for a reason, and nobody else has taken up the challenge of manufacturing them for a reason.

As I've previously posted, Sigmacars: If you're in a position to manufacture Saratoga-style tops then I genuinely wish you the best of luck with it and hope you help make many an owner even happier with their cars!