docmirror

MX for a TR/BB will put 348 mx cost to shame. The flat 12 of the family is a true mx hog.

blitz928

He bought at the start of the bottom falling out on Ferrari prices coupled a loss of job and impending home foreclosure. Makes for a big loss.

blitz928

My former next door neighbor has a Testarossa, One thing that I noticed when looking in the engine bay was that the engine is really quite accessible within the bay. Parts costs are probably outrageous, but it seemed like a car that a home wrench could probably work on, or is it another Ferrari that needs the engine out for every Maintenance?

pcar928fan

YUCK! So sorry to hear that Matt...the worst of all possible positions to be in!

TR's and BB's also get engine out for repairs and with the four extra cylinders MAN are they expensive to maintain! They say the 456's and 550/575/599 have changed that for the 12 cylinder cars, but the earlier ones were big bucks to keep running well!

blitz928

It's unfortunate but he will bounce back, it's happening everywhere. The one thing that comes out of others misfortune, though. For the patient car buyer, one can find these deals on exotics cars all over the country. As a buyer you really have to circle like a vulture though, with cash in hand.

Marine Blue

Matt you're right, it is a good time to buy.

The supercar market has been steady for years probably due to high real estate prices and the ability for many to use their equity to buy something they normally couldn't. With real estate dropping the quantity of buyers drops with it and of course supply and demand dictates the rest.

I don't think I'll be jumping into the Testarossa simply because I know I can't afford to buy the quality of car I want while also being able to maintain it to the level I would want. Besides, the 928 is just too nice to sell.

TV, if you still have the 348 I would love to see it.


Joe, did you get any good ideas from this post?

blown 87

One thing that is different about the Ferrari folks is the fact that pretty much any work not done by a dealer is going to lower the price that many Ferrari buyers will pay.

Right or wrong, that is the way it is.

With the 928, sometimes having a dealer work on it is not a good thing.

tv

It belonged to a friend and I have not lived up there for a few years. But a very nice looking car, a mini TR.

docmirror

Not true at all of the older chassis'. No one expects an owner to take a Mondial or 3x8 series car to the dealer. The 348 can be owner or private maintained by one of the better shops like Norwoods. Modern cars it's prolly true, but for the discussion of the inexpensive super cars, it doesn't matter.

dr bob

I was thinking that, based on my very limited experience at the local P-car dealer anyway, having a complete owner-maintenance picture history on my car will help it hold a bit more value than having the apprentice-trainee at the dealer even touching it. Rusnak next door in Pasadena used to have a "factory-trained" 928 servic tech, but he's either retired or moved on as of ten years ago. It took me a whole afternoon to 'fix' the stuff they worked on when i had the T-belt tension chckd a few months after I brought my car home. Fool me twice? Not gonna happen.

blown 87

It seems to be a matter of perception, I know that having the dealer do it does not mean better.

But I stand by what I say about it impacting the value of the cars, seen it to many times, even on the 3 series.

I have a friend that just bought one and he says the same thing.

pcar928fan

Greg, et. al. it is a matter of IF the people know what they are doing ultimately. If you have a dealership work on your car and they don't know what they are doing there will be problems. It will be seen by the astute buyer either in the records as the car keeps going back and back to the dealer for related (though that may not be obvious to someone new to 928's) problems, or a poor running car. Our dealership here in town actually has TWO techs who were trained on the 928. That said, these guys hardly EVER work on a 928 so they are not GREAT AT IT! It will cost you absolute book time and might even take longer than book time to do the job and chances are good they are going to miss something and bring you back.

BMW is a different animal altogether. In particular the 3's... They have built XXX,XXX of them or maybe even in the MILLIONS and they are STILL in production (though vastly different from the originals) so there is likely to be tech folks good at working on them at the dealership. Further there are a zillion shops in a big town that WILL work on BMW's and some claim great ability w/ 3's where maybe they don't actually have them. Thus there is going to be a FAR larger disparity in the private market of BMW repair than the 928 repair IMHO...

YMMV!

blown 87

I agree with that.

I am just going by what a few Ferrari owners have told me.
I think it is maybe because that there are so few Ferrari's out there that few indy shops are going to see enough of them to get good at it...

I started a thread on another forum to discuss the direction newer cars are headed, and IMHO it is not good for us independent repair shop guys....

Here was my post there.

I keep seeing more and more things on newer cars that make me wonder what these folks were thinking.

From Alternators that are water cooled, to starters that are built into flywheels, transmissions that do not have dip sticks, CAN data buses, and there is much, much more of this kind of thing.

Now some of the manufactures are wanting to say that the computer programing is proprietary. (that really makes folks angry who do not want to go to the dealerships for repairs)

Most problems with new cars in the first year they are being used are corrected by a re flash of one of the many computers.

Some of the newer cars are built so poorly that the first major failure pretty much totals them.

You have to be so specialized in one brand of car any more that the days of folks like me that try to repair what ever comes in the door are about over.

Just the amount of information to repair cars has gotten huge, fifteen years ago three CD's contained pretty much all the factory repair manuals for 95% of the cars built.
My last quarterly repair information update was right at 70 GB.

Just a rant after finding out that you have to pull a engine on a Touareg to replace a alternator, good for me, but not so much for the customer.

Newer cars seem to have far fewer parts counts, no more replacing just what is broken, but whole assemblies.

That in it self makes me love some pre ODBII cars, like the 928.

I am not even going to start on what it cost me to stay current in tools and diagnostic equipment, but lets just say my 300 a week to Snap-On EVERY week does not seem to be making a dent in what I owe.

Greg

dr bob

Greg--

There's a huge WYAIT list on that Toureg with the engine out. Cam drive jumps to the top of the list for me. Make it all worth the customer's while.

Erik N

My dad had a Pantera when I was a kid. I think it was a '73 or '74.

I remember only two things about it: First was the color- it was soooo red you thought you'd fall in.

And the other was the sound of it idling. I still remember that sound today and I was only 7 or 8 at the time. That sound beats a 928, hands down.