I was lucky enough to get mine in 1978. Only way I could get a manual in CA, since the limited supply of V6/five speeds was sold out. Probably the only really poor car-buying decision I’ve ever made, and it never stopped costing me until my ex sold it.
And it was 88 hp, so there.
What about other handcrafted cars such as Rolls Royse and Bentleys, which are put together by hand and each section of the car or the whole car unit has the artisan’s signature stamped on it? I thought those cars were impeccable in terms of fit and finish. Not disagreeing with you, All That Bright.
Regarding tires that a poster mentioned in an earlier post, I was always under impression that tire manufacturers nowadays have a wide range of tires rated for different speeds already in production, and exotic car makers just select the tires suited for their cars. No need to say, hey, can you make us a tire that can sustain speeds of up to 200mph? Since exotic cars are a bit more mainstream and selling like hotcakes these days, you’d think Michelin would be on top of their game by offering high-performance tires.
Anyways, I’d be a bit disappointed to find out that fit and finish on, say, a Lamborghini or Ferrari isn’t just as good or even better than the most top-of-the-line Mercedes or Lexus, which is still cheaper than an exotic.
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what you see might be impeccably hand-finished, but what you don’t see might not look all that good, or be just garden-variety components. Modern Rolls and Bentley cars ride on BMW and VW architectures (respectively,) and for a long time RR and Bentley bought transmissions from GM.
Cars like these are status symbols, they’re to let everyone know you can afford one.
radial tires contain their speed rating in the size markings on the sidewall. E.g. a 245/45YR19 would have a speed rating of “Y”, up to 186 mph.
it isn’t. Hand-built means it “might” be better finished, but it might not. it can be quite inconsistent. On the other hand, any given BMW or Merc is likely to be as well-finished as any other one.
also, there’s the matter of where the cost is in the car. The Tesla Model S and X are expensive cars, but much of that cost has come from the battery. their interiors and body fits aren’t particularly well-finished for the price segment, but that’s not the point.
They’re not built that way anymore. Rollers and Bentleys are now built on giant-sized versions of BMW and VW platforms, and only the interiors are done by hand. And it’s not the fit or finish that is the problem. It’s that handbuilt means “will break down.”
High-performance tires are easy to find. Tires rated to 200+ mph are not; the cars which can manage those speeds are built in tiny, tiny volumes. So it’s no big deal for, say, VW to tell Michelin it wants a custom tire for the Bugatti Chiron, because the tires are going to cost an astronomical amount anyway.
Yeah, many makers of extreme high performance cars have a tire manufacturer build a tire specifically for the car they are making.
That, or in the case of say, a Corvette Z06, the factory fits them with Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2’s and call it a day (although I think the Michelin Super Sports are also available on the “lesser” variants of that car). Either way the tires are very expensive and don’t last long due to being so soft. And many of them can’t even be rotated due to staggered front/rear sizing.
And it is true that the older musclecars would have benefited HUGELY from modern rubber. And not just replacing nylon with radials, but the wheel sizes available today versus then as well. A 15" wheel on a 1967 Pontiac GTO is just absurdly small. You can only get so much rubber on a wheel that small on a car.
Let me chime in on fit and finish, given that I build automobile body shops.
First off, there’s a lot of manual manipulation. For status vehicles like pickups and bread and butter, 300,000-per-year cars, we put a lot of effort into fit and finish. Things like “margin and flushness,” that mean diddly squat to me, but appeal to most of our customers.
Although the body shell meets its target (say, ±1 mm), and the door meets its tolerance (e.g., ±1 mm), and the hinge setting meets its tolerance (call it ±1 mm), this gives us up to 3 mm of slop in any axis, and inevitably it’s a “fitter” who “hand-crafts” the final fitting.
Luxury cars and exotic sports cars shouldn’t have any problem at all meeting the same types of fit and finish and margin and flushness requirements as mass market OEM’s. Have tight tolerances. Establish process capability. Reject out of tolerance parts. Manually fit where necessary. Charge back to your supplier when he screws up, if applicable.
What’s the perspective on Maserati these days?
I ask because the damn things are commonplace around here. S class Mercs are more common, but not much.
Are they sort of the Italian equivalent of Jaguar, or are they up here in the Ferrari level of exclusivity?
How’s their perception of reliability and practicality? Are they daily drivers or a proverbial Fix it Again Tony?
The doctors and actors of Los Angeles put me through (expensive private) college. My shop bought crashed 911s (and burned 911s/924s) and rebuilt them. Those twisty roads in the Hollywood hills were littered with dollar signs. Folks just loved to dive into turns too fast, get scared, and let off the gas. Whammo!! Ka-ching! Next! 
…and you decided to become a fighter pilot, sounded safer. 
Well, they’re certainly not exclusive in the way a Ferrari is; at least, not any more.
In fact, Maseratis have actually become less exclusive over time. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ferrari produced more cars every year than Maserati did. Now, it’s the other way around, with Maserati producing about five times as many cars as Ferrari (42,000 vs. 8,000 in 2016). As recently as 2012, Maserati was only producing about 6,000 units per year. They more than doubled their output in 2013, and more than doubled it again in 2014. Maserati Sales History
Of course, some of this could be because the company, under its Fiat-Chrysler owners, made a determined effort to move upmarket, with more powerful cars. As they produce better cars, more people want to buy them.
My experience, in terms of seeing them on the road, is similar to yours, and probably reflects this recent expansion. There was a time, not that long ago, when seeing a Maserati was a pretty unusual event; now, i can’t go a day without seeing one, and there are at least a couple that frequently park in my neighborhood.
Depreciation hell. Buy yours when it’s 2-3 years old.
Yep. Good old trailing-throttle oversteer (something I am well familiar with thanks to my sim racing days).
Well, the example is the Cobra or GT40, built in the same era and sharing most components with (Ford) musclecars. The single biggest difference between the two was the massive, track-quality rubber at the rear. 350HP at the rear wheel with an 8-inch-wide bias patch is just going to produce smoke. Put that power to a 13-inch patch radial (some of the first) and you can hook up a lot more of it.
Those 60s cars that were sent to Car und Driver were all specially prepared ringers. It’s very unlikely that whatever the magazines quoted in terms of performance is true. This is also true for modern Ferraris. Ferrari does not allow them to be tested by anyone in any manner that is outside of their control. In the various “shootouts” like the power lap or whatever the C&D one is called, the Ferrari always comes with its own pit crew and support team, to make sure the performance of the car is accurately reflected.
I guess the point is that they don’t make money selling a couple thousand cars a year, but through the “brand”, although to be honest I’ve never seen anyone unironically wearing a Ferrari shirt or have a Ferrari purse or whatever it’s supposed to be. Maybe I just run with the wrong crowd.
There are lots of other vehicles that need to be hand built because the volume is too low to justify an automated assembly line. Military vehicles for example, like the HMMWV, Hummer H1, Mercedes G-wagen are all hand built. From what Hummer H1 owners tell me it’s not uncommon for body panels from one car to not fit on another because the hand built tolerances are so large.
Wonder how Chris Harris got to drive the FXXK on Top Gear after that article.
That article was over written over five years ago. Ferrari did, indeed, ban him from driving their test cars for a couple of years, but Harris and Ferrari achieved a sort of rapprochement in 2013.
One problem for Ferrari was that its ban could never stop Harris from driving and reviewing their cars, because, unlike many workaday automotive journalists, Harris can actually afford to buy a Ferrari, and he also knows a bunch of people who own them and are willing to lend them to him for review. Harris owns a 1990s Testarossa, and he also owned a 599GTB for a year, and a Ferrari FF, all of which he has reviewed at one time or another.
Harris also has a huge following on the internet, and Ferrari probably realized that they looked like petulant dicks when they banned one of the world’s most popular car reviewers for having the gall to speak a truth that many other car writers had known about for ages.
Of course, Ferrari isn’t the only brand that Harris has managed to alienate. He was banned by Lamborghini for this 2014 article, and hasn’t done an official Lamborghini review since.
But he did sneak one on on Episode 2 of the 2017 Top Gear.
Richard Hammond put it simply: “It’s easy to design a sports car in that you need to fulfill only three things. First, it should look good inside. Second, it should look good outside. And third, it should handle well.”
Well, the overriding principle is that it should be profitable, not just to sell initially, but to service, and to sell add-ons to, and high-end cars certainly succeed on those metrics.
LOL no. Bentley sells a relative handful of lard-assed crap barges, and on sales of 2 billion Euros they only turned a profit of €112m in 2016.