low mileage nonsense Who started this trend?

Amen brother.

 

I had an '84 308qv that I purchased with 40,000 miles and sold it with about 75,000 miles in 4 years. It's like having Monica Bellucci as a girlfriend and not making love to her, saving her for the next guy! On the other hand , I'll be in the market, hopefully, for a 360 in a years time, at least I know they'll be plenty of low mile ones around.

 

I agree my 355 has 20000 miles but they are well driven and the car has been serviced and well looked after by Norwoods in Dalls yet the first person that looked at it as I am selling it said this is really a high mileage car its 10 years old for crying out loud So I am with you all the way on this one.

 

well said. give me a well sorted, regularly driven car over a garage queen any day. if i want something to look at i'll take a picture. cars are made to be driven.

 

Very simple. Most people (including me) would rather buy a car with 695 miles and all service up to date than a car with 32K miles and all service up to date. The key is "all service up to date," and confirmation of such. Sorry, but no matter how well you take care of a car, use will result in wear and tear. I think that most here will agree that WE want to be the drivers running up the miles on a car, not some other guy!

BTW, IMO your Testarossa was not a high mileage car. My '85 with 51K miles is ready for the scrap heap under that standard. Any 355 with 20K miles is a cream puff in my book.

 

All cars have a premium when they have low miles, it is industry wide. It just happens that with Ferrari that there are always cars available for seemingly any age group with few miles. When there are 10 of a particular model (say a 10 year old car) on the market, 5 have greater than 20k, 3 have 10k or less, 2 have 5k or less and 1 has 400 miles. With that selection the 20k cars do not look good in comparison.

We got a 90 TR in 98 with 1k miles (it rolled to 1k even during the test drive) for what was about 10% less than top of the market. Why consider a 20k mile car at 25% less than the top when for a few thousand more we got a new car? The orig owner paid over 300k as an investment and never drove it. He saved the car for me.


Don't buy into that garage queen stuff too much. 10 years with minimal driving isn't much. Since 98 we have put 11 k more miles on it and besides scheduled maint the only part replaced is one cat temp ECU and it leaks less than any other car in inventory. I see so called garage queens at 10 years or less all the time with very little trouble.

 

I recently purchased a 92 512TR with just under 15k I was considering buying one with 4000 miles but would have cost $18,000 more. As far as I am concerned I made the right choice. My car looks and drives great. It did not make sense for me to pay $18,000 for 11,000 miles. I have also heard that cars that are not driven often have problems from sitting around all the time. I have many beautiful cars in my collection that I do not drive and are for show only. They are called Matchbox cars.

 

I have bought 2 garage queens out of the 6 used Fcars I have owned. 1st was a 94 348 TB with 1500 miles I bought in 1998. I put 15K on it over the next 3 years, very trouble free for any car, let alone a 348, although the next owner was not as fortunate with it. 2nd was a 89 328 GTB I bought in 2001 with 7K miles on it, less than 1K in the previous 5 years. It now has 21K and has been great, no storage related issues at all.

As you can see, I drive my cars but I am thankful to those who don't. It leaves a nice supply of nearly new old Ferraris for me.

Dave

 

I love driving my 328. I can't imagine not using this car every chance I get. That being said, driving the way I do is KILLING the resale value of the car.

A zero-mile late model 328 runs ~70K or so

Put 20,000 miles on it, and you're looking at a 45-50K car

Put 50,000 miles on it, and it's maybe 35K, IF you can get someone to buy it. For most people, they'll spend the extra 10K to buy the car with 30,000 fewer miles on it.

My 328 has 92,000 miles on it. What's it worth? Mid 20s maybe, even if it was redyed and resprayed? Do you think anyone would actually SELL a 328 for that? Essentially, the car has no resale value, because the sellers of the cars with that kind of mileage would rather keep the cars than give them away for the firesale prices buyers would require.

One reason people buy 308s/328 is that the depreciation curve is flat, meaning you're not throwing away cash the moment you sign the check. However, that only applies if the car stays in the same basic condition -- including mileage. If you use the car as a car, you're literally burning money.

 

I agree that Ferraris should be driven and people should be less concerned with mileage, but I'm gonna play the devil's advocate. If you are someone that can drive your car for hours on end every weekend, feel blessed! People that can afford a Ferrari probably got to that point in their life because they work really hard for their money...some I'm sure are even workaholics. Running your own business can be a 24/7 job...executives at large companies have a huge responsibility to their company and stockholders to deliver results. My friend who could afford just about anything he wants is a consultant and travels sunday- thursday and the last thing he wants to do when he gets home is get into a car of anykind.

Plus if you have a wife and children you have responsibilities to them if you are any kind of a human being. Cooking dinner, attending your son's t-ball game, taking your wife out shopping so she can treat herself after taking care of your children all week.

It has been a life long dream of mine to own a model airplane. I finally purchased one a few months back...I took it out for a few weekends, had a ball...and it hasn't left my house since. I'm not even married and I can't find time to fly my damn airplane! LOL. Chores, work, and traveling home to visit with my parents has drained all of my time.

I'm sure that it was not their intentions to only put 619 miles on their brand new Ferrari in 4 years, but sometimes life happens.

...or the even better situation....you have so many damn exotics you couldn't possibly get around to putting miles on them all!

Cheers.

 

I just picked up my F355 Spider. It had 17,200 miles ago last month and now is pushing 18,700. I have no intention of stopping. I drive it to work daily, except when it looks like rain. I have to say that I can't remember anything else I have owned that I enjoy so much. I can't understand why anyone wants to keep it in the garage or use it on occassion. If you want an investment - buy a building. If you want to have fun - drive the damb thing. Maybe I am missing sonmething but if I am, I don't want to find it.

Keeping the tan in San Diego!

 

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I was once told that there really aren't as many low mileage Ferrari's as one would like to believe. Just cars with well placed switches.

 

Owning a Ferrari and not driving it is just silly. Speculators who buy them and store them for later resale are just warehousemen, hoping that their commodity will appreciate at some point so they can earn some money. What a terrible situation to be in - own one of the world's most desirable objects and you can't touch it in case you lose some money.

That's like starving yourself to live longer. Imagine 95 hungry years versus 83 well fed and satisfied years. I know that I need to be fed and I know that my cars need to be driven.

 

F-cars more than any other car derives it's resale by mileage. If you don't believe me ask any dealer that sells preowned ones.

 

Italian cars don't generally take well to not being driven - in particular when, as sometimes happens, the owner, when he finally backs it out of the garage once in a blue moon, kicks the throttle without warming the engine properly etc. This kind of behaviour will easily kill a finely tuned piece of aluminium machinery and certainly wear it way beyond the recorded mileage as opposed to a car which is driven carefully, regularly and above all spiritedly.

The Italian tune-up is no myth!

 

It is all relative to the perspective of the buyer. I bought an 89 348 with around 21k miles a year and a half ago. I thought it was very low mileage. If I were buying a 2001 360 today I would consider 15k to be low mileage. To me it is not how many miles per year are driven, but rather how many total miles are on the car (as an indication of wear).
BT

 

Wear is not always in the miles driven I have a 1974 XKE with only 17800 miles on it at 32years however I have had to rebuild the IRS and brakes and replace the exhaust syatem as they were victims of sitting around and got a great deal of rust on them I have spent as much on that car( but I still love it) as any of my Ferraris, if its ROI you are looking for then most cars are not the best investment vehicle.

Martin

Martin

 

When I say 'wear' I am talking mostly about cosmetic stuff (interior, door dings, wheels, etc...). I know you can have a higher mileage car in great condition, but one with VERY few miles will have firmer seats, controls that click like new etc... My car looks very good on a lift (no corrosion, scrapes, etc...) and it has 24k miles. I was a bit surprised since people say that cars in Florida suffer from corrosion due to the high humidity. The underside of my car looks like new as my mechanic can testify, and it is an unrestored 17 year old car. I guess the mystique is that you are buying a 'new' car that you could not afford when it first came out, and you really wanted to buy it.
BT

 

Just came back from Maranello in Italy. met up with a 355 spider owner who has 190k on his car with only one belt change. The guy lived in Marenello and has owned 2 ferraris befor this one which he bought new. It did not seem to consern him about milage.

 

I owned a dodge viper with very low miles, turned out to be a major pain in the neck.. needed a ton of crap just a few months after I purchased it.

I just purchased a Lotus Esprit V8 with 36k miles(15k miles on the new engine, was rebuilt), for the same price I could have had a 10k mile Esprit.

I chose the 36k mile esprit because the owner loved the car, and people knew him in the community, he modded it and I knew the car has been driven and used and it all sorted through..

Miles and age is not as important as how healthy a car is.. In the case with some cars I would rather know it was taken care of when it was owned than anything else.

I would take a car with miles on it over a garage queen any day if I knew more about the history.. Now if I happened upon a low mileage car that was well sorted and I knew that it's a different story..

Cars are meant to be driven.. so anyone that buys a car and avoids driving it just to keep the resale up in my opinion just doesn't get it..

Again, I am willing to bet that most ferrari's owners that care so much also have their odometers rolled back or frozen..

 

I personally love the huge price decrease in higher mileage Ferraris. If maintenance is done, its a buyers paradise. Because I love to drive my Ferrari often I can get an awesome deal on a good driving car.

 

Don't know where it started and why it exists, but I've had my 360 20 months now and I've put on over 12,000 miles. I see no reason to own the car and not drive it.

 

Yikes!!

Lotus Esprit reliability makes Ferrari look like Porsche...