Ferraridatabase.com offline

No way!!!!! That sucks! I LOVED that site and downloaded some great GREAT stuff!

Any thoughts to changing URL to something like "Maranellodatabase.com" or something? Hate to lose such a great resource as yours!

Can you help us understand the legal issues?

 

It's copy write issues for sure. Bummer as the site was great - glad I downloaded a bunch while I had the chance.

 

Ben,

I can appreciate you not wanting to address the details. But I hope you will consider answering this:

Obviously you still have all the files... Was the issue with making the files available for download, or with the site branding?

 

Ok Ben, fair enough. Thanks for all the hard work you put into that site. It will be sorely missed

 

This is terrible news.

 

I loved your site. I was just looking for it so that I could get a couple of much needed docs. Thank you for that great service you provided.

 

Ben thank you for "adding to my knowledge". You efforts have not been in vain and you have made the Ferrari community more knowledgable and robust.

Thank You!

 

Further to Terry's comments yesterday too I can only echo what has been said above: many thanks - your site was a great aid particularly to newcomers to the marque

 

I used it frequenty to enhance my knowledge.

Thankyou for all your efforts.

It will be sorely missed.

 

This is terrible..

Thank God i have downloaded everything i needed before a couple of months.

Thank God!!

 

It's just going to make it difficult, but not impossible... How convenient... Smart move? Nope.

 

I want to thank you for all your efforts, it was a great resource and sadly irreplaceable.

 

Maranello apparently has little regard for the owners of older production cars. The company is chasing a completely different demographic now.

 

Not sure. At the recent 488 launches they paraded all the earlier V8s.

The reason they have suddenly decided to enforce copyright might indicate they have become aware of the customer base of the classic cars and want to capitalize on it.

 

Ben
Thank you so very much for taking the time and effort to put together one of the best websites for all of those who have and enjoy vintage cars. It is a shame that a company thinks that you are hurting there bottom line. Ferrari/Maserati should be ashamed of themselves.

 

Ben: Thank you for getting the information out to us. Having manuals allows owners to pull things apart, fix stuff and appreciate the engineering of these beautiful cars. And even improve some of the comical solutions they included in their designs. A parts guy once explained that F. would like all the old cars crushed so we would all have to buy new. Access to manuals keeps the old cars running. And Ferrari does not sell manuals.

A fun thought experiment: "What would the world look like if the first wheel design was copyright?"


Again, Thank you.

Jeff Pintler
89 348tb, 86tr, 99 360 3-pedal

 

They seem perfectly happy to trade on their heritage, but they don't seem very keen on providing parts or support for older cars unless they're very $pecial models. Contrast that with Mercedes-- I can order parts for older cars directly from the dealer and most of them show up in ~3 days.

That's actually one of my single biggest gripes about Ferrari-- the company itself seems to have little regard for customers after the sale has been made. I'd have *tons* more respect for the company if I could order any esoteric part for my 348 or an even older car, and have a reasonable expectation of receiving it, even if it took a while. Seems to me that Ferrari is leaving a bunch of money on the table by not servicing owners of older cars, but like someone else said, maybe the real intention is to force everyone into new cars.

In any case, it doesn't seem like Ferrari truly honors its heritage-- they just use it as a selling tool. Going after Ferraridatabase when they don't even support the older cars at all only serves to illustrate my point. They inconvenienced a lot of people, some of whom will presumably be disinclined to buy another Ferrari as a result, and it's not even because they're trying to protect their profits. Go figure...

Hopefully you're right and the intent is to go after the lucrative replacement parts business, but I'm not holding my breath.

Oh, and big thanks and huge respect for Ben for doing what he did for as long as he could. I actually found a couple of items just the other day that I was intending to contribute. It's sad that one guy working for nothing more than his passion for the cars did more for owners of older cars than Ferrari itself does. There's something wrong when a company spends more time going after a single Italian car fan than it does building up its own web site for its customers.

 

I don't know that I ever saw your Website, but I'm interested as to why the legal powers that bay coerced you into taking it down. Was it simply because of the name 'Ferrari' in the URL? If that was the extent of the issue, couldn't you change it to something else? If it was something more, can you expound on the other reasons(s) why they wanted it down? For years, people have encouraged me to put up my own Website, and I'm very interested in learning what upsets them.

 

This is not what I meant.

In fact Ferrari, via the dealers, do support the older cars. If you take any Ferrari into a main dealer they are unlikely to turn the car away.

So one intention might be to remove the ability of people maintain the cars outside the dealer network.

It goes without saying that this is would not be a positive move! A total disaster in fact. Made worse by the fact the main dealers often dont have knowledge of the older cars which the specialists do have.

I am concerned that this is the tip of an iceberg. I have seen this happen before with another specialist car company, back in the 90's. It was caused by a change in management and appointment of a big-shot lawyer who was out to prove himself. They also attempted to put out of business any non-factory car clubs of the marque and then went after non-factory parts suppliers. Incidentally this company eventually realised is was all a big mistake and backed down several years later.

 

This is not good !

I love to work on my 512tr and those manuals were a tremendous resource

Is there anyway I can get a copy of those manuals - 1993 512tr

Thanks in advance

Dominick

 

in lieu of a website, I'm wondering if it could be possible to make some of these files available on a torrent network

 

It's all about the money. A shame, but that's life these days. I'm glad I had downloaded all I wanted, but what about future docs I might need? I'm just SOL.