355 running costs

Neil,

Tony best to answer that as he has one with may i had a lovely sounding tubi sports exhaust....

Over to you tony....is it really a bottomless pit...I think not!!

Joe

Neil just my advise..go for the Fcar its more fun and looks bloody fantastic..
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Neil,
i'm on 3 rd year of running 355 Spider .The car had a belt change and service in 2001 before i bought it.so ;

2001 costs; £1350 insurance and cost of Tracker £600.

2002 costs;Service =£1271 ;insurance £1300;Tracker £100 pa.

2003 costs;Service= £2133, inc 2 rear tyres.12.5 k service is more than standard service.Insurance £1300;Tubi sport pack £2040;Tracker £100 pa.

2004 cost so far; Challenge grill and repair to engine hoses £800.


These are fixed costs , then there's petrol @ £55 a tank.I average 190 on full tank.I checked how much a Formula Warranty was and £1750 was on my invoice.

Hope this helps.
The 355 price has come down a lot since i bought my car in 2001[£71k with 6k miles and i owner from new], and i think it's a great buy at the moment compared to other £50 k ish cars.

Regards
Tony

 

Neil

i did a kind of buyers guide for a mate who was looking for a 355, some of it may be of help

In terms of blatchat style sites the nearest to it is Ferrarichat.com but it is US based with a small EU following, there is a forum on the owners club but it gets about one post a week no not of terrific value.

Where to Buy

Official Dealers, regretfully they're just as useless as any other Marques! I bought my 355 from Meridien Modena in Lyndhurst for one reason which I'll go into later, be aware that some dealers charge much more than others for a car of the same spec

Specialists, I've dealt with Talacrest (http://www.racecar.co.uk/talacrest/index.htm) in Egham and Kent High Performance (http://www.theferraricentre.co.uk/) in Maidstone, bought my 328 from KHPC and had it serviced at Talacrest some very good guys there who know their stuff and are enthusiastic about the cars. Others that have a good reputation are Nick Cartwright Sports Cars and Foskers.

Privately, As in any other car market you'll get it cheaper but lacking the dealer facilities, without doubt if you go this route you MUST have the car inspected by a specialist before you buy, there's some ropey cars out there some of which have been rebuilt from write offs! Good place to look for private sales is www.ferrariownersclub.co.uk where the for sales section is a free access area.

Warranty

As I said earlier I bought mine from an official dealer because I wanted a good warranty and it paid for itself when it covered a £5k bill in April!, however the renewal cost in May was too high so

All official dealers will sell you a car with Formula (1) warranty included, this covers engine, gearbox, electrics etc however there is a £10k limit to any individual failure, an new engine will cost you around £30k. When I asked to renew it they wanted £2,100 for Formula (2) for another year which was still limited to £10k but excluded all the electrics inc ECU etc (circa £5k for a new one!). If you buy privately or from a specialist and the car is under 6 years old at inception you can get a factory warranty that is unlimited for two years for around £1,400 inc vat, you have to have a dealer check the car and that costs around £300 and it must have a genuine official dealer stamp on all the services. Obviously Specialists can offer third party warranty. Personally I wouldn't have one without a warranty that you know you can rely on.

F1 Gearboxes/Clutch

The 355 F1's are renowned for excessive clutch wear, the dealer will tell you that it's because people don't drive them properly and treat it like an Auto but history has shown that 3.5k miles out of an F1 clutch is good going!, fortunately it's only a £500 job to change it (£350 parts) however I would be inclined to go for the manual for the above and the following..... the general view being that the F1 is good for the track but almost dangerous on the road, Tiff Needell showed a scenario on Top Gear a few years back, you start to pull out of a junction, realise there's an Artic coming towards you, you need to reverse, stop car, press Neutral button on dash, engage handbrake, move lever to reverse, release handbrake, somewhere in there the truck has hit you!.

General

Earlier F355's (Changed around early1996 and have Bosch Motronic 2.7 ECU) are known to have problems with valve guides and bore wear, easy to identify as they have no airbags and on the induction system the pipes from the air filters go straight in to the air intake castings, the later cars (Bosch 5.2) have a convoluted arrangement to improve emissions and also have some tricks to beat the drive by noise restrictions, the later ones allegedly have 5 BHP less however sound better.
Also Cats are expensive they've stopped making the ceramic ones which lasted about 20k miles and replaced them with a Metallic one, All of them suffer from failed Exhaust Manifolds, £1,400 each new but can get rebuilt ones for £600, maybe worth looking one htat has new Manifolds and Cats.

Good luck

 

Read good things about Nobles- Quicker than a 355 probably, but I suspect that a Ferrari would make a more satisfying ownership proposition; I keep looking at other cars, but somehow the Ferrari works on a different level.

No question, servicing on any Ferrari is relatively expensive, but there are plenty of trusted specialists who will do a fabulous job at reasonable hourly rates. The 355 will need an engine-out cambelt service every 3 yrs, so try to get one which has just been done.

In my view, Ferraris can be trusted and are not as fragile as people would have you believe. I had less trouble with my 1988 328GTS than I had with a 1988 911!

I'd say that the Formula warranty, like all insurance policies, is worth it when something goes bang in an expensive-sounding way!

I got my 355GTS from Maranello Sales, and as part of the Formula preparation, the car had a service, 4 new tyres and a new clutch. 355s (I suppose Spiders wouldn't suffer from this) often bubble up where the rear roof buttresses meet the rear wings- (a number of explanations; manufacturing fault, body flex, chemical reaction) It's generally agreed that once fixed it never reoccurs. This was also fixed on mine before delivery.

Will this be your "daily driver"?

Good luck in your quest!

Robert.

 

All official dealers will sell you a car with Formula (1) warranty included, this covers engine, gearbox, electrics etc however there is a £10k limit to any individual failure, an new engine will cost you around £30k. When I asked to renew it they wanted £2,100 for Formula (2) for another year which was still limited to £10k but excluded all the electrics inc ECU etc (circa £5k for a new one!). If you buy privately or from a specialist and
F1 Gearboxes/Clutch

The 355 F1's are renowned for excessive clutch wear, the dealer will tell you that it's because people don't drive them properly and treat it like an Auto but history has shown that 3.5k miles out of an F1 clutch is good going!, fortunately it's only a £500 job to change it (£350 parts) however I would be inclined to go for the manual for the above and the following..... the general view being that the F1 is good for the track but almost dangerous on the road, Tiff Needell showed a scenario on Top Gear a few years back, you start to pull out of a junction, realise there's an Artic coming towards you, you need to reverse, stop car, press Neutral button on dash, engage handbrake, move lever to reverse, release handbrake, somewhere in there the truck has hit you!.

Some very good advise on this post except for the rubbish above!!

I have had 2 F1 cars and my business partner has had 2 also.

My first car did 18K when I sold it- still on original clutch.

My second car 14K still on same clutch.

Other cars I know of average is 14K.

This kind of post does nothing to help an individual make an informed choice!

I suggest the questioner speaks to someone who knows the cars rather than be reliant upon some comment from a tv commentator.

You dont need to press any button to get neutral you can change directly from first to reverse and you dont need to engage the handbrake! what a nonsense!

General

Earlier F355's (Changed around early1996 and have Bosch Motronic 2.7 ECU) are known to have problems with valve guides and bore wear, easy to identify as they have no airbags and on the induction system the p

Reality!! a small pc of cars had this problem and it relates to some cars in 97 as well
Also Cats are expensive they've stopped making the ceramic ones which lasted about 20k miles and replaced them with a Metallic one, All of them suffer from failed Exhaust Manifolds, £1,400 each new but can get rebuilt ones for £600, maybe worth looking one htat has new Manifolds and Cats.

Good luck[/QUOTE]

 

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I got my 355GTS from Maranello Sales, and as part of the Formula preparation, the car had a service, 4 new tyres and a new clutch. 355s (I suppose Spiders wouldn't suffer from this) often bubble up where the rear roof buttresses meet the rear wings- (a number of explanations; manufacturing fault, body flex, chemical reaction) It's generally agreed that once fixed it never reoccurs. This was also fixed on mine before delivery.

The reason the buttresses crack is due to 2 factors.

The body when assembled is spot welded and the dipped in primer. This seam is about 1 inch deep and in fact most of the metal there is unprotected. With condensation forming underneath the joint its begins to rust. When the body shop at marranello have repaired accident danaged cars this joint was red with rust. Also one does get body flex.

For your information Im afraid it recurs about every 2 years. NO one will warranty the repair beyond that any honest ferrari bodyshop will confirm this.

 

Cheers. I'll look forward to that conversation with Maranellos in 2 yrs! You would imagine that it would not be rocket-science to protect the metal from future condensation during the repair...

 

Well there are two problems!

when the joint is repaired they normally sand blast the join and get out as much corrosion and old filler as they can. The problem is that you cant get deep enough and corrosion is already there that cannot be removed.

Then of course you have a thick covering of flexable filler over that join which is then painted over and its this that normally cracks the paint.

Marranello bodyshop will confirm if you ask them that it will recur. In fact many cars were done sveeral times when they were under warranty.

And Ferrari only gave the bodyshops limited time to complete the repair so normally this consisted of removing a 1 in strip along the join, filling and repainting- that gets it just past the warranty!

 

Again just my own experience from ownership, I'm not expressing an opinion.

F1 Clutch

Had a '99 car, sold it after 14K on the clutch during my ownership, no problems at all.

This car had very slight corrosion on the rear 1/4 panels.


Now have a '97 manual, no corrosion on 1/4 panels & the car has never been panited in this area.

Apart from regular scheduled sevices never had a single failure in 18K miles with the 2 cars.

 

Just to give you another experience:

I bought my red '97 355 Spider one year ago for 59,500 pounds. 19,000 miles on the clock. Mixed service history(some main dealer, some specialist)

In one year I've spend:
500 on annual service
600 reconnolise whole leather (that is now partially dirty again!)
1000 on Tubi
700 on Cracked manifold and associated damage to plugs etc
100 on recovering air-bag (leather shrunk back)
2600 on insurance
200 on Tax and MoT

Total 6,000.

(Now its due belts and service = 1,500 more)

Also depreciation ? Can anyone help me on this? 4K a year?(I did 4,000 miles) I don't know whether I got a good deal initially - simply because the price at dealers fluctuates massively

I'm guessing the beast will continue to cost me around 10K a year in total. Simply because I plan to use it often and continue modifications.

But hey, I lost that on my Porsche Boxster in 18month from new on depreciation alone!

I hope this helps, cause I relatively new to this too!

 

Ade

The leather (provided it is not badly scuffed) can be cleaned surprisingly well using Gliptone leather cleaner. I also use Zymol leather conditioner which keeps the trim nice and supple. So that's £600 saved!

Sounds like you payed a fair price for the Spider; depreciation shouldn't be too scary if you keep it for a few years. I can't imagine a good cond rhd 355 ever fetching much less than £40k, given that 328's can still make close to that 15 yrs on. As you say, compared to a mass-produced car, depreciation is limited.

 

Thanks for the tip on leather cleaning - I'll try out those products. Its got a cream interior, so the wear shows quite quickly unfortunately.

That is interesting what you said about 'base value' of 40K. I think I agree (but have little experience to base this on!) I'd be interested to see what people thought about the 'base value' of other models as well... like a RHD 355 GTS, GTB, 348s?

 

just looking at your running costs;
how do you get away with £500 for a service or was manifold cost on top of that? it seems very cheap....
my car was bought in 2001 for £70k , full FSH, 6k miles 1 owner from new, so i think you paid a decent price for yours.prices still seem on the way down, having said that!
10 k a year in depreciation seems way too much, ....otherwise in 5 yrs we'll all be owning a car worth nothing and paying £5k a yr for the priviledge!!!

 

Wasn't that 4k a year depreciation and 6k running costs coming to a total of 10k, although the running costs seem extreme to me, the tubi cost won't be every year for starters.

M

 

Yes thats right. I'm guessing 4K depreciation over last year. The 6K 'running' costs is steep - with 2K on totally optional enhancements. Also my insurance is high as I'm under 30 and live in a rough part of London (car garaged of course!). Hopefully I'll stop modify the car so much!!.. and insurance shuold come down.



Tony,
The annual service was 500 pounds as part of special deal when I bought the car. Got it done at Joe Macari in Wandsworth. Where have you been getting your serviced - as mine is due another?

 

Ade,
up to know , it's always gone to Main Dealer. This yr i need belts done so it'll go to Verdi's .Tubi shouldn't make too much difference to insurance premium,maybe 8 %.
Tony