Got to smile at the idea of Morgan owners talking about poor Ferrari reliability. With all the moans you see on here. It really is nonsense
Basic mechanical reliability is good - better for example than the water cooled 911 which suffer from intermediate shafts issues amongst others. Engines are tough and it was often said that with Ferrari you bought an engine and they threw in a car body. Body wise until Luca brought in the all aluminium construction, they suffered rot in the same way that an Alfa or indeed almost all other cars of that era ( bar Volvo and Merc) did. Parts prices are mixed with many at Ford levels and others at exotic car levels so its the luck of the draw.. Electronics are not Japanese and in the early cases are flakey. .
On the early non electronic cars like the 308, service is a similar cost to other cars plus any parts and can be done by your local garage.Cam belts need regular change but then the engine does rev to 8500. On the electronic cars, you need a specialist simply for the computer software so you are looking at £1000 for a regular service and maybe £350 more every 3 years for the cam belt. In a few cases at around the early 90s there were models like the 355 and the Testarossa that needed engine removal every three years to do the cam belts. True the cars were designed for that - the engine came out with the rear suspension and box attached so you wheeled them around but nevertheless the cam belt service at a dealer of a Tetsarossa ( flat 12) would likely cost £5k. In general though ,and in my experience service isnt much more than an Audi sports car .
The owners club is very much like this forum full of mature petrolheads / enthusiasts. Very few of the loads-a-money city dealers seem to join hough it has to be said that there are a some who are clearly quite wealthy.
My car is 17 years old, done 18k miles worth maybe £80k on a good day. Its 400 bhp, 1.3t mid engined V8. Would I prefer it to an Aero - every day of the week I would, but for the quality of design and engineering not the badge. But then thats a personal choice.
Last edited by howard; 08/05/20 04:29 PM.
