Buying an early California - Tips please

To the OP, IMO, some of the comments on this thread lack technical rigour. You cannot come to a correct conclusion by reading and taking snippets of other people's opinions or experience, however accurate those may be when qualified. The problem lies in using snippets, in the wrong context, because people cannot tell you the full story in a "chat". A chat is an entertaining discourse between equals but that's not what you need. You cannot make serious decisions based on chats. There is no free lunch.

If you are picky about buying a car, you must have sufficient first-hand experience, some technical prowess and spend the time to learn about your subject... and then use those assets to conduct multiple test drives as well as ask for qualified opinions. Otherwise, your solution will depend on luck or resemble something made by committee.

I suggest using the SEARCH feature of FChat and give yourself enough time to understand the issues important to you before coming to conclusions.

 

Are they comfortable for longer drives?
T

 

If there was, it'd surprise the heck out of me.
May be worth stopping by your local dealer service department and seeing if they have info. If nothing else, it may give you a good vibe or not on whether to use them for service, since having good service is an important part of the Ferrari experience IMO...T

 

They were comfortable on long drives. My wife and I took the car to Europe and would be in the seats for up to 6 hours a day.

 

I owned a 2013 Cali that I custom ordered. I loved that car but the dealer could not fix the roof. It never really worked from about year 1 on, even though they covered the cost under warrantee. Sometimes it would go down and fail trying to go back up. I somehow averted getting stuck in the rain. This problem continued for years and finally, out of desperation, I asked them to just get the top up and I would drive the car as a coupe. Not more than one day after the dealer promised me it was fixed (I heard that line for 3 years) I had to endure the beeping sound for 1 1/2 hours driving home that the top was not latched properly.

I called the dealer and said come and get it (with less than 10k miles on it) and just send me a check for the car. And the final insult was that nobody called to say they were sorry they couldn't fix my dream car.

Bottom line, I wouldn't buy it unless you have a lot of patience and since the car is off warrantee, a ton of money.

 

I'm sorry to learn of your ordeals. However, this appears to be your first and only post and IMO you should have shared your issues on FChat when you first experienced the problems. Quite often other members can provide useful advice. While personal matters are different, one should never keep quiet about problems that affects many people.

I am surprised your dealer was so incompetent that they could not fix your roof. Assuming you mean YEAR 0 is the first year and YEAR 1 is after 12 months then it means the roof was in proper working condition when it was new. So something happened after you started using the car and then it got bad enough that your roof mechanism failed. Make sense? So your problem was likely not a defective part unless you only drove the car a few times during the first 12 months in YEAR 0.

If my understanding of what you wrote is correct then your problem may have been in the wire harness. From what I have learned about these roofs a wire harness problem can lead to a multitude of spurious errors with the roof. The harness is also expensive to replace. Another possible issue is improper alignment of the roof panel lifting mechanism. This can be caused if the mechanism was not properly fastened and some parts have become misaligned after use. The parts can also be misaligned straight from the factory. The latter case actually happened to my 2013 Cali30's roof as it failed within the first 2 months after I collected it new and it took a couple of years to track down and correct but the problem has not bothered me ever since it was fixed a few years ago and I operate the roof at least twice every time I use my car.

I think part of the problem was that this roof was completely new to Ferrari and Ferrari dealers. The Cali is the first Ferrari with a metal retractable roof. So they had no experience building or servicing this mechanism. However, keep in mind, Ferrari has subsequently also used the exact same roof, guts and panels, on the CaliT. AFAIK, the Portofino also uses the exact same mechanism. If the roof is an unreliable and troublesome feature, Ferrari would be the one who would know, as they would be notified of every failure, not just the ones reported on FChat. So I suspect what's happened is that the Ferrari factory has built up experience and expertise in implementation and assembly and their dealers have accumulated lots of experience and expertise in servicing this mechanism.

This is the same thing that has happened with the DCT issues of the early cars. The factory has learned how to fix and avoid problems as they became more experienced with the design.

A very important lesson for owners to understand is that when car manufacturers do not give up on particular new designs or 3rd Party components in their commercially successful car models, it means their craft is being perfected and that owners have the benefit of belonging in a larger and ever-increasing population of cars that all use the same part, the same service knowledge that is continually improved. It means your car will become better serviced as Ferrari sticks with continuing to use those parts in the new models. So ownership prospects for for these cars are actually improving, not deteriorating.. unless you abuse your car or run it to the ground. This is one of the reasons why I tell people not to use their Ferraris as "beaters" or daily errand runners. They are neither designed nor serviced with that type of duty in mind.

This story also describes how Porsche made their 911 models relatively reliable - they seldom make radical changes to their models and they sell their cars in 10 to 100X the numbers in volume, compared to Ferrari. Where they did make radical changes, Porsche also suffered catastrophic failures with those models until they sorted the new designs.

This is how all new designs undergo refinement - they all start out with problems. It's also why you want to drive your new cars some decent mileage while the warranty is live... to refine your copy of the product, to identify the items the factory is still grappling with and to identify properly-designed parts that were improperly made.

Finally, I hope people also understand, that if they are in the US, that such a litany of repair failures (3 or more) for the same significant defects while under warranty qualifies a car as a LEMON. You should record every one of your complaints in writing and if in doubt, your write a letter to your dealer stating the facts around your service issues and request a response in writing. Mention the problem to your lawyer and offer to have the letter written by the lawyer instead if you do not receive a proper response.

 

... forgot to explain further about my suspicion about the wire harness - progressive chafing may cause subsequent failure. So it would be working fine for some months until the wires start getting shorted as the conductors break or the insulation becomes compromised.

Failures that occur immediately (DOA) or soon after are different from premature wear-and-tear failures. Parts are usually tested and are known to last a certain amount of time. If they fail earlier than "spec'd", it's usually a manufacturing or assembly defect (DOA) or failure caused by abnormal conditions during use (e.g. improper assembly, driver abuse). The 3 or 4 year warranty is not guess work, the factory knows from parts specifications and their own experience from building cars that they should not experience excessive failures during the first 3 to 4 years.