ISUK:

Stefan,

You are never going to get a Ferrari with the build quality of a Porsche. They simply make far too few cars in comparison for this to happen. They also don't have the benefit of a large parent who is heavily involved in the volume luxury sector that can transfer technical expertise like Lamborghini has with Audi. Ferrari are hardly going to benefit from tech transfer from Fiat/Chrysler products

The cars are what they are and I disagree that they aren't improving. My experience has been a marked improvement over the last 10 years and the corresponding reduction in maintenance intervals/costs bears this out. You seem to have more negative views on Ferrari these days. Have you had issues with your 458?


Iain, I strongly disagree here. Ferrari earns a hell of a lot of money with each car. They have fantastic engines, which belong to absolutely best engines on the market. They have superb chassis technology and they put together the best parts for their cars, like tranny, brakes and so on.

Yet they can't build high quality cars! Smiley

It's not the aforementioned R&D from the customers that I criticise here, nor a lack of technical expertise.It's their laissez-faire when it comes to the quality details, which may not be important for the reliability of their cars, but which are an absolute PITA for the owner. Heck even Maserati builds cars with better quality nowadays!

In fact my 458 had poorer build quality than my 430, that's why I said I think the quality of F cars is on the way down again (since Schumacher left BTW). You may be luckier with your car or you just overlook the typical Italian "way of manufacturing". But I'm not willing to accept a poor paint quality, misfitting parts in the cockpit, bad rubber seals in the doors, the poorest carpeting work I have ever seen in a car and a disregard of small quality details which I would approve in a Fiat Uno maybe, but never ever in a 200k+ sportscar. Smiley


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The secret of life is to admire without desiring.