Why are you afraid to drive your Ferrari! ($)

+1. Get them out & drive them. In fact, drive them like you stole them (in the appropriate location -- i.e., the track). If one's concerned about cost of ownership, then letting them sit only drives up your $/mile.

BTW, Darryl, you're giallo 360 is beautiful. It's gonna make it hard for me to sell my '00 yellow 360 6-speed (I also have the 430 "itch").

James

 

I agree. Cars were made to be driven, not sit around. Seals dry out. Metal oxidizes, etc. I would be hesitant to buy a 10 year old car with 5000 miles, unless most of those miles were put on in the recent past and any issues had been dealt with by the current owner.

 

I put 13,500 miles on my 360 in 20 months. I put 17,300 miles on my CS in 30 months. I've put 3,000 miles on the Scud since May. I've had no mechanical issues, just routine maintenance and a lot of fun.

 

3300 miles in almost 3 months,btw whats eugenios contact #

 

I agree
I had 55k on my 308 and 52k on my 360 spider before I sold them
They all have 4 wheels, a steering wheel and a gas pedal. They are meant to be driven.....

 

If you are wealthy enough, you don't care about mileage. Regardless of wealth, if you have no intention of selling your car you don't care about mileage.

But there is a certain profile Ferrari owner that always has one eye on resale value every time they start their car (or don't start it), and this will always be. Such owners fuel the myth that Ferrari owners do not drive their cars, among other myths. I would speculate most such owners have never visited FerrariChat.com, so in a sense we are preaching to the choir here.

Mike

 

I feel truly sorry for those people.. because modern ferraris are not collectibles.. you buy a modern 430 with 5k miles it's going to lose money PERIOD... even if you do not drive it..

For this day and age I gotta say those people are a bit nuts.. if you have enough cash to blow 200k on a car you BETTER have enough cash to drive the ******* thing.. especially since it's really not expensive at all with a 360/430 and most new ferrari's to drive them..

Keep an eye on resale? please within the past year.. all exotics have taken a 30k loss just by market conditions.. mileage not even taken into account.. it's a losing game..

buy these cars with the idea that you are losing money and just dont think about it.. I don't and I am a happy man.. I dont notice or care about the miles I put on the cars.. I Drive them.

 

Chas, you sold your 360? Man, you snuck that one in on me.

I agree with everyone, drive the damn car as it's not increasing in value, that's for sure. I have to tool around kids so often that it makes it hard for me to take it out.

I'll start working again in a few months so maybe I'll drive it to work.

 

Yeah sold it in July
Im looking for a CS.........or possibly a 430 coupe

 

A good friend of mine used a '79 308 as his daily driver throughout the '80's and and for a good portion of the '90's. He followed the proper maintenance schedule, but other than that he just drove it. Every day to work, every weekend to golf, on dates, to visit his family, wherever. If he had to haul something he used his company's Toyota pickup (which had a couple hundred thousand miles on it) When he finally sold the car, it had over 120,000 miles on the clock and was still going strong. In all that time, the only real problem the car had was cracked paint. He had it re-sprayed and problem solved.

It's just like a helicopter. Use it and it stays up. Let it sit in the hangar, and it gets lazy and wants to stay there where it's comfy and warm.

 

To answer your question (from the thread title), the mileage/depreciation curve on Ferraris is obscene. Try selling a 360 with 50,000 miles. The problem is the fear factor associated with rebuilding a Ferrari engine and other components when they age and wear out. And, when they do have problems they can be expensive. (E.g., a defective varietor resulting in a San Diego friend's 360 engine expiring at 16,000 miles...)

Also, to be fair, the maintenance required on the 308-360 run of Ferraris is far beyond what other high performance cars demand. I wouldn't categorize $5000 or so every 3-5 years as equivalent to the "general maintenance required on any vehicle".

One of my other passions is vintage Porsches. The value equation is the opposite, in that the engines are revved hard, used up and rebuilt for less money than a 355 or TR owner pays to change a timing belt every 3-5 years. As much as I love older Ferraris, there is something incredibly liberating about running up the miles on a 356 or classic 911.

My local automotive hero is Malcolm B, who posts in the vintage section. He has two Daytonas (black and yellow) and a 275 GTB and drives them extensively. Whenever I'm over at Bobileff's, invariably one of his engines is being rebuilt or worked on. Odometer irrelevance is part of the beauty of the classics, IMHO.

I agree, buy what you can afford. But, a low-mile 360 is cheaper than new Porsche 997S now. The tone of your post implies that these are rarified cars that only a few can own, but the truth is they are the new 308.

The problem remains that a huge percentage of the value of the whole 308-360 run is tied up in the odometer reading, and Ferrari owners like to talk endlessly about the value of their cars. And it's not a new phenomenon -- the Greg Garrison Daytona Spider sold at auction in 2007 had under 100 miles on the odometer and had all kinds of praise lavished on it. I don't know what you do with a 100-mile Daytona other than roll it gently from one garage to another, but the whole "Don't Drive Your Ferrari" notion isn't new.

As discussed in a thread on higher mileage 308/328s (which really are indestructible), there are "bragging rights" associated with low odometer readings. Ridiculous, because obviously it takes no great talent to park a car in the garage and stare at it.

 

I totally agree on use the car as much you can. These are are built to be driven. It is better to pay 100k+ for a car and enjoy every mile or you can store it and save it to the next buyer. To bad I cant use mine because of work. Every week I tried to make some time to use the car on the weekends with no good results.

Use the car a lot is one thing but leave it outdoors suffering to all the crap is a shame!!

Use the damm car!! Enjoy it!!

 

I thought it was the sellers who drive average transaction prices down. The seller has the last word in the transaction. Perhaps too many current owners can't really afford the car and will take a hit to get out of it? Or perhaps they are well-off enough to not care about that last $10k? In any case, it's hard for me to accept the premise that the recent price erosion is caused by buyers who can't afford the car.

Jeff

 

I've always driven my Ferrari's without concern of running up the miles. Unfortunately, I've paid the price come resale time. The reality is that the Ferrari resale market stupidly imposes a huge resale penalty on what is viewed as "excess mileage". The whole Ferrari "excess mileage" definition has become a skewed, self fulfilling prophesy based on ill conceived notions of wear and tear. Through the years, Ferrari owners (as a group) have unwittingly painted themselves into an inescapable depreciation corner, should they actually drive their cars.

Tim

 

There are many reason for mileage variations among Ferraris for sale. I would assert that it's not fear of mileage, but consider that many Ferrari owners are busy doing other things such as work, traveling for work and don't have as much time as other people to enjoy their cars. Then factor in geography. An owner living in Wisconsin has fewer days available to drive their car due to average days of snowfall compared to Las Vegas or LA.

While I agree that it's important to drive the cars to avoid dry and cracked seals and to get any warranty work completed as well as service campaigns, I think it's not a fair assessment to assert fear as the reason behind low mileage cars. With the disposable income required to purchase a modern Ferrari, I think it's a safe bet to assume that these people are not including a 360/430 as a compliment to their retirement portfolio.

Time available, work, family and travel in my opinion are more likely answers to the low mileage issue, not fear.

 

Well said.

 

This is spot on. Fear of putting on mileage has little to do with low mileage F cars. A large majority of F car owners are sufficiently well-off to pay cash for their cars, don't have to buy them on credit, and can let them sit, just like they let their yachts sit, w/o angsting over depreciation losses.

The reality is an F car is one of the most impractical cars in the world and most owners have highly practical lives requiring a different kind of drive -- to transport young kids, the dogs, buy huge amounts of groceries etc. Moreover, its no fun driving an F car in gridlock -- which is an increasingly prevalent in/around most urban areas. And its no fun driving an F car in rain conditions, sleet etc., with the thing covered in grime.

Saying "Just Drive It?" has about as much effect as telling smokers "Just Quit". Its gas, w/o understanding tugs and pulls in the real world.

 

When I'm not traveling, I use mine basically as a daily driver. If I looked at the mileage I've put on it as if I was at home all the time, it would be about 12K miles per year.

If I lived in an area that weather would be worse (snow, rain, etc), I probably would not take it out as much. I can understand owners not wanting to risk an accident when you can't really enjoy what you're driving anyway.

But, I don't see the point of owning something and then not using it. Will the cost of maintanence be higher? Yes. Will the resale value be less? Perhaps.

Would I be just as happy driving something else instead? No way.

These are toys. But, there's no sense in keeping them locked in the closet when it's so easy to play with them all the time.

 

They are cars and need proper maintenance. They are also built to be driven. Don't keep them locked up in your garage. Either way, they are not going up in value.

 

Seriously? You are a fool... please tell me this was a bad joke.

 

The fact is, the majority of US Ferrari owners did not pay cash for their current model Ferrari's (per my prior discussions with several authorized dealers). I suspect that this popular misperception is perpetuated by those who are concerned about the negative stigma attached to using credit for such nonessential purchases. This stigma is not always warranted, but none-the-less persists. If you doubt me, look at the old FChat threads that debate the merits of using credit for such a purchase.

Tim