348 TS vs GTS - worth the price difference?

Hello, Team 348/355!

As a long time P-car and Alfa Romeo enthusiastic Ferraris have always fascinated me but my experience with the marque is limited to few shotgun rides on local car meets. Perhaps, now when kids are about to leave the nest and there will be more space in the garage it is time to consider Ferrari experience.

I am currently living in Europe and have been looking the market for a short while and it seems that there is a clear price difference, perhaps 15k€ ± 5k€ between comparable TS and GTS. I am aware the differences, at least the major ones, on the paper, but my noob question is about the difference in real life.

Assuming there is TS and GTS on the market with comparable condition and service history, does it make sense to pay 10k€ - 20k€ premium for GTS or is that money better spent on "TS service and emergency" -fund?

 

Thank you, Ferrarium for an insightful response with many different angles. My planned use case is a beautiful cruiser for sunny summer days but with decent enough driving experience when pushing to 7/10 or so. An upgrade for my current toy, Alfa Romeo 916 Spider V6 which looks nice and Busso signs beautifully with Ragazzon ss pipes but spirited drive is mediocre at the best even with all the upgrades to suspension and chassis reinforcements.

I used to have 987 Boxster Spyder which certainly ticked all the boxes but then I was living in US where driving a sports car is not a taxable offence like here in Northern parts of the Europe. In theory I could rather comfortably afford to buy a new Porsche or even Ferrari here but I do have a strong distaste to pay 50k€+ just taxes for a 80k€-100k€ car. Or in case e.g. new Ferrari Roma tax free price is 167k€ and the taxes are 166k€ so you pay 333k€ or so...

The optimal car enthusiast tax strategy is to have 0% vehicle tax household appliance i.e. EV as daily driver and the 25 years old "antique" toy which also are taxed very lightly. And I do like to do some wrenching myself even if I certainly can't claim any master mechanics capabilities. Cam belt change for Busso in situ is currently about as complex as I have gone but life is for learning! https://www.italicar.co.uk/blog/2020/7/12/how-to-change-the-cambelt-on-alfa-romeo-v6-busso-engine

Based on your feedback I will not limit my search to post -93 units only but include also earlier units.

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Current toy

 

Thanks, Nosevi!

I thought, I understood 348 evolution on the paper based on studying this forum and other source but obviously I need to study further. Could you please elaborate the running development of 348 or point to a source which would help me to understand the upgrade steps?

As 348 GTS is almost f355 and late TS is almost GTS we could conclude that actually late 348 TS almost-almost equals f355...

 

Just a tiny bit...

Thank you for the link and apologies for my clearly less than optimal usage of "Search" function.

 

Web scraping (single source, autoscout24.com, Europe and LHD only) and Excel exercise shows that some market trends can be found even if sample size is small and cars this old are more individual examples than a comparable commodity. Especially given the highish maintenance costs compared to car value.

-> Spider the most expensive type of car, no surprise here. Later cars and typically with lower mileage
-> Using first registration 1993 as a split between "early" and "late" there is about 10k€ average and median price difference between groups
-> 77 "early" and 33 "late" in the market
-> Number of (G)TS and (G)TB in the market is about the same (45 vs 47), spiders are more rare (18)
-> Type designation "GTB" wasn't used in any ad and there were 5 only "GTS" but there were several 1993 or later TS and TB listed

You can find a Excel sheet attached and play with it yourself. I didn't do any statistical pruning like removing outliers etc. Only duplicates and sold units removed from scraped data.

 

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It seems that high-end 348 market and low-end f355 overlap quite a bit. I know question about 348 vs f355 is a really, really dead horse but I still have to ask your opinion about 1993-1994 348 with 50tkm - 70tkm vs 1995-1996 f355 with 80tkm - 90tkm on the clock?

Same price point, different mileage and potentially f355 being a bit less "concours condition".

I have now followed market only very short time so I am not position to say if 348 prices have started to creep up or f355 prices to go lower but I was expecting a bit more difference between those two.

 

Bid made for a 12/1992 registered low mileage (55 000km) 348 TS with full service record. Let's see how it turns out.

 

Missed this one. Sold already.

 

348 TS, 1990, 98tkm≈61k miles
3rd party PPI cleared with flying colors

As a part of the deal, seller, a Ferrari, Maserati and Lamborghini specialist in Sweden does a fresh major even if last belt change was in 2019 and after that car has rolled some 300km / 200 miles.

Waiting for a delivery still during month of August.

 

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