Can early California owners tell me about your ownership experience?

I've owned a 308, two 348s, and a 360. All pretty bullet proof. I live 350 miles from a dealer, so I have to have a car that a decent foreign mechanic can work on. Do the early Calis fall into this category? With my 360, it was all about the clutch, belt service, interior stickies, dash shrinkage, cloudy headlights, and bubbles on the dash.

Would love to hear from early California owners on how care-free (or not) these cars are. I might try to snag one this year sometime. I am 58 and 6'4, and found the 360 to be a pain in the butt getting in and out of. Granted, I felt like I was in a F1 car (and perhaps in a way I was), but I'm looking for something that might be more comfortable, easy driving, not real repair intensive, but something I can put in the local car shows now and then.

 

Will be 9 years and roughly 35 K miles this May.
'11 California. Have a whole thread detailing the ownership experience.

It's been super reliable. When things do go south, it gets expensive, but the major expenses have been due to squirrels making it their love shack. On the mechanical side, it's been great. Leaking shocks and a few other items. Stickies and dash bubbling are starting to become more noticeable as it ages, but that seems to be a Ferrari-wide thing as near as I can tell from this forum...T

 

My 2011 Cali - purchased 3 years ago with 21,000 miles. I've put 20,000 more miles on it. Aside from normal maintenance - i.e. oil changes - power top failed & had to be rebuilt and intake had to be removed to de-carbon. Guess that's an issue on direct injection cars. See if you have a 3rd party mechanic nearby before you buy as Ferrari dealership shop rates are more expensive.

 

Could you elaborate on the power top failure, i.e. any warning signs before failure, cost of rebuild? I just purchased a '10 a couple of months ago and have read about the failures and the associated cost. Worked fine when I test drove it and a couple of times since but now I'm terrified to activate it, lol.

 

Really gave me no warning. It's my understanding that many of the parts (sliders) are plastic & fail over time. Keep in mind my car at 30k+ miles when the top failed. Repair was several thousand $$$s. Don't recall exact amount. Car had 4-5 previous owners so I have no idea of prior owner top usage. If top is/was used a lot - you can expect top mechanism to wear out.

I think top can be lubricated - read the manual. Also - there is a company making more robust mechanicals out of metal. Found this out after my top was repaired.

 

Thanks for the reply!
I think I'm pretty much on borrowed time. Mine has 61k on it so far and I'm the 4th owner. I've also seen the sites that sell the 'kits', can't believe it would've driven the price of the car up that much to use metal parts but I digress. I'll definitely look deeper in the manual to see if there's any guidance for lubrication..

 

Is the California a cousin of sorts with the Maserati Gran Turismo?

 

TBH, I’m not really sure.

 

I put ~30k miles on my 2011 and it was bulletproof. Literally zero issues.

 

I certainly hope I fair as well as you have! So far, so good!

 

We went to the Boardwalk Concorso today In the 308 and the wife fell in love with the California. Good to know these ownership comments as I think I’ll be looking for one later this year.
Cheers
Dave

 

Be careful, if you go on jaguar, Range Rover and Maserati forums you'll find threads just like this one with everyone talking about how bulletproof their cars are. It's not a nefarious thing but rarely will someone chime in and say "yea my car has been terrible you don't want one", that isn't exactly good for their cars to go and say that. My Cali ownership was definitely not trouble free it was actually quite expensive, about 30k in 2.5 years and that was without any real issues just common crap. That's swallowable on a 250k car, not so much on a 90k car. The world renowned Ferrari tech at my local dealer when I told him "I thought the California was the reliable Ferrari", which I had learned from my research here, looked at me like I had 3 heads. He put the Cali reliability at a 5 with a 458 at a 10 for reference.