Talking about money. It’s all a bit unseemly isn’t it? A bit gauche, darling. We don’t discuss such things. Just not done, especially if you’re British. The only money-related thing we’re happy to talk about is property prices – our obsession with the cost of bricks and mortar is rivalled only by our preoccupation with the weather. Unless, like me, you don’t own a property, in which case such conversations are going to drive you into a murderous rage or send you into a corner to quietly sob at the injustice of it all. You’d have to pull the fingernails out of British person to find out what they earn, which is probably why salaries are so low here. We’re so repressed sometimes when a little more openness might benefit everyone.
In that vein, then for your amusement and to the horror of my credit card balance, I am going to walk you through exactly what it has cost me to run a classic Ferrari for the last three and half years. There are a lot of misconceptions about what it really costs to own and maintain one of these glorious cars. Depending on your relationship with money this article will either reinforce or dispel them. Owning an old Ferrari could be considered the final boss of classic car ownership: you survive or you get financially creamed.
I want to say up front, and for the record, I am not of means. I like to say if I were rich I wouldn’t be working here, but as David pointed out to me of course I would because I love it and nowhere else will have me. I hate it when he’s right. A while back, I came into a small amount of money and rather than sticking in the bank for a paltry return, decided a better idea would be to buy a car I could use and have fun with. Something to get me out of the house at the weekend. I didn’t specifically set out to buy a Ferrari, but classic car values being what they are in the UK it represented fantastic value for money. Walking car designer cliché that I am, I thought about a 911, but the Singer Tax has pushed values of anything air cooled into orbit, even the cabriolets, which I would have been happy with because I’m a terrible show off. I also considered a DeLorean, but they come up for sale about as often as Jason gets Cold Start done on time and would have been over my budget. A car designer friend of mine sold his a few years back for £48k before emigrating to Japan. Bloody eighties nostalgia ruining everything.
A Red Letter Day
Back to the red cars. I’ve always loved the 348, probably because it was the one that was always popping up in car magazines when I started buying them. The 348 being a bit unloved and undervalued suited me right down to the ground. The trouble is everyone else has cottoned on to their (relatively) analog charms and they’re no longer the bargains they used to be. I would later realize I had inadvertently dodged a massive prancing horse kick to the wallet by not being able to afford one. But the red seed had been planted in my brain and it wasn’t leaving anytime soon. So I started looking at Mondials. This was back in the dying months of 2021.
The looking part didn’t take long as there were only three available at the time. I plumped for the middle option, a one-owner totally original car that had been parked in a barn for a few years. I viewed the car at a dealer in December 2021, and a full recommissioning, including the all important cambelt change was included in the purchase price. And so in early January 2022 I had my very own 1983 Ferrari Mondial QV parked outside my house next to my 2011 Range Rover Sport. Why own one unreliable, badly built, breakdown-prone car when you can have two?
Let’s stick a rusty screwdriver through that myth first. Older Ferraris are not underbuilt cars constructed from week-old pasta sauce and communion wafers. Being built from steel and with some aluminum panels, the Mondial weighs just over 3000lbs (1400kgs) so for a smallish car it’s an absolute unit. The engine and gearbox have been in service since the 308 GT4 in 1974 and as was pointed out to me by an auto journo friend, developed by serious helmsmen ragging the things around the Fiorano test track for months on end. Being a QV as opposed to a later T model, the most complicated part of my Mondial is the original dealer fit Pioneer KE-4300 stereo, which doesn’t even have a digital display. It does have electronic ignition but the fuel injection system is the boat anchor simple Bosch K-Jetronic mechanical setup. It’s got an advanced mechanical specification (limited slip diff, vented discs all round) for the time, but the Mondial is not a car stuffed with mysterious black box modules that expensively fail as soon as they meet the damp British climate. It doesn’t even have power steering or ABS. It’s held together with nuts, bolts and screws in the usual old car way – there’s no fragile plastic trim clips holding the interior together. Given enough beer and a free afternoon you can easily figure out how it comes apart.
Breaking down the expenses individually wouldn’t make for a particularly engrossing read, so I’m going to walk you through what I spent as I spent it throughout my Italian romance so far. This will help me keep it all straight in my head and hopefully be a more compelling story. At the end, we’ll come to some conclusions and add it all up. Sound good? Oh and one more thing – I’m going to keep the costs in Pounds Sterling and then convert it to freedom pounds at the end, because to paraphrase a great woman I write for The Autopian boo boo and I don’t have that kind of time. Also it reduces the opportunity for me to make a mistake in one of the conversions and upset David.
Teething Problems In 2022
I didn’t know what I was going to use the car for when I first got it. It was January and too early in the year for any car events to be happening. Because I was itching to drive it the first thing I did was get groceries for the week, something the Mondial was unsurprisingly adept at because it has a full size, regularly shaped trunk. Parallel parking when I got home I noticed a few tell tale spots of coolant in the road. I wasn’t unduly worried but a couple more local drives resulted in the right hand side intake doing a good impression of a kettle at full boil. Checking the coolant tank the level was fine – I guess it doesn’t take much to make a lot of steam. But now I had spent a bit of time with the car a few other small problems made an appearance. The fuel gauge was a bit reluctant to give an accurate indication of the tank’s contents, sound was only coming out of one door speaker, some of the segments of the digital clock didn’t work, and while the engine sounded terrific the exhaust note didn’t give me the feeling of winding out a 126C2 along the Coventry bypass.
I figured the fuel gauge sender unit was a bit sticky from sitting idle for a decade and that a couple of tanks of super unleaded would free it up. I rang the dealer who sold me the car and he agreed this seemed a prudent course of action, although he was at pains to point out the reserve light, which comes on when there’s 15 liters (about 4 US gallons) left in the tank did work. Reserve light or no light, a couple of tanks of gas later the fuel gauge still didn’t work properly.
So we have a small coolant leak, superb mono sound, and an inoperative fuel gauge. The exhaust note wasn’t exactly a reliability issue, but being a showoff that’s what I dealt with first. Ryan Edwards Exhaust Fabrication at Bicester Heritage knocked up a custom system for me at £960. The Mondial now sounded amazing, but this highlighted another problem – a misfire. Upon double-checking the paperwork I got with the car, when it was recommissioned at Ferrari specialists QV London they replaced THREE HT leads? Who the bloody hell only replaces three ignition leads on an eight cylinder car? I suspected the dealer who sold me the car was being cheap to keep his profit margin fat. Further evidence to support this theory would be uncovered in the future.
It was time to put in a call to Migliore cars (who have been the Mondial’s custodians throughout) in Bromsgrove about a 45-minute drive away. The fuel tank sender units are no longer available – they would attempt a repair or adapt a different unit to fit – but the tank would need to be dropped. Like all small specialist operations they are insanely busy so sorting that, plus tracing the coolant leak, checking the car over and fitting a new set of leads took two months. That final bill came to £1300, including £322 for the leads. At least they were red.
While the car was away, I investigated fixing the digital clock. My naïve assumption was it was shared with some Fiat or other as the Mondial was the first Ferrari built with significant input from them. No such luck and of course no longer available. This was one of the first lessons about classic Ferrari ownership I learned. The mechanical and consumable parts are widely shared with other mid-engined V8 Ferraris of similar vintage and therefore commonly available and reasonably priced. It’s the interior and electronic components that are hard to get and ruinously expensive when they do come up second-hand. Someone on the excellent and surprisingly not-full-of-wankers Ferrari forums had pulled the clock apart and simply soldered in new seven segment LED units. I ordered four from eBay for £10, but no way was I going to attempt to solder them myself.
Once I had the Ferrari back with a working fuel gauge, no coolant leak or misfire, I spent an afternoon upside down in the passenger footwell yanking out the classic twin spindle style Pioneer stereo to figure out why I was only getting music from one door. Some swapping round of the left and right channel confirmed it was definitely the stereo and not the speakers or wiring. So I found an electronics firm in Sheffield who were happy to look at it and solder the new LEDs into the clock PCB for me. £100 including return postage. The central locking also stopped working on the passenger side, which turned out to be the door mechanism itself. I got a secondhand unit from exotic car dismantlers Eurospares for £60.
I didn’t venture too far for the rest of the year, totaling about 1450 miles. I still tried to get it out every couple of weeks because Ferraris don’t like to sit around but the furthest from home I ventured was two visits to the Sunday Scramble at Bicester Heritage during the summer, about an hour away. I wanted to make sure there we no more problems lurking before making plans for longer trips in 2023.
Into 2023
That Christmas I took it to my best friend’s house in Wales. After surviving the holidays and sitting for a few weeks, I opened the garage door and was greeted with a small puddle of coolant on the floor. This time I could see which hose was leaking so I replaced it myself, which you can read about here. Total cost £21. Annoyance and faffing around cost: off the charts.
You haven’t really owned an Italian car unless some weird design idiosyncrasy makes your life difficult. Something that had been bugging me about the Mondial for a while was the cigarette lighter. Eighties Italian car cigarette lighters are made solely for the purpose of firing up a heater and nothing else. Unlike a normal lighter you push in and remove, there’s a narrow hole you put your cigarette into like dipping a pickle into a jar of mustard. Then after a few seconds, you remove your lit cigarette and enter flavor country. Normal 12v accessories wouldn’t fit into this tight opening. I didn’t want to take a chance on a cheap Amazon 12v socket so I spent £25 on one from a reputable electronics firm and spent another afternoon upside down removing the entire center console to fit it.
Getting a hand wash job at my local car wash place revealed the door seals on both sides leaked like a newborn baby. This is the sort of stuff you don’t even think about on a newer car but on an old car just forms part of the constant rotation of stuff that wears out and needs replacement. New seals are available at a princely £336.52 for the pair. I bought ten meters (33ft) of generic door seal with the same profile from eBay for £56. Because I am lazy and didn’t like having to set the clock every time I took the car out, I never bothered using the built-in battery isolator. You can guess where this is going. The supplying dealer had fitted a cheap junk battery that was now knackered despite being a little more than a year old. I fitted a high spec Bosch replacement for £135. And started using the isolator. Then backing out of the garage one day the steering felt heavier than usual. A self tapping screw had gone through the tread of one of the TRXs rendering it as flat as a turd. New TRXs are available because Michelin knocks out a batch every so often, but they are £361 each. I got the puncture repaired and all the pressures checked at my local tire place for £28.
My first proper long journey was a public holiday weekend away at Brands Hatch to watch the Historic Grand Prix cars. About 130 miles away, albeit slightly lengthened by the fact I was going to pick up my brother from East London. Our lovely members all know what happened and so if you’re not (and why not?), at the end of the M11 just outside London I noticed the temperature gauge was pinned to the red. This part of the Big Smoke is my old manor, so I knew there was a gas station half a mile away I could limp to. The water pump had seized and consequently snapped the accessory belt. Because it was a holiday weekend the Ferrari couldn’t be recovered straight to Migliore as they wouldn’t be open. My breakdown service promised me a two-leg recovery saying they would collect the car from house Tuesday and take it to the garage, but they reneged and denied saying this leaving me £200 out of pocket to the get the Mondial hoisted onto a flatbed and taken to Migliore by a local firm.
While Migliore had the car for the water pump replacement I had the yearly service done and a booster kit fitted to speed up the driver’s side window, a common issue on old Ferraris due to the way the windows are wired through a relay or something. At the same time, the driveshaft gaiters also needed replacement. That was the second of my big bills and it totaled £1728.
This might all seem like a lot at 18 months in, but it’s important to remember the Mondial is an old car. Stuff is going to wear out whether it’s a Ferrari or a Fiesta. Seals, rubbers and plastic components all age out regardless of which factory screwed the thing together. It’s just the irrevocable march of time. In 2023, the car turned 40 and I turned 50, so to prove to myself and to the Ferrari it wasn’t a temperamental diva first up was a trip to Le Mans Classic in June, a journey of just over 1000 miles. Later in the year, I took it back to place where it was born, Maranello, as part of a weeklong pan-European road trip to the Italian Grand Prix. Once back home I had time to unpack, have a cup of coffee and repack before heading straight back out again to go and meet a car dealer and my twin brother at Goodwood. That came to 2500 miles in eight days and the Ferrari did not miss a beat, sitting quite happily on uncongested European motorways at 80 mph.
Not Much Driving In 2024 But It Still Broke Down
The problem of 2024 came in May when the clutch slave cylinder failed. Luckily, this happened near home, so the inconvenience wasn’t too great. The parts were £116 and the total bill was £349, again from Migliore. Because I spent lot of last year flying to see friends and being a fabulous goth in Germany, the Ferrari didn’t get a lot of use. Towards the end of the summer, I did manage take it to the Retro Rides Gathering at Mallory Park. After sitting in the sun all afternoon, when it came to leave I turned the key and bupkis. Not a click. Not a whirr. Nothing. Embarrassingly, I was one of the last to leave to had to cadge a bump start from Johnny Smith of Late Brake Show fame and his mates. At least he’ll remember me now. Then this weird non-starting fault the sort of fixed itself. Autopian contributor, Italian car whisperer and good friend Andrea Petersen visited my damp little island in November and OF COURSE the Mondial behaved impeccably when I took her out in it. The fault didn’t reappear until earlier this year when I wanted to take the car to a media event in Coventry. The morning I got it out of the garage it was fine. But when I jumped in the afternoon it flatly refused to start again. Serves me right for wanting to show off to my media mates. Recovery service called again, Ferrari recovered to Migliore again.
Those of you keeping track will have realized that up to this juncture I have had the car in my possession for a little over three years. So you know what that means–cambelt time. I cheated slightly in 2024 and didn’t have the car serviced simply because I didn’t use it much, so a fluids, plugs, and filters refresh was due as well. Although the Ferrari is now over forty and doesn’t legally require an annual MOT test I figured it’s always prudent to get one done anyway. Not only is it a good check over, anyone who wants to know the car’s roadworthiness history can look it up online. Migliore informed me on the way to the test station there was an overpowering smell of gas – a new fuel accumulator at £280 please. The non-starting issue was low voltage (again) at the starter motor, solved by running a relay directly to it, a common fix. The total bill this time was, are you sitting down, £2137. Including the mandatory £50 for the MOT test. Bloody hell. And that brings us up to date, as I sold my remaining kidney to pay that bill a couple of weeks ago.
What I Spent
Aside from all these minor maintenance costs, what else have I spent? Before heading to Europe, I thought it wise to fit some more modern headlamp bulbs, £50. These Ferrari V8s also burn a bit of oil. The specified grade is 20w50, and you can’t use synthetic because it attacks the seals. I went through three 5-liter bottles of Valvoline VR1 at £45 a pop. Classic car insurance (limited mileage, agreed value) was about £250 for the first year and £275 for the second. Last year it jumped to £450 and this year it’s gone up slightly again to £468. For the first two years of ownership before it became exempt, the Mondial was liable for Road Tax at £295 per year.
All right, like yanking off a plaster or getting an eyebrow piercing the painful bit is best done quickly so let’s start adding it all up.
Fixed Costs:
Insurance, 4 years: £1443
Road Tax, 2 years: £590
MOT, 3 Years: £130
Storage: £2160
Total: £4323
Now the maintenance and sundries:
Stereo and Clock Repair: £110
Custom Exhaust: £960
New Battery: £135
New Door Seals: £56
Passenger Door Lock: £60
Coolant Hose: £21
12v Accessory Socket: £25
Puncture Repair: £28
New Headlight Bulbs: £50
Valvoline VR-1 Engine Oil: £135
Total: £1580
Major Maintenance and Repairs at Migliore Cars:
April 2022 (drop tank, new HT leads, change top hose): £1300
June 2023 (water pump, service, driveshaft gaiters, window booster): £1728
May 2024 (clutch slave cylinder): £350
Additional Recovery for above: £200
April 2025 (cambelt change, yearly service, starting fault, MOT): £2138
Total: £5716
Fuel (7560 miles @ £6.40 gallon approx.): £1920
GRAND TOTAL SPENT: £13,539 ($17,987)
Bloody hell. When you add it all up like that, it sounds like a lot. And truth be told, it is. Every mile I’ve driven in the Ferrari, it has cost me about £1.79 ($2.38). I haven’t included my yearly breakdown cover with the AA because I have that anyway for my daily driver. Likewise, I haven’t included ferry crossings and European motorway tolls because I would have paid them whatever I drove, although to be fair I wouldn’t have thought about driving to the Italian GP if I didn’t have a Ferrari. I didn’t buy the car with content in mind, but some of this figure is offset by the pieces I’ve written about it here and at the insurance company. But I’m not telling you how much I earned because we don’t talk about money darling, remember?
I don’t think the Mondial has been more troublesome than any other classic car would be. It’s just the issue with owning a Ferrari in the UK at least, is provenance. You simply must have it. Anyone buying one of these cars wants to see a nice fat service history stuffed with receipts for work carried out by people who know what they are doing. And this is aside from the fact I don’t have the skills or the facilities to carry out any in-depth work anyway. If you think I spent a lot, I met a chap with a 360 Modena who had to buy two new engine ECUs at a couple of thousand pounds. Each. The Mondial might be the last remaining attainable Ferrari, but even the later Mondial T which shares its engine with the 348 is a big step up in maintenance because of the additional electronics those cars contain. I went into Ferrari ownership with my eyes wide open but the truth is it’s just too much of a stretch for me. So soon it will be going up for sale, hopefully to be replaced by something a bit more manageable. A car that’s a bit more downtown. A bit more me. One that doesn’t require expensive visits to a specialist garage to maintain its provenance. A car I know inside and out. The love of my life, a Capri 2.8 injection.
In the meantime, do you think sleep deprived David will notice if I invoice him $18,000 dollars for this piece? Or should I just ask for a pay rise?
All images the author unless otherwise stated. Top image credits: Adrian Clarke, eBay, Deposit Photos
So you didn’t state how much you paid for the car, which is important. You bought a solid, original ferrari, but it wasn’t really sorted…which is fine, if you got a good price.
The way I justify all of my shitboxes is through purchase price of car, plus parts to get it sorted, and how much the car is worth when done.
Now, I don’t include my own labor, and I don’t include gas because I would be driving something else consuming gas anyway, so take that off.
The ultimate goal? Be above water, have your total expenditures be less than the car is worth; it’s a difficult goal but if you can pull it off, you can always exit ‘at a profit’…. but that’s a bit too simplified. You did get USE out of the car… and you created lifelong memories, that are worth a lot.
And the best way to justify it? Compare it to buying a brand new car. Or even a slightly used car. Loads of people do both, and even buying a few year old Camry will quickly depreciate to a 5-10k daily beater in a relatively short amount of time.
Last thing: Why TF do cam belts only last 3 years? I get that it’s an interference engine and you really don’t want those to go, but 3 years?!?! WTF! And only how many miles? That is crazy. Belt technology has come a LONGGGGGG way since this car was produced, surely you can get kevlar reinforced belts with a better compound that doesn’t dry rot?!
Good luck with the Capri, though I prefer the Opel Mantas….. mmmm Opel Manta with K20 swap….
I specifically didn’t mention the price I paid because it’s going up for sale soon, but I paid a lot less than they are currently appear to be going for. If/when it goes and a Capri replaces it I’ll do a follow up revealing all.
Cam belts. What are you gonna do? It’s every three years in the service book, and like I said provenance is everything. Migliore charges just under £800 which I don’t think is too bad.
I suppose if you factor in depreciation, or possible appreciation, the costs won’t seem too high.
OTOH, my 2002 MX5 has been with me for about 10 years and except for the recent timing belt replacement at 76K has been more or less free to own. Tires, brakes, and routine maintenance are my only expenses.
I once owned a 1971 BMW Bavaria that I purchased used in my youthful exuberance in the mid 70’s. After a few years and many thousands of dollars in expenses I learned a hard lesson. The most expensive automobile you can own is a used Exotic.
Thanks for the article and the story.
Cheers~
Or you could be lazy like me. Both of my classics ( 55 Mercury Monterey and 49 Plymouth Super Deluxe have weird little problems. The gas gauge hasn’t worked in the Mercury in at least a decade. The Plymouth leaks oil but that’s why I have a metal pan under it. The radio doesn’t work in one but the one in the other does. And so on.
Then again both of mine are dumb-dopey murican cars made out of chunks of iron and so a far cry from something nice like yours
If you throw out the stuff that isn’t specific to it being a Ferrari, you’re around 6000 pounds. That’s not so bad. Many of those repairs should be one-time fixes and as a 40 year old car, things like this should be expected. Old cars are expensive whether they have a prancing horse on the side or a blue oval on the grill.
Exactly this, I should perhaps have made this point a bit clearer.
I like the way you itemized it at the end. It allows one to look at it and draw their own conclusions. As you said at the beginning, whether or not it’s too much really depends on your relationship with money.
Not cheap, but noit crazy expensive for a Ferrari. Well, at least you didn’t run over any musicians from Hanoi Rocks…….
https://x.com/AutomotiveTales/status/1553685766299172866?s=20
Great, now im looking at used mondials near me. found a red convertible with manual transmission and…is that a backseat? ok this counts as a family car…
Not only does it have back seats, rear passengers get their own cigarette lighter and ashtray!
Well I say back seats, it’s more of a luxry padded cargo area.
mine offspring is 4.5yo. a luxury padded cargo area must be safer than a convertible carseat
Plus your 4.5yo would have ample access to cigarette lighters and ashtrays!
How else are you to feed your toddler their Italian breakfast?
It absoLUTELY counts. If they grow up in the backseat, it’ll be easier to keep them in as they grow up and arguably out of it. My family loves ours and my daughter was much older when we pulled the trigger.
I skipped all the way to the bottom to see the final price. I don’t know what that says about me.
something about relishing in other peoples pain?
I get paid either way, but you’re missing out on some good writing.
One thing you never mentioned was it being amazing to drive. Is it?
It wasn’t the point of the piece, but it is. Life affirming. If you Google the articles I wrote for Hagerty I go into the driving experience a bit more.
I am not opposed to classic cars with questionable reliability. Breakdowns and impossible-to-find parts are always part of the classic car experience. However, I am aware of my limit in terms of a combination of breakdowns and expenses. The more it breaks down, the less I am willing to pay to keep it going. Being within my limited wrenching ability is also a big factor.
A Renault 4? Yes, please. 1987 Toyota FX16? Absolutely. A 1972 Olds 98? Sure! 1987 BMW 325 convertible or 1977 Ford F250 highboy? Would do and have done with much joy. All fit within my envelope of reliability, wrenching ability/patience, and cost to make owning them feel fun rather than burdensome.
I don’t want to be an automotive caretaker and put zero value in owning something just for the sake of owning it. It has to be fun. Once a hobby or toy becomes a burden, it becomes work, and I have enough of that already.
Often, buying a toy and finding that personal limit is part of the fun. I applaud Adrian’s ability not simply to take the dive into exotic Italian ownership, but the self-awareness needed to know it was his time to exit and attempt a new adventure.
There’s other slightly more complicated factors influencing my decision as well, but I’m not ready and it’s not appropriate to write about those yet.
Looking forward to it! As someone who doesn’t keep cars for long (I have owned over 30 cars and 14 motorcycles), learning about different brands and models is a big part of what I love about cars.
DO YOU HAVE A BABY NOW TOO?
Good grief no.
Whew. My subscription remains.
“Why own one unreliable, badly built, breakdown-prone car when you can have two?”
Damn right!
Just ask David about it, although his cars are, usually, not unrealiable, they are just broken.
Reliably broken is still reliable.
Kind of need more than one in that case right? “I’m stuck driving my Ferrari because my Range Rover is in the shop”
I would have no hesitation getting the Ferrari out if I was in a jam and needed a car.
“This…is the way.”
— The Mandautopian
I did that one but I’m a moron with three kids.
Bought myself a BMW 545i (MT naturally) and after it abused me for about a year by making me fix it constantly, I bought my wife a Mercedes S55 AMG.
I don’t know what I was thinking as those two just kept taking turns on me. I want a water pump! I want a hydraulic pump! I want some expensive electronics! I want to leak fuel on the exhaust manifold! I want another water pump!
Those two german turkey broke me. Sold the AMG first, got wifey a Navigator (what a letdown that was on the first drive) and got myself a Camaro SS. They’re both getting older now, but they’ve been surprisingly solid and the only time I had to ride the flatbed was when I replaced the radiator on the Camaro and didn’t tighten a hose well enough; blew the coolant and had no way to get underneath to fix. I used to be VERY well acquainted with my local flatbed driver (big shout out to Alpha Dog towing!).
I’ve probably spent about that much in the 5 years I’ve had my GT6, and I’ve done all the work myself. I’m a little afraid to actually do the math, but the truth is I don’t want to. All that work and the time I’ve spent on it has taught me so much and brought so much joy I don’t really care. Whatever the cost, it’s been worth it.
I’m mainly jealous of having a reputable shop that doesn’t break stuff that wasn’t broken. Main reason I sold my 94 Miata.
Oh, and the cheap insurance. Damn.
If you’d bought a five year old econobox instead I reckon you’d be over half of those costs, and that’s before taking depreciation into account. Taking that into account you’re paying a bit less than £2000 a year to have a Ferrari instead of a Hyundai i10, and that seems like a pretty good deal.
A five-year-old econobox is going to be able to do six times the number of miles at a fraction of the cost. Likely less than 10% of the cost per mile. That doesn’t mean that the Mondial was a bad deal for a classic Italian sports car, but comparing it to a Prius isn’t going to make it look affordable.
UK mileage per year is much. much lower than in the US – only around 7,400 – so Adrian is probably not a huge outlier in terms of miles driven. Added to that there are things in the list that are reconditioning rather than running expenses (the exhaust is a good example of that).
However, the main thing to take away is that if you buy an old Ferrari you probably aren’t thinking that hard about the bills.
Agreed, a classic Italian car isn’t purchased based on financial prudence. It isn’t a small hatchback that can do the 7-10k miles a year of the average UK driver at a rate anywhere near a Hyundai i10. However, having a Ferrari also means you need a car that can do the things a Hyundai i10 can do. One is transportation, and the other is a toy.
That doesn’t seem particularly adventurous! For years I ran a forty year old car as a daily driver and it was fine. I mean apart from the holes in the floor, having to not run the heater in winter and running it full blast in summer, the noise, the barely functional wipers, all the electric shocks it gave me, and the one time it almost caught on fire.
Aside from that it was fine.
I drove a series of beaters in college. Buying one for a few hundred dollars and then, when it failed, buying another. I had great fun in old beasts like a ’72 Olds 98, ’67 Plymouth Fury, AMC Eagle Wagon, and others. A couple of them ended their lives at the local demolition derby.
For me, the difference between that type of adventure and an old Ferrari is that an old Ferrari is “precious.” They demand money, time, and attention, which can make it feel burdensome unless you have the capability to fix it or the money to not care.
I have an R55 Clubman for daily duties.
“I took the car out, I never bothered using the built-in battery isolator. You can guess where this is going”
I guessed engine fire.
Looking forward to the Capri content! I had a ’76 Capri 2.8 liter gifted to me when I was 19 by a family member that was moving out of the USA. I had no idea what a cool car it was at the time, being young and stupid and all that. I didn’t abuse it, and it was fun to drive. That car gave me my first wrenching experience replacing the brake master cylinder. Like an idiot, I traded it to my sister for her VW Bug.
I had a ’78 Capri II 2.8 as my second car. I’m not sure why mine was titled as a 1978 since any documentation out there says that they were only sold until 1977 in NA. Anyway, I loved that car and always regretted selling it for a Foxstang.
Invoice it so it’s tax free.
Better to have loved and lost and all that. Now you’ll never wonder what could have been; you know!
I remember talking to a Ferrari owner and asking about cost of ownership. He said to budget $5k per year, which is right about what Adrian spent.
Adrian amigo. With your vibe and swagger, ditching the finicky unreliable Ferrari is a good move. Let someone else have that twisted fun experience, while you get down with something that will pair well with the smooth black attire.. an early C3 Corvette. No breakdowns and all the fun. And T-tops are basically a natural aphrodisiac. https://www.carandclassic.com/car/C1877859
Wrong color.
Baller move going straight for the custom exhaust. If the car doesn’t sound right then what’s the point?
The tips on the original exhaust are mini silencers, because it was built when noise regs were starting to become a thing. If you want to know what it sounds like now:
https://youtu.be/jiYDcEV6HSE?si=Qi-Vckt111YiufBe
I like the Autopian hood badge and window stickers 🙂
I’m impressed by how cheap insurance is for classic cars in the UK, I’ve got a friend in Nottingham who’s trying to buy a Clio RS 172, but the insurance quotes are insane! £1.5 – 2K a year for a £4K car! Granted he’s an international student on an international license, but it’s still £1000 even if he gets his UK license.
My 500HP moderately modified R33 Skyline was about £480 this year and my VW T3 will be about £180, (Both fully comp) So yea, It’s not too bad really. I have owned the Skyline 21 years and each year it’s been between £400 and £600, Being a bit higher when I was younger and the car was only 10 years old.
I assume it’s a quadruple whammy of him being a young driver (20M), having an int. license, no previous driving experience in the UK and trying to insure a “hot” car. Guess he’ll have to go with something more pedestrian, like a diesel Sandero or 1007
or a classic mini or beetle 🙂 insure it as a classic car…
I guess he has no no-claims bonus either.
If that’s his only car he won’t be able to insure it on a classic policy.
It’s pretty cheap here too. I’m about $600 on Haggerty for my 2001 M3 convertible, full coverage.
Ferrari has been with Hagerty for the last two years. No I don’t get a discount. Yes I did ask (when I still wrote for them).
Interesting, he’s looking for something cheap but worthy of Silverstone, and I don’t see him doing too much driving Mon-Fri. Let’s see if Hagerty treats him better 🙂
I was thinking while reading this that it’s all pretty ordinary old car stuff, especially if it had sat for 10 years as that doesn’t do any car favors. Some of the prices were better than I’d think, but that is a lot of it in a short few years. I’m looking forward to reading about the Capri. My mother had a blue manual 1600 until I was about 4 and I remember it well. I think it’s what always endeared smaller, modest sporty cars to me, maybe cars in general. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the last time I saw one so much as just rotting in a yard here in New England. Even looking for one back in the ’90s turned up nothing but a few basket cases or expensively restored ones out of my price range, but neither type was common.
Without the specialist garage visits it would be a lot more palatable.
How do the folks at Migliore feel about you selling?
I’m sure I’m far from their best customer.
Yeah, it really helps to have a place to work on them. I rebuilt an engine in my kitchen and swapped in a driveway, but that was a simpler car and I’m too difficult for women to deal with for very long, so I could have an engine (and crane and stand) in a kitchen and use the table for parts layout. Now that I have a garage, I don’t want to do serious work on cars anymore. I do the brakes and I’m walking around like I’m in Gladiator, “Are you not entertained?!”
Looking forward to the Capri!!!
I gotta say, pretty good. I spent more than half that just getting the old F250’s engine rebuilt piecemeal when it started losing coolant. (Lots of “while we were in there we noticed…” stuff.)
That’s less than I thought. When you consider depreciation in the equation for most cars you will buy new, there is a significant saving offset in my opinion. If you buy a “stable” car at a time when it’s value is mostly stable, of course.
The other things are hassle factor of breakdowns and how much you rely on your transportation for a job, etc. with options you have if it’s not running.