F430 Reliability!

If this owner gets even $130,000 with 58k miles on it in 3 years I will envy him. I just wish I could drive an F430 for 10 miles.

 

I like this part in the listing:

"Our vehicles are washed, vacuumed, and hand-waxed daily"

Waxed DAILY???? What if it doesn't sell in 6 months... that's a LOT of WAX!!


Jedi

 

They called it a Murcielago ... jeez who are they kiddin' I'm looking at a 2008 coupe with 3K mi. I could probably get for 165 - 170. Asking 142 for that baby is a bit of a stretch IMHO.

 

Huge strectch. I doubt it will bring 100K. It would only appeal to people on a limited budget. Claiming it is less than half original price is an outright lie. MSRP was probably right around 200K.

Dave

 

Note that this is car was part of a rental company. You can only guess what each driver did to the car. I agree if he gets past $100k they will be very lucky or find a buyer who did not read the post.

 

"Gotham Dream Cars" - I attempted to rent this car from Gotham and it showed up looking like sh*t. It had been smoked in, unclean interior and exterior. I refused it and had to fight to get my friend's deposit back.

This car lives in Florida in the winter and NYC in the summer and is abused by renters all year round.

I wouldn't give salvage value for this piece of junk.

 

I am gaurdedly optimistic regarding "future" miles, but we don't know what it took , i.e. what expenses were incurred, to get it there? Best

 

Can the Gotham guys chime in on what maintenance was necessary to keep the car rolling after 58,000+ hard miles?

 

run, fast! If you want a bargain, get a 360.

 

Ari - We take posts like this very seriously and I'm concerned about what you've written. This vehicle has never been in Florida -- we only send our F430 Spider down for the winter and keep the coupe in NY year-round. The only F430 coupe that's been in Florida was our '06 that was sold a year ago.

Also, we don't deliver cars to customers unwashed (inside or out) - we have a full-time detailer that has to get management sign-off before a car leaves the shop.

Are you sure you tried to rent from us and aren't confusing us with another rental company? I checked our database and don't see your name listed anywhere.

 

Sure -- maint. has actually been pretty straightforward -- basically a clutch every 15 - 20k, oil changes every 5k, etc. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I know it's conventional wisdom to think that a rental car w/ lots of mileage is "beat" but the truth is that it's not. The guys who actually rent the cars from us are not harder on the car than most owners -- we take a security deposit and people don't want to lose that

Lots of folks say "Well If *I* rented that car I'd beat the snot out of it" but therein lies the difference -- people who talk on the Internet about how much they'd beat a rental car are <> the people who actually spend $1k / day to drive it. Most of our customers are 30-something or 40-something guys who have been given the car as an anniversary gift or birthday present.

 

really how bad can you beat a car in 1 day? that being said I'm sure they are beat.. the question is how badly are they beat? like a read headed stepchild? or like a dog that urinates on your food that you only realized AFTER you ate it?

 

Thanks for chiming in. Ari mentioned he was getting his "friend's" deposit back.

 

LOL I like the analogies

Let me put it like this: A car with 58,000 has been driven. Nobody's denying that - we say so pretty clearly in the description. The leather's a bit worn (lots of butts sliding in and out) and the car has seen a lot more miles than most 430s.

But we take very good care of the car (and all the cars in our fleet). When something doesn't sounds or feel right, it goes straight to service. Service fixes the car so it stops misbehaving. When the clutch goes, we replace it. When the brakes get worn, we replace them. When time comes for an oil change, we change it. When suspension gets soft, we replace it. Etc.

So "beat" to me says performing below specs -- engine misfiring, clutch misaligned, suspension worn, etc. This car is not beat - because if any one of those conditions were happening we'd have fixed them.

Rather, this car has been driven and will show normal signs of wear and tear. But all 8 cyl's are still firing with all ~500hp and it still performs every bit as much like an F430 as it did when it had 100 miles on the odo. Hope that clears things up a bit....

 

Understood. I'm mostly taken aback because none of what he posted sounds like how we operate -- we don't send the F430 coupe to Florida, we don't deliver dirty cars, this car has never been smoked in or smelled like smoke, and we don't take deposits on rentals prior to delivery (so there's no deposit to "fight" over getting back if his friend never actually rented the car).

So something just isn't adding up...I'm guessing he's confusing us with another rental company. There are lots of shady guys in this industry, many of whom have names similar to ours (i.e. Miami Exotic Luxury Dream Rentals Cars, etc. )

 

Another point often misrepresented, is exactly how hard it is to run the living snot out of a car such as this. These things are designed to have the snot run out of them on race tracks. They come with sufficient cooling, sufficient oiling systems, sufficient brakes to survive almost anything the 'renter' can throw its way--and stay on the (public) road.

How do I know? Well, I have 5,000 actual track miles on my F355 (total miles at 60K) and through this experience I have graduated to being a driving instructor. Nothing I can do on the back roads of texas is even able to get the oil and water temps up into the range one encounters on a track.

In the engine, transmission, suspension, and brake departments these things are suffienent to deal with the stresses that can be thrown their way.

 

Exactly -- and the key here is maintenance. Often what people also mean by a "beaten" car is one that's been neglected ... broken bits all over the place. Many folks get in over their heads when it comes to maintaining the cars (whether they're rentals or privately owned), so when something starts to tick the wrong way they ignore the problem instead of addressing it (which only makes things worse).

I've seen many track-driven cars that drive 100% to spec because their owners know what they're doing and repair things when they break. I've also seen 10k-mile cars that are falling to pieces because the owners get scared by a $5k clutch job.

I saw a guy that used to bring _USED_ clutches to a mechanic to get installed on his Murcielago because he didn't want to spend the money on a new part. I don't even understand the point of that but he did it....