The Ferrari Tax

And you can buy it at Pelican Parts as well. The Porsche tax is MUCH less And free shipping.

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My rule of thumb is to adjust by decimal a point and you are in the ball park.

 

Thank fully the advent of Internet forums we have parts cross sections .

I have two Porsches currently and once ran a Bentley GT .Bentley tax is right up there , but since VAG own the Co they parts bin many a VW phaeton , Audi A8 + other VW bits like said door jam switch .Rad cooling sensor £7 from a VW golf ( rabbit ) or £150 from Bentley.It’s even comes ie the OEM with VW stamped on .The only difference is the packaging.

How ever there is a logical reason the same part pops up on different “ systems ‘ at different prices .It’s to do with the volume of movement mostly and owners expectations re exclusivity / brand awareness as well .

Take a flasher relay for Aston Martin DB anything from 96 to present day .
A friend of mine had a DB 7 ( U.K. based ) and he diagnosed a flasher relay issue .The nearest Aston dealer ( pre internet ) was 150 miles away , parts side closed on week ends ,He girl friend worked in the 2 miles away Ford dealership , where her farther was the parts guy ,Such was the volume of throughput , in the service bays they employed a dedicated parts guy .High vol on the sales forecourt as you would expect .

Aston wanted £65 mail order .
So one lunch time he popped it round to his future farther in-laws Ford place .He pulled the flasher unit took it inside and came out with an identical unit costed out to Ford punters £3.45 p .Plugged it in and hey presto .All FOC .

The Aston dealer might sell two cars a month, not an hr and have two to three cars a week on the ramps for maintenance not 2/3 an hr coming in like the Ford dealer .

So the costs of stocking , the floor space , the manpower are the same but the vols are tiny .This reflects in the pricing .

How ever this was pre internet .These days a online parts guy can set up at considerable lower overheads = his garage or back bedroom so should be able to pass on reductions so yes some out there today ( on line guys ) are greedy as they don’t have a dealership to fund .

The other point of customer expectations ….l
If you lived next door to a Aston dealer and took it in with a flasher fault …….My friend was told Aston owners expect , or turned around would not expect a 5 min fix and three quid part .The bill with Labour + parts etc would be nearer 100 quid in keeping with the marque prestige……something like that .

 

Back in the early 80s, not long after I bought my first Ferrari, I went to the local Ferrari dealer for a fuel filter. The parts guy asked me if I wanted the red box or the yellow box. The red box was for an Alfa while the yellow was the Ferrari branded filter. Price was about 1/2 for the red box.

 

Good day Christopher,

Greed and/or taking advantage of an unknowing customer is nothing new. That said, there are times where the parts distribution is the blame for all of this. For example there could be some dealers that are contractually forced to acquire their parts from their dealer network and so have to pay whatever the the price is and so they add their margin. We simply do not know who in this parts distribution framework is adding an excessive margin. Secondly, the contractual obligations may result in legal action by the dealer framework should the dealer sell parts not officially sanctioned and/or blessed... and the dealer could lose their distribution license, franchise, etc. Now, my comments are in no way a defence of the excessive prices, but I am merely pointing out that they could be all sorts of things that we as end customers are not aware of.

Lastly, as you mentioned... today we have the Internet along with the ease of transporting goods from all over the World and so there is no requirement that forces anyone to shop for parts from a particular dealer or local area. So... the customer if they are so inclined, can shop around and find the suppliers that provide the product, service, support, and value that each customer wishes. This extends beyond f-car parts and is pretty much anything that we purchase these days.

Cheers,

 

The exact same thing happens on ebay.

People buy parts from the main Ferrari parts suppliers, that are more often than not readily available, and sold as being a "rare" or "hard to come by" part, and advertised for a massive mark up, for example (for a 348 not a 308/328, but it serves as an example of my point):

A striker plate for the 348 TS targa roof clamp to press against (part No.63635100)

From ebay: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/292595612818?hash=item44200ebc92:g:hh0AAOSw3BNa7Dk4&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA4J5hrPP%2B%2FxoMI2GzIrSkucTLgFOuMdELFoXS1Qhe0byO3Br2cOxEzGryXptcqzC09lSoj81lxBBmVeMfR%2F83nGMda2JBMpn5q9ENDR9x6ISUAoYUsVwth%2BMaid%2BeBd5555sRgw7xaoABxxI4rp1encJ2JoNPeocLN5CD9CXONjb3jaP8G%2BSvuOVLt3ay%2BJB8VAFYy%2BcDEr8TXkEKnY%2FCOJxY%2BCTTxv6S2uIOs34XILFslXV3DXadwrO9AjmMa4nnRKeWWCsAENCiOoC0kCMZf1BJws%2BVuP%2FTW9DIUQPJ5Wb9%7Ctkp%3ABFBM5tPMzv9h - £155 each

From Ferrariparts.co.uk (Maranello classic parts) : https://www.ferrariparts.co.uk/part/search?SearchText=63635100 £17.80 each (£21.36 with tax)


Sometimes, it can work the other way around with ebay though:

When I bought my '89 328 GTS, the rotational operation of the wiper switch was faulty, and causing a relay to trigger constantly. Reading through the service records, it turned out there had been an issue with the switch previously, and so to "fix" it, a detent ball bearing had been removed, leaving the end of the switch free to vibrate. I tried to live with it, but the buzzing relay was driving me nuts (yes, I could've just pulled the relay out, but as with just removing the detent ball, that is not a proper fix for the problem), so I looked into replacing the switch.

In true Ferrari fashion, you can't buy just the wiper switch, you have to buy the entire column switch set (headlight/indicator and wiper switch). At the time, the switch set was available from both Ferrariparts.co.uk (@£5000 at the time), and Eurospares.co.uk (@£4200 at the time).

I found a supplier in Italy on ebay, selling brand new 328 column switch sets for @ £1100.

Naturally I was skeptical, as the price seemed just too cheap compared to the "normal" Ferrari price, but i checked the suppliers name on this site, and other members had already bought parts from them without issue, so I placed an order. Four days later, the part turned up on my doorstop, brand new, in perfect working order, and is now fitted to the car and working perfectly

The trick with any Ferrari part is to do some homework first, check all the possible suppliers (including Ferrari themselves), and don't automatically believe people when they claim a part is rare or hard to come by!

 

The Ferrari tax is very real. GTO,Superformance and Dino parts are eye watering expensive on a lot of their parts. Having worked on a few of the older Ferraris from the 60’s and 70’s I’ve found that a lot of parts are raided from the Fiat, Alfa and Lancia parts bins. To be fair I’ve found this has also been the case for Lamborghini, Maserati and Aston Martin to name a few. I get asked a lot about parts sourcing over the years so I’ve started to catalogue for reference for future customers a few of the parts for some of the more exotic cars and the mundane parts bins they are sourced from for instance the rear light units on the back of a Jaguar XJ220 are from a Rover 200.

 

Good day Christopher,

Understood. However, it is a free market and so customers can chose where they decide to spend their $. Sadly, the business culture and motivations of today have changed markedly from years past and especially so with the larger businesses. There is a focus on maximizing profit at all costs with no or limited concern for customer support, product reliability, etc. Many years ago a ROI or yearly profit of 10, 20, or 30% was considered fantastic, whereas, these days the target is much higher... 1000%+ and these very high ROI numbers comes at a cost. I guess to some, getting as much $ as one can is the focus instead of creating a long term customer relationships. The days where you, the customer, could simply sit back and order items without being overly concerned about product quality levels, relative pricing, etc are over...and so a lot more effort is now placed on the customer for things they deem important. It is sad, really... but it is now the World and/or business culture we now live in.

Cheers,

Sam

 

I can’t knock the service of Dino parts. Their early outer Dino door handles weren’t the best (came off the shafts) but they made some changes and now they are bang on. I supplied a number of parts to superformance and again their device is vey good. A great deal of stuff on a Dino is right out of the Fiat parts bin and when you see how much they actually are it’s hard to get over the mark up some are putting on some items.

 

Currently rebuilding a 308, would you be so kind in sharing the catalogue?

 

My early 246 dino gt was missing the trunk push button release mechanism. No one had one.

then on a lark I bought a Fiat 3P coupe. Low and behold it had the missing latch mechanism. It used it to open the rear hatch. I found an NOS replacement I think at Bayless and installed it on the Dino for like 5 bucks. I was very happy that day!