One of my helicopter pilot friends owns a car dealership. He is selling a fairly new, but out of warranty, convertible Ferrari on behalf of a customer. He drove said Ferrari to Hanscom Air Force Base, the airport where we do our flying, a few weeks ago. After we landed, he tried to move the power seat backward. It wouldn’t budge. He drove the car back to his dealership with his knees against his chest. The other day I asked him if he’d sold the Ferrari. “I didn’t get it back from the shop yet; they are still fixing the seat.” The problem turned out to be a broken switch, the kind of thing that the standard automakers buy in China for $1 and that seldom fails. How much did Ferrari charge for a replacement switch? $2200. With labor, it was $5000 to fix the “seat is stuck” problem.
Josh and I flew the Cirrus down to Teterboro, NJ today to pick up a friend. We told him the story. He said “Oh yeah, my old business partner Will spend $300,000 on a new Ferrari 360. It had a fancy pushbutton F1 transmission. You had to press a button to go into reverse, but the button was always failing and he would have to take it back to the dealership over and over again.”
Ha, these stories come out of the woodwork! I have a buddy that bought a used Ferrari 308? (The one Magnum had) back in the 80s. He had saved a bunch of money up and this was basically his only real luxury really. (this was before the death of the head guy when apparantly the price of used Ferraris went through the roof) He didn’t put many miles on it and had it for about 1 year pretty much problem free before the water pump went and the cost just for the part (I cannot remember at this time) was enough to discourage him from keeping the car any longer. He did make all of his original investment back I think.
My early dreamcar was a Lamborghini Countach and I even had the poster on my wall. Then one day I read an article about a car reviewer and he listed the problems that he had with the car in the 2-3 days that he had it for review. They ranged from doors not closing properly, to windows not going all the way up, alignment and on and on. No one problem was a showstopper, but they were pretty persistent and annoying. I cannot imagine how it must be like to own something that expensive and have to deal with so many problems. Not worth the problem. What causes these problems? Are they still hand-building a bunch of this stuff?
A related insider-information blip (but from a slightly different angle) came to me from a friend who used to be a Ferrarri repairman. He said that 90% of people who buy Ferrarris can’t afford them. The problem from the maintenance angle is that owners simply won’t bring in their cars for routine maintenance, so the service department typically only sees cars when there’s an immediate, pressing problem, typically when somrething has gone direly wrong. My friend finally quit–he said it was fun to work on Ferrarris that were well cared for, but no fun to have to get poorly maintained cars running again and send them out the door again before they’d been properly serviced. FWIW.
Not in the league of Ferrari owners, but like any rarefied foreign car, it’s the “Ha, I gotcha” repair situation. Just had 1999 Volvo in for service, Informed that there’s some belt which needs replacement at 75,000 miles (car has 76,100 on odometer) for a cool $675.00
So, we ask, “Is is frayed?” They claim it’s 90% of the work to go in and determine its condition, so they never do that, but simply replace at the 75,000 mile service.
We decided against it (our family just paid the fall term bill for our oldest son, Philip’s oldest nephew, to start college so we’re low on funds). Then, to repair the rear windshield wiper, they wanted almost $500. Car seems to be okay without the rear wiper, so we’re going to have our 17 year old try to fix that himself (it may take a while), as he just managed to repair the emergency brake cable on our 1995 Taurus wagon — mail ordered the cable which tore for $30 inclusive of shipping. It took him almost a whole day of time to fix, but he appeared to learn a lot of process. Fortunately, car did not roll on top of him, but he claimed the transmission holds the wheels in place even when emergency brake doesn’t function.
Would anyone out there replace a Volvo belt for almost $700 without knowing what condition it’s in? Is this reasonable? When I told the service adviser that my Ford has never needed a new belt except if the belt is broken, she basically said, “Volvos are different.”
Thks for advice!
Philip’s sister Suzanne (older than Philip by 21 months but definitely not wiser)
Suzanne are you sure it’s not the timing belt? I bought my 96 Geo Prizm (rolls of same assembly line as Corolla with same reliability rating from Consumer Reports, but sells at hefty discount) and took it in for a mechanical inspection first, 80,000 miles. The guy told me the timing belt would need to be replaced for around $600, which I used to negotiate the price of the car down.
He said this is standard work, although apparently Toyotas can go to ~100k usually if you want to push it. He also said, and others have confirmed this for me, that some engine designs make timing belt replacement very simple, so the procedure costs half as much or even less, while others make it complicated, figuring it will only need to be done once in the life of the vehicle, and they can get more reliability or efficiency by tucking it away somewhere.
Here in Berkeley we have lots of those old Volvos around, they seem to last. You can also buy used Saabs very cheap, probably because youll pay thru the nose for maintenence.
Indeed, Ryan, it’s the timing belt. I had to look at bill to determine that. We’ll probably go ahead and have them take care of it at the next service. There were two other problems which were more urgent, so we let this timing belt which seemingly came out of nowhere and the rear wiper slide.
Not sure we’ll buy another Volvo, as the repairs are invariably between 100% and 300% more than the Ford Taurus or Ford Freestar (but the minivan rolls back on hills and I’d never buy another one either). We actually like our 1995 Taurus GL wagon best, with almost 94,000 miles. It traveled via ship to Geneva and back, where it managed up and down the Alps for several vacations, etc.
If anyone specifically thinks you’re crazy to let the timing belt go beyond 75,000 miles, please let me know. Service adviser says it could potentially result in major engine damage.
Thanks!
Don’t save money on the timing belt. It works proberly till someday it fails. When the timingbelt fails takes the rest of the engine with it. Its rubber, and rubber gets old. So its better to replace it in time, then to replace the engine later.
All set to have it replaced tomorrow. Two of the repairs which were done need revision as well — when they replaced shift lock for $165 they somehow managed to clip cable so that the light bulb no longer goes on to be able to see what gear you’re in after dark, and the door panel repair didn’t work whatsoever. So we’ll invest in the timing belt. Thanks for your sage advice!
I promise not to whine about my cars in the future, at least not on my brother’s website!