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It's really sad that this happened to the 458. I think Ferrari is on the case but this should NEVER have happened. My 430 was a friggin' LEMON and now these cars have THIS issue out of the box?? The car is by far the coolest car on the market IMVHO, but this is not making me want one as bad as I did. To you owners, I only wish you the very best. I REALLY hope Ferrari makes this right.... Stay safe guys.
Ferrari states there are 5 confirmed fires out of 1100 delivered. Certainly, any fire is not good and it should be zero. But, it's 0.4%. You have to keep things in perspective. I'm not making excuses but it's no Toyota gas pedal design failure.
one would expect that, after many hundreds of hours of actual testing on road & track, sufficient temperatures would have been reached to set at least 1 test 458 on fire...
True. But, you don't really know the exact situation. Perhaps the formula of the glue was changed. Perhaps in the assembly they did it improperly. Perhaps the conditions in the real world caused things to happen in an unpredictable way. I don't know so everything is just a guess. You would have thought Apple in all it's testing, science, and technology wouldn't create an antenna that gets weak when you hold it in your hand... but they did. I'm not excusing anything. I'm just saying that there could be many reasons why it could happen.
I think its a seperate issue... campaign #336 was for the breather pipe. This is campiagn #51; adhesive on the heat shield.
I don't buy the "hard driving" argument. One car in Orange County burnt down in a residential area, the other in Europe was in downtown type driving. The third car was in the Swiss alps. Not one has issues on a track. I hope that this heat shield really is the fix. It will take time to confirm.
Ok I just DROVE the car to the dealership. Its funny how I kept looking at my side, rear mirror and the engine temp guage to see if there is anything unusual happening in back. I dont think dealers have the parts yet.
haiz, then how? mean you send your car in then got to wait for months for it to replace? if that the case then really :-(
one wld hv imagined that a company like ferrari wld know the correct proportions of ingredients ... this "mistake" was obviously avoidable ... unless there is yet another undiscovered reason for the fires ...
If the total delivered is 1248 for 2010, does someone know when the 458 started to sell in the world? If you assume they started selling in March of this year that is 208 per month and with 4 months left in the year and they produce the same number, that is only 2496 cars. And that is a lot for Ferrari? Some of you know better than I the past productions runs of cars.
Wow, that is a lot. I wonder what that would mean for the residual value over, say 2 years.... Looks like we'll have another testarossa.... the 458 would be a bargain at half the price, as long as its not "fried" .
My guess is the "adhesive" thing is a bit of a red herring. What about all the fires on other mid-engine models? They happen way to frequently. The hot cats are below the engine and any kind of a fuel compromise will cause a fire. Porsche's have the cats off to the side and Mercedes use titanium to cool the cats at a greater expense. How does F explain all the other fires? If you say it isn't any more frequent then other cars, that is false.
