$130k service cost on 328 true?

I doubt anyone pressures Jay on his own channel. Jay likes to feature random people he meets and finds interesting when they have fun cars. Not too hard to see how Donny might end up there, I suppose; he does have an outgoing, fun personality.

 

Jay talked about it in his interview with @twinpalms. I think @robertcope's description is about right.

 

There's a lot Leno seems to genuinely appreciate about Ferrari, and he's had other Ferrari owners on the show with him discussing and driving their cars, and he sure looked like he was enjoying them.

He just doesn't want to own a Ferrari, for his own reasons. Somewhere there's an interview with him, I think in a Garage episode, where he explains it - I don't recall offhand what he said about it.

 

He didn't like the dealer experience.

 

I’m going to paraphrase as well, but it has to do with Ferrari’s allocation/hierarchy scheme for owners new to the brand, forcing them to work their way up the model ladder until they’ve proven that they “deserve” one of the more desirable models.
Would be interesting to know if his POV comes from personal experience.
- Dave

 

That's about what I remembered, but didn't recall what he specifically said about it. I wonder if he was well-known enough at the time that they tried to shake him down, after a fashion, making him decide that while he may appreciate the cars for what they are, he'd never be a customer. Pure speculation on my part, though.

 

It does, when he first moved to Hollywood they wouldn't sell him anything, not even the lowest model, so he bought a Countach and daily drove it for a couple of years while his career took off.

 

I'm sure the producer lined him up for the show, took his fake story, then filled Jay in on it in probably a minute or two right before filming.

 

It's shirt like this that makes me question my love of the brand. Not that I will ever be in the position to roll into a Ferrari store and pluck one off the showroom floor, but to even be tacitly associated with such antics is an embarrassment. My only solace? Everyone's got the right to run their business as they see fit. I mean they ran off possibly the most famous collector in the world and it doesn't seem to have hurt their business one iota. The other thing? I'm hoping my 70's 308 represents a time before all those retail shenanigans became Ferrari's M.O.
- Dave

 

FWIW, this anecdote about Jay (which might be apocryphal) may say more about the dealer than about the brand. It was also a long time ago.

I never understood the objections to Ferrari's approach. If you want a production car, you may have to be patient, but you can get one. The limited cars go to their most loyal customers, not to the highest bidder. Would people prefer the ADM shenanigans of their competitors?

I can imagine that some dealers make it feel transactional and slimy. Perhaps Jay had the misfortune of walking into such a place.

But that's never been my experience. My dealer (Miller) has always treated me with respect, and never pressured me. This was true before I became a customer and remains true today. When I request an allocation, I get one, or I don't. No games or quid pro quo. It's always felt fair, professional, and friendly.

 

It was the early 80s, so not that long ago and Ferrari dealers didn't have that reputation by mistake.

And yes, I would rather pay ADMs than the crap Ferrari was pulling....at least selling to the highest bidder is fair.

 

To each his own.

 

I am very familiar with the new purchase of my 1982 308 GTSI because I was there even though I wasn't the buyer. The original purchaser wanted to buy a 512 but he was told that there were more buyers than cars allocated so the best they could do was sell him a 308. Now its possible that this dealer could easily sell more cars than was allocated to them so I can't say. The buyer was a bit upset so decided to not purchase. A month later he decided he would take a 308. The dealer was out of 308's and ended up importing one from Canada. So why didn't he import a 512? My guess was that Ferrari was playing the game all the way back in the 80's.