…and here’s a link to Corse Clienti, the Ferrari division that sells and maintains the retired race cars.
My fathers accountant owns and drives exclusively the Magnum PI model ferrari.
I had a detailing client that paid us to take care of his Ferrari F430 Spyder weekly. That thing was absolutely stunning, but honestly it seemed like a heap. When it needed work, they had to have it picked up on a flatbed and taken to another state. That happened several times in the short period of time that we worked for that family before they moved. Once I had to back it off the truck, which was frightening as it was a several hundred thousand dollar car, a stick, and I was taking it backward off a truck with skinny little ramps. Then we noticed that the dealer didn’t even put all of the panels back together when servicing it as we found bolts and such while detailing.
Super cool looking car, but seemed like a pain in the rear to me to own.
Revenge for what??
My ex-next door neighbor has an 82 308. Magnum-esque as it were, but in blue. He let me drive it around town. My head stuck out the top just like Selleck. Sweetest car I have even driven. What a sound!
But you are correct about maintenance. The previous owner had kept all the receipts, and he had never got out of the shop for under $900. And he was a nitpicker-the car was in all the time for odd carburetor issues. Or at least, perceived issues. When my friend owned it it ran well.
Everybody I know who wants to go 200 mph owns an airplane. And traffic is not a problem.
Maybe it’s a regional thing but super cars don’t get much traction around here. A nice type F Jaguar might see the light of day but no UFO’s.
I remember that episode well. I don’t know how to reconcile the discrepancy, but reading the blurb about the Ferrari program, they are able to take owners with no track experience at all to a place where they’re able to go out on track in some sort of limited competition in recent F1 cars so it can’t be that big of a mountain.
I knew a person once named Debbie Ferrari. Does that count?
She made a name for herself by scuba diving around Hawaii and taking utterly fabulous photos of humpback whales.
I know a couple of guys.
If you look around, you can get a Mondial for around 20k, and maybe a 308 or variation for not too much more.
When the late 80’s GTO came out, I told my dad, “BUY ONE! Park it for a year and double your money!” He grumbled a “hurumph, hurumph! Bad investment! Bah!”
I was wrong. Enzo died and he could have tripled his money.
I saw an article the other day about what it’s like to own a Ferrari here. It’s an interesting piece, and (in an unheard-of-on-the-internet twist) the comments are actually intelligent and add some context and exposition to the initial essay.
Ok, we are talking about 15+ year-old cars here. When you said ‘recent’ I thought you meant much later. Thanks for the info.
A friend of mine owns two. A 512TR and a 430. He placed an order for a 458 and will take deliver later this year. I think he’ll trade the 430 in.
There’s an informal coffee klutch in the area where local exotic car owner gather every Saturday (in good weather). The parking lot is a sight to behold if you’re a car enthusiast.
And no, you can’t go 200 miles an hour in an exotic sports car on public roads. You can’t go 120 miles per hour in a run of the mill Hyundai or Buick either, though they’re certainly capable of it. 200mph is not really the point of driving an exotic cars though, is it.
I knew a guy who had one, though I would never have called him a friend. He was the heir to enough family money to be filthy rich by small town standards. He was a deeply weird and distasteful person who had a taste for psychoactive substances. IIRC, he got stoned on something or another one weekend and decided it was a good idea to take the car apart. It lay in pieces in his garage for years after. I don’t know what ever became of it. He eventually ran through most of the family money and died. He was not widely mourned.
I have a couple of good friends who are driving enthusiasts who have each owned a Ferrari or two over the years. You can even use them as daily drivers, but only in the summer around here. Each had a few backup cars so it wasn’t essential to have it working every day, but they’ve been surprisingly reliable.
Ah, yeah. You have to understand that I’m old enough that '97 still seems recent to me. It’s an 800-ish hp V10. Anyway, any the Corse Clienti site, they’re selling and supporting up to the 2012 cars now.
“Cars and Coffee,” very cool.
I believe they tune the cars down; basically a reverse form of “race ready” to make them manageable to the average driver. It looks like last years F1 and it sounds like last years F1 but what’s really under that body is like 50% F1 and 50% good track day cars. They (I was partly involved at one time) did the same with dragsters. They looked like and felt like something you would run on a serious racetrack but they could be tuned down to the point that they became amusement park rides. Kentucky Kingdom had a set back in the old days - I want to say $20 a race and the winner got to keep his seat until he lost for free. That’s the extreme version - but you can do the same basic thing for any “racing experience” on four wheels.
Yes, and they drove them because they liked awesome cars, and could afford that level of awesome. Of course, there are also those who use them for status symbols, but I don’t know many of those people.
Another group takes their car(s) to the track (or even autocross, this past summer), where they can drive them at the speeds they were built for, or at least learn the car. Rather than looking at it as “you can’t go 200 mph, why bother”, view it as an experience that is the sum of its parts-- the exclusivity, the sound, the feel, the gadgets, or the appreciation of a high-end machine, including the materials, craftsmanship, engineering, design, etc. And then there is the community, where you can meet other people like you (who understand why you own one ;)), allowing you to talk shop, without boring someone completely out of their mind. If you’ve ever visited a car show or cars & coffee, and spoken to one of the enthusiasts, you’ll see how passionate they can be. Going 200 mph is really beside the point, in a practical sense, but serves as a measure for advancement and potential.
An enthusiast of most any particular hobby, doesn’t always have the most practical reasoning to justify what they like. I also used to collect coins and rocks. I wasn’t going to get any practical use from these, so technically it could have been argued to be just as pointless, but I enjoyed collecting and the value I personally assigned to them.
I’ve known two people with Ferrari cars. The first one is a good friend of mine. He and I are always sports car guys, me Mazda rx7 and Porche 944, him with his higher (much higher) income had several corvettes, a few Porches 911s and in the '90s he had a Ferrari 328. He loved the car but told me he was afraid to drive it much because he was always worried about parking it and getting dings. He then said he sold it because the cost of maintenance was so expensive. He said “I have enough money to buy a Ferrari, but not enough money to own one”.
The second guy I knew had twenty or so Ferraris and several Lamborghinis as well as Aston Martins, Rolls, etc… He was a collector and bought and sold them for profit. Never saw him drive them, he just had them. Blew my mind away the first time I looked in his warehouse. About thirty exotic cars, some with the factory plastic still on the seats and for panels. Must be nice to have money to burn. I found him a 1979 Ferrari 308gtb fiberglass body that he bought. He was very knowledgeable and a hell of a negotiator. He purchased that car for $52k and I got a $4k finders fee! Wish I could have found him a car once a week!
I know three people with Ferrari’s. One of which owns several (including an F-40). They all drive them on a fairly regular basis.