FERRARI SERVICE HISTORY QUERY

It strikes me as a little odd that a car previously owned by a Ferrari mechanic and lets face it he WOULD know what it means to have the FSH and a stamped book, would not do it, after all how much trouble is it to stamp a book?????????????

 

The car is STILL owned by Karl and has been for 13 yrs. He bought it as a keeper and saw no need to stamp a service book on a car he was never going to sell. However, things change and i see no prob with retrospectively stamping the book up.

 

Lets face it, (if some ferrari owners can), we pay over the odds compared to other cars for oil and all filter changes that most of us can do our selfs if we were arsed. My self i know that the main reason that i take my ferrari in to a ferrari specialist is just to get the book stamped and nothing else. I wonder how many other owners would admit to that.....not many im sure.

 

I would admit to that with you Charlie sure you would need to go to a specialst that you know and TRUST to do all the work properly and there are a good few about . One step further on than this i would say if you have a say under three year old car you need to be useing a main dealer higher cost or not for warranty and history (stamp) It does make a difference when you come to sell it rightly or wrongly

RAY360M

 

Ray your servicing/running costs for your stable must be F**N immenes dude, respect to ya!

 

You want a service history for 2 reasons:

1. In the hope is has had all the neccessary preventative maintenance done that will prevent big bills.

2. Becuase it will make the car easier to sell on.

I've seen cars with FSH (I'm not just talking about Ferraris) that have been complete sheds. The FSH just means the most basic servicing (oil changes) has been carried out. You take them in for their next service and all of a sudden there is a lot of work that needs doing because it wasn't done at previous services...only the oil was changed and the book was stamped.

What you want to look for - especially with such an old car as a GT4 - is that there has been regular preventative maintenance done. The clues are lots of small items, rather than huge bills for major components. E.g. you want to see a bill for a new CV boot rather than a new driveshaft!

I bought mine with zero service history. The first service cost an arm and a leg to put all the minor things right. Since then it's been extremely reasonable.

 

308 owners either took the trouble, or did not......

One of mine spent many years in Montana, USA where "Authorized Ferrari Technicians" were pretty thin on the ground..nonetheless the car was well maintained...

When it returned to Civilization, it was a simple matter to review the car and catch up on the Service Book.......as noted that's about the time you start rebuilding carbs, overhauling distributors, changing water pumps, compression tests.....you catch up on that 'deferred maintenance" pretty quickly if you are driving it......fuel lines, shattered headers, ........."****, we're on FIRE".....LOL!

"Wait here and pick some wildflowers for Daddy, honey....I have to take care of something.........."

 

i still think karl's will be the best car, even if the service history aint stamped up , it will have been lovenly maintained, ring him and tell him your concerns re service history

 

I agree with Tex and Steve......Karl's car will prob be tops. Funny how the search has come full circle

 

Had my 328 serviced by:

Kent High Performance - V.Good, great people, too far away.

DK Engineering - Quirky people, brilliant work, perfectionists if you want them to be, pragmatic if you don't. Mid-price for work, top price for cars.

Maranello - Didn't do the non-standard things I asked them to (Radio Aerial Switch and Elec.Mirror Switch), forgot to stamp the book, billed me £400 too much. To be fair they responded fast when I complained.

On a pre-1990 car I'd take a car from a recognised specialist ahead of a main dealer any day.

Maranellos are currently (at least a couple of weeks ago they were)trying to sell their own 246 from the vintage fleet (Asset stripping before Ferrari UK takeover again) and they also have no history other than a stack of MOTs. They wanted £65k, I offered £50k to no avail.

No history - drop the price at least 10-20% in my view.

jg

 

You are WRONG.....OK???

A service history? A crook looking to rip off your hard earned cash could forge one in a heart beat over a xerox machine with a bottle of white out!

What have you got if you buy THAT?????? Not much...

OTOH, a stack of misc. scraps of paper presented in good faith by a careful owner MIGHT look like ten years of your Old Lady's shopping lists, BUT it shows a WELL MAINTAINED car!!

You guys need to remember that these cars are like real estate, except instead of LOCATION, LOCATION, and LOCATION, the primary inspections before purchase should be CONDITION, CONDITIOPN, CONDITION......and while you'll occaisionally be fooled by a pig in lipstick, there is no faking the patina of a well cared for example......

My last one was from a 78 year old man, and engineer with Pacific Gas and Electric, and I could tell after a few phone calls and 30 minutes with him in his garage he was the kind of guy I wanted to deal with...

Remember, the car's past, is past....YOU get to decide the FUTURE!


My tech could whip a Service History into shape a LOT faster than he can repair the actual machine! LOL!

*stamp.......stamp.........stamp........*

He did NOT show me the torn sunvisor, so I ended up downside 99 Pounds Sterling ($187.00 USD)!

I'm off to New Orleans! Ya'll quit haggling and GO BUY SOME CARS!

Get the Dino, too! They're so CUTE!!!!

 

Wise words from Tex, as usual . Julian, i really think this will come down to you trusting that Karl has looked after this car properly for the past 12 years.
Good luck.

 

Haven't KHPC got a black 308 gt4 for sale from 12 K ?

 

Wierd, huh?

 

The car is STILL owned by Karl and has been for 13 yrs. He bought it as a keeper and saw no need to stamp a service book on a car he was never going to sell. However, things change and i see no prob with retrospectively stamping the book up.

 

can see both points but again if i were karl i would still stamp the book