Lower expectations on Ferrari’s but it’s ok, why?

In my estimation , if todays Ferrari build quality was as good as when the 3x8s were being built, we would not be having this conversation.I dont expect Ferraris build quality to be as good as the Japs, I dont expect my Ducatis to be as good the jap bikes, with that being said, both could do a lot better, considering their price tags. Ive got three jap bikes from the 80s,one built in 2000 and their build quality out shines my 3 Ducatis by miles. Even my 03 BMW K1200 RS is built better than the Ducatis, and it can go over 200,000 miles if properly maintained .My 328 has 104 K miles, and at 100 K, the suspension was still doing its job before I completely rebuilt it.

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In my mind every car company has shortcoming either in quality or engineering but their feedback from customers is how they judge themselves.

How do you tell a company who has over 2 years production presold they are doing it all wrong?

 

Back in the 80’s every car in the midrange and up used metal switches. Now I think only high end luxury cars like Rolls and multi million dollar HyperCars use metal switches.

I don’t think the later 996.2 interior was as bad as the earlier ones. I had a 2000 boxster with full leather and much of the interior still felt cheap. The factory did let you upgrade a lot of the interior in the 996 as I mentioned in my thread. Usually didn’t justify the price unless you were decking out a Turbo or TurboS. They did even more upscaling the base interior in the 997 but still nothing like the older 911/964/993 or your 328.


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My grandmother would say
You like someone because but
You love someone despite.


Yes I love my Ferrari s despite.

But what she didn’t say and maybe didn’t know is the difficulties and challenges make my love worth something that there are flaws.
Everyone can love perfect.
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Economies of scale.

 

There were some things on my 308 that were pretty cheesy. I felt the 348 was a huge upgrade in quality.

 

I think it’s interesting to hear different perspectives on this. For me, and many here, cars are my passion and because of that I have blinders when it comes to shortcomings. However, I think that a lot of what has happened over recent years with exotic cars and performance cars in general has been a positive for Ferrari. Also, now public trading has had some positive impact with this as well. To me, it seems that the cars coming out are more reliable in general. And I think competition has a lot to do with it. Lamborghini has upped its game tremendously. Huracans now come with Audi derived v10 engines and Porsche derived pdk transmissions and it gives them a pretty bullet proof drivetrain. New mclaren artura comes with a 5-year warrantee which will go a long way to easing skittish buyers. I think this competition is healthy and good and will result in much better reliability for the cars.

I watch the used markets for Ferrari and I’m seeing many many cars from recent models being sold for good money with 20, 30, and even 40k miles on the clock. In my memory, it wasn’t so long ago when these cars with these miles would sit at a big discount. Yes, economy is crazy now and high prices are everywhere along with low availability. But I don’t think everyone has taken leave of their senses. People who have driven these cars and put miles on them have felt comfortable enough to do so in them and people who are buying them must feel confident enough to believe that the cars can go much longer.

I’m no statistician, but it would appear that these cars are much more robust than they have generally been given credit for. Maybe they’ve always been this way, because of the historic mileage tax. Maybe the cars that are driven more, and our European compatriots can probably chime in here, are just more reliable. It’s kind of hard to put miles on a low mileage car after getting hit with a 5 figure repair. I personally would think if this happened with 3k miles on the clock, I don’t even want to consider what would happen at 10 or 20k? Still., I think a driven car is a happy car.

There will be sticky buttons and shrinking dashes. And there will be faulty PTUs that lead to big repair bills. In the future, each sub forum will have reports of parts failures and design flaws that will cause people to scratch their head but I believe these will be less and less. Also, pointed out, other car companies have their gremlins too. What other cars don’t have is Ferrari design, heritage, status, and those are things that make these cars very very special. So I will be keeping my Ferrari and driving it and enjoying it warts and all. My 488 has its quirks and all, however, I am just fine with it and if I am fortunate to get a 296, I am reasonably confident that it will be significantly better and just as reliable

 

I think this is it. I actually like a few of the post-328 Ferraris. Definitely worth putting up with some of the minor quality lapses for the unique aspects of the experience. Some of the major issues definitely ruled out several models for me.

But as others have said, life is bigger than a Camry.




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True. What bothered me was that if you’re buying a Porsche you shouldn’t have to open the wallet even further to get a decent interior. Ferrari had basically no options on 328, which IMHO spoke to the premium position of the car. There was no detuned “base” model, or “S” model.

But… there should be no cheap bits in a Ferrari. No one here would argue over another $1K to have forever switchgear.



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Leather in German cars is more of a display of how DOW Chemical Corp can so infuse leather with chemicals it no longer even resembles leather. It stil kind of looks like it but it sure doesn't feel or smell like it. Might just as well use Naugahyde.

And I do need to correct you about the 328 interior. They had 3 levels of interior. The standard which 90% of them have, then 2 leather upgrades. With both upgrades the dash, the entire door panel, the headliner and the entire area behind you was leather.

 

In those days they built sports cars. Pretty simple, fun, beautiful spots cars. They have discovered it is more profitable to build cars that are rolling self propelled displays of electronic convienences and gadgets. They are very cheap to buy and install, appeal to people, do nothing to enhance performance and greatly increase the price the car will sell for. It is very profitable. It also causes most of the technical headaches. And that in a nutshell is why I am no longer in the dealership world. No one works in a Ferrari dealer just for a job, it doesnt pay that well. The modern cars removed every reason I was there.
I was shop foreman in one of the largest dealers in the world when I called it quits. A few years ago I met one of my counterparts in another very large dealer. We knew each other by reputation but had never met. He asked how I liked it being out of the dealers. By way of an answer I asked him how he liked spending his days fixing infotainment systems.

 

Are the newer Ferraris beleaguered with all of the infotainment and electronic gadgetry? Are they set up so that only dealers can work on them? My daughter’s little Alfa stelvio is a neat car, but I get the impression that it takes a dealer with Alfa-specific tools and such to work much on the car. Thoughts?

 

Yes
They try. But its OK for me because I do not want or need to.

 

The 458 is about as new as I want to go service wise. Zero interest in the new turbo models. So much plastic in the engine bays now.

 

All of these infotainment systems are putting riders at even more risk. You just would not believe the insanity out here in So Cal when it comes to drivers not paying attention , Ive accepted it, and now instead of smashing the mirrors off their cars, or punching out their windows, I just shake my head and ride on. I love having a high end audio system in my Ferrari, but thats it .

Thank you

 

every iteration is better but still Ferrari has legacy issues like sticky parts since 348 and those lovely fuse boxes. That’s part of the Ferrari charm.

 

There's no question Ferrari has improved its quality control. Before Luca and the F360, it appeared Ferrari didn't even give a damn. Cars had a one or two year warranty that was swiss cheese. It is a lot better today, the downside is cars are a lot more complicated. It's not just info systems, but the traction controls are much more complicated, which is a good thing given 600+ horsepower cars.

I guess it's not possible for a car manufacturer to make a simple sports car anymore. We live in a complicated world. It was be unreasonable to expect our toys to be any less complicated.

 

You think Ferrari is bad… anything British hand built will shake, rattle and roll. Lotus is notorious for things rattling. Aston has little quirks as well. McLaren,…well threads on that as well.
I don’t understand the sticky buttons either, especially on the newer cars.
Guess those have been remedied by haptic buttons and everything going electric.
Ferrari has their customers by the balls. They choose to advance whatever they choose and leave other things as if they don’t care, i.e. sticky buttons. Certain companies listen to their customers and others feel they don’t need to.
Customer service? What is that?
Lost art.


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Texas, I agree 100%. I had an idea that Ferrari should make homage cars again. Bring back 250, Daytona, 3x8 and other iconic cars. Same looks and same type of mechanics with 21st century engineering but none of the high tech stuff, or at least less of it. And at a lower price point so that mere mortals like me can enjoy them. Probably never happen, but a guy can dream.

 

I hope to own the 488 GTB / Spider, and I am prepared to deal with any aggravation that comes with whatever might go wrong with it, just the same as those of you do when it comes to owning these late model Ferraris , its either that, or buy a Porsche lol . Its the motor / gearbox Im concerned with, is the 488 going to be bullet proof at 100,000 miles, same as my 328 ? What say you ?

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This happens to a lot of older cars, the good thing is both are easy to fix. The one that I can't wrap my head around is the stinky buttons/trims.

 

Ferrari dipped into the Chrysler Mini Van parts bin for the infotainment systems in the earlier California and FF Cars. The new Roma screen is just a reconfigured Ram truck 12inch unit. All the systems are based on Chryslers Uconnect. It is one of the best out there tho. But the screen graphics should be more on par with Audi or Landrover for the price point.

 

i dailied my 456mgt for 9 years and 30k km.....it was great fun.
it also cost me about $30k to do that since i had to replace nearly everything on the car at least once
HOWEVER, i would do it all over again because life is short.

i have had times with little of my own money, and times with enough of my own money to daily a ferrari, and when you can do that, you want to go ahead and drive a work of art every day instead of an appliance.

people dont expect their hand-built-in-very-few-numbers ferrari to hold up as well as their built-a-million-times toyota....and why is that?
i will posit that if you are in fact dailying a toyota, you are angry (or at least annoyed) at that fact, and therefore, by god, that appliance that nobody covets, better not add insult to injury by not working well on top of not inspiring anything in anybody!