Neil sounds like you ahd a bad experience there - my comiserations.
As I mentioned but maybe did not hilight my 3200 was ultra reliable. Just the one breakdown due to air con pump failure and being a bosh part that could have happened on just about any production car.
As mentioned it's just the fact that all parts are ferrariand the rate of wear and tear is high when you drive a heavy performance car hard. Discs and pads keep on adding up, as do tyres not to metion the petrol cost. I never hated my 3200 though. Id' gone in eyes open looking to buy the best - it was a great one by the standards of many others I knew. Ultimately though a 70k car has 70k running costs, and on a car of that value the 2-3k per year in consumables and bits and bobs when you're doing 12-20k a year isn't really that unexpected. I'm sure a new Audi RS4 would probably have cost me similar money to run.
In the end if you're a car freak, who loves cars their history heritage and above all the way they can make you feel when you drive them, then you ahve to accept that somtimes it's just going to cost you more money to indulge your car fantasies than it's going to cost your mate bob down the road who buys a BMW 330d. My argument is that 'bob' plays golf and belongs to an expensive gym for his hobbies - my hobby is vapourising hydrocarbons in interesting motor cars in nice locations preferably at high speed! When you look at it like that it's a lot easier to justify. At least to myself if not to my better half!...
