Novitec Portofino: 675 Horsepower

When I came here tuning and modifications were mostly frowned upon, even changing wheels was for the most part a no, no. Of course there was also a time when you had to know how to drive a stick (no offence to those who cant) to own a Ferrari. It seems with all the new and younger members we have here now modifying your car is not such a bad thing anymore. Since turbo cars are a tuners best friend, those numbers are probably low, but still a nice increase. As some of you know I have a added a piggyback (that looks identical to the Novitec though tuned to offer even more power) and capristo exhaust to my Cal T which I will pick up from winter storage at Algar on Saturday. Over the years I have voided warranties on brand new cars as soon as 24 hours after I have bought them, and had those cars in some cases referred to as kit cars by the dealers I bought them from. I think power is great and I am fairly certain the chassis can easily handle the increase in power, just be aware that you should probably check with you dealer and see how they feel about modifications. In my experience most Ferrari dealers (though the techs might tell you how great your car is now) are not big fans of modified cars, and most have at least a few horror stories they can tell you. If you are someone like me none of that means anything, but I'm pretty sure most of you are not like me. One last thing before you start adding power, take my advise (it is good advise, might end up saving you money and your life), learn to truly handle your car. Take it to a big empty parking lot (office parks are great), turn of the traction controls and make your own little course (I use suction cup flags you can get them online), you might be surprised at both the car and yourself, in both good and bad ways. In the end power is fun, but not if you cannot control it or the cars systems are keeping you from even using it. Okay the old guy is done.

 

Very nice upgrades. I've seen offerings for the CF bits as well, typical prices, very tempting to add once you're comfortable with the car.

 

Love what they have done to the car!

 

My dealer has told me a horror story about aftermarket wheels messing up the car, let alone horror stories about engine mods...

 

Yep, if you don't know anything about wheel fitment and suspension tuning, you are very likely to truly **** up your car.

Even so-called performance tuning experts do that because many of those people are just salesmen and not very bright ones at that. There is no school or training course for configuring upgraded wheels. The easiest way to **** up is to do "poseur-style" wheels.

However, aftermarket wheels are also the biggest bang for the buck if you want to make your car much faster, handle much better and even look better. They don't sell a lot of aftermarket wheels because they **** up everyone's cars.

 

I have been preaching to those who will listen for over 25 years about wheels, tires and suspension. Once you have turned a few AWD cars into RWD cars you learn a lot about chassis balance pretty quickly. What has always amazed me is that the four contact points your car has to the road are the four wheels and the rubber surrounding them. I have seen many owners have very little regard about them, and even less knowledge. Obviously I have different purposes for my cars, so I have different reasons for each wheel and tire setup, some have dual purposes, so they have two sets of wheels and tires, others just one, so one set. When you spend 21/2 times what the sticker price of a car on modifications, you are either a bit nuts or don't realize that you are. As I have gotten older (and supposedly wiser), I have come to realize there is only so much you can do with a car on the street (which is why I am building a car for the track now), and I can only speak for the area I live in but most of my driving (unless I want to venture out into the less populated areas), does not other much of a challenge for my cars in stock form, let alone with the modifications they have on them. As the manager of Algar has told me, I do what I do because I can. I can live with that. One bit of advise if your dealers horror stories give you a bad feeling, then doing modifications is probably not for you. If you do end up deciding to do them, find a reputable company, and a shop that knows what they are doing.

 

I should add for context that I put a supercharger on my Lotus before the ink on the warranty was dry, so I have some experience. Nevertheless, I’m not going to be quite so eager to mod the Portofino once I get it.


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Here is the price list from Novitec for the Portofino. I would consider an exhaust upgrade and possibly the CPU but I don’t want to have any issues with the factory warranty. Do any of you have past experience with this ?
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Maybe you are not used to doing business but ask yourself whether your dealer would agree to providing an extended warranty on a car with the upgrades that you would like to apply. Keep in mind, the dealer examines and certifies the car before they agree to provide extended warranty from the factory and they use factory replacement parts and factory service procedures to handle warranty claims, and then charge those costs back to Ferrari.

The factory is in business to sell and service their own products, not someone else's products. If Ferrari the factory, not the Ferrari dealer, provides you the upgrades, they will uphold their warranty, otherwise you are at the mercy of other people.

Always do major upgrades AFTER the factory warranty runs out and understand you should not expect to have any warranty aside from the maker, not the installer, of the upgrades.

As for power upgrades, there are limits to their utility. Your stock car was not designed with the power upgrades in mind so your brakes and suspension may need work or upgrades to handle the increased power, unless you don't fully use it. There may also be a problem with traction - getting the increased power to actually hook up properly to the asphalt. This is why many people with cheaper cars end up with poor upgrade experiences.

 

I appreciate you taking the time to respond . I have owned my own business for 20 years and yes I understand how business works I had a 2014 Porsche 4S with an aftermarket exhaust and chip that were on the car when I bought it while still under warranty and Porsche honored the remainder of the warranty .
The service manager for Ferrari told me that Ferrari may come out with an aftermarket sport exhaust for the Portofino . I am more interested it upgrading the exhaust the car has more than enough power stock in my opinion .

 

As is often stated by many instructors, the best mod is to the nut behind the wheel. When you are better than the car, then you can mod the car. Easy approach to the problem....

 

Lucas I can appreciate your being a long time business owner and I meant nothing personal with my statement. I think you guys may not have fully understood my post.

I made the point that it would not make business sense for the FACTORY to honour warranties with products it did not make or sell. They would be asking for trouble with nothing to gain. However, I also indicated the DEALER may respond differently with the warranties, especially if they sold and installed the upgrades. The dealer has his own rationale because he is closer to the customer and can examine and tend to each case selectively - he wants to keep his customer happy. The factory isn't going to look at each case if they have nothing at all to do with the upgrades. Their business priorities are different. Once the factory agrees to warranty 3rd party upgrades with one car, it risks defaulting this to ALL THEIR CARS and ALL DEALERS but if one dealer does it as a personal favour or one-off for a good customer with a car they have always serviced and know well, their RISKS ARE LIMITED TO ONE CAR, ONE CUSTOMER and it's their own labour hours.

There is also the nature of the upgrades, turbos in particular. If you change the engine mapping and turbo boost and get it wrong, you can easily damage the engine, exceed the tolerances of the DCT. Those kinds of upgrades will definitely invalidate factory warranties.

Big German car companies like Porsche have also often worked with reputable European aftermarket tuners for many years IN EUROPE and actually use or market their products with their cars, because they want the performance bump. Ferrari is a tiny company, even though it has a huge brand footprint and it doesn't really need the performance bump. They just offer to sell you a faster model if you want a faster car. It doesn't really go after the aftermarket tuning business, which is why it generally doesn't offer upgrades. As you have also discovered, Ferrari is only now looking at aftermarket PF exhausts, as an afterthought.

 

Thanks for helping to soften my words. You are essentially correct although I was actually covering off several possible realities... the primary one with Lucas perhaps being a young person who hasn't yet found himself on the vendor side of a situation involving warranties and other ones involving upgrades of various degrees of potential to affect factory warranties, especially with Ferraris.

 

I had a Capristo exhaust fitted to my Ferrari California.
Initially, I spoke to my local dealer who said it would effect the warranty. However, I then wrote to Ferrari North Europe and had a subsequent phone call whereby the exhaust could be changed under the proviso that it was put back to stock when I sold the car. The change would not effect the warranty. Apparently a note was put on my cars record confirming the agreement.

The dealer then rang me and from not wanting to have anything to do with the exhaust change they agreed to fit the new Capristo exhaust for me.

Before selling the car I got the dealer to change the exhaust back to stock as agreed and was able to sell the Capristo exhaust on.

I'm sure an ECU 'upgrade' would not be accepted.

 

Okay I have had some time with the T with the tune and the exhaust, the best words to describe it are Holy SxxT. I never expected it to feel that fast, it is like you are being shot from a slingshot. Mine can be controlled with an app, and I have to remember to shut it off (I'm glad it has an off switch) before you shut of the car or it will throw a code, at least it did one time. The biggest problem is that it is hard to find situation where you can actually use the power, I was on a highway and there were one cars in visual range in front of me. I hit the gas and in what seemed like a few seconds I was pushing the brakes hard to keep from slamming into the rear bumper of the car in front of me. The person sitting next to me said, please don't do that again, turn that thing off. It is fun, but I don't think I'd pay for it if I had to buy it for the normal selling price.

 

A few points.

Ferrari purposely prevented full turbo boost being available in lower gears so an easy ECU “upgrade” is to just remove that. The other thing is that increasing the flow rate in the exhaust system with sport cats will increase peak HP. However, you will find the traction control system may no longer be effective or feel out of sync under some conditions so be careful applying throttle when traction is compromised and finally, you have to work the brakes harder to achieve a predictable braking distance and the brakes may feel a bit overwhelmed until you get used to the changes, especially with full turbo boost being available at lower street speeds.

 

I’m kinda going to side with the folks that say don’t do too much with these cars ( the California and Portofino). I think up to a certain point adding power wouldn’t be too bad but you could easily overdo it and wind up in a precarious situation.

All that being said someone that can afford a new Portofino and then turn around and drop that kind of money on those kinds of upgrades, worrying about the warranty just seems kinda like a first world problem to me. If it were me and I were in that situation I’d just not worry about it much and roll the dice. I mean it’s not like it’s a Toyota or Honda here.

I do think it’s impressive to Modify these cars and the power outputs but realistically unless you track or race a lot it’s really just unusable on the street. Even the Hellcat and trackhawk really have too much power on tap for street use, not that it isn’t impressive.

 

Shawn, while I understand your points I think you are missing a big part of the equation re warranties.

I have tried many times to educate people on this and here is my point again. The original factory warranty is meant to allow the owner(s) to shake down the car while any failures being flushed out will be covered under warranty. So you ABSOLUTELY DO NOT WANT TO VOID THE ORIGINAL WARRANTY. It acts as your free ticket to properly test the car, put it through its paces without fear of incredibly crazy repair bills and the nasty aftertaste.

We get 3 years of warranty in NA and the EU, 4 years in the UK, You do not want to throw any of that away. Use it to determine if the car is reliable and that you like it enough to keep it after the initial warranty expires. When the warranty does expire if you want to keep the car you can then modify it, lack of warranty be damned. It helps if you are patient and methodical. If you can appreciate details, you can keep yourself entertained by them until the warranty expires, before you do your upgrades. By then, the aftermarket upgrade offerings should all be in place and your research should tell you which to buy.

I strongly recommend a proper sports muffler as the much, much better sound will DOUBLE your enjoyment of the Cali. I used to get a rise out of people revving their NA muscle cars next to my upgraded Cali30 because my car would sound just as loud but also project a better exhaust note. A properly-designed muffler upgrade will also make the car accelerate noticeably faster and make it more of a joy to drive any time you drive it as it is simpler more responsive. The upgraded mufflers are dirt cheap compared to what you have paid for the car.

I always tell people I am too poor to cheap out on expensive purchases as I cannot afford to throw money away on disappointing purchases. Every expensive purchase I make has to be perfect. If it takes an upgrade, so be it.

 

I would agree I have always told people if you are concerned about warranty, not mess with the car. Me on the other hand could care less about warranty and have to mess with everything. I would never advise anyone to do what I do.

 

I understand, you really enjoy the process and experience of "messing with" or "improving" your rides. However, I do have 2 other points I like to make. I think one should always take some time and effort to first test, observe and appreciate before determining a cause of action, change or fix things. An intact warranty (and intact car) would be useful if you decide you really do not like the thing and want to trade it for something else. You should only mod or fix a car that you like to begin with.

My other point is that when messing with a car you really enjoy driving, that you have at least one other car which you can continue to similarly enjoy driving and avoid messing with all your cars at the same time.

 

I dont understand the want for more power in a Portofino. If you want something faster (and its already really fast) then just buy another car and use the Portofino for what its designed for, a nice balance of comfort and performance. Why try to turn it into something it wasnt designed to be. Bizarre to me

 

Thanks for your points, and again I agree. But, and I think you caught this but am going to clarify for everyone, once you reach a certain point monetarily speaking where you just have to make a choice. Leave the car mostly stock and retain warranty OR spend big bucks voiding the warranty and pay for failures out of pocket. I certainly understand the value of a warranty especially on a limited or low production car and the risk associated with voiding it.

The exaust upgrade is one of the biggest choices a Ferrari owner can make, and it’s a little more difficult (depending on location) to compare different exaust for the California models then say the f430. Also I think for the most part an exaust upgrade doesn’t diminish the value at all and if anything increases value. The one “upgrade” I’m most likely to do would be an exaust swap. But I’m also not to big into loud exaust anymore either, so retaining the vacuum valves and or a valve controller would probably be in the cards.