Looking for an older Ferrari, part 3

Date:	Mon, 21 Mar 1994 16:33:48 -0800

We left our story at Saturday afternoon; John had just told me his
friend Brandon proclaimed the car worth between $26K and $30K. John was
going to find out about part prices for the front suspension rebuild
and call me Monday.

Got to work this morning and received a call from John.

"Chris, I think you should pass on this car. I called around and was
told that doing the front suspension will probably be $2500-3000 in
labor alone. Depending on the wear in the kingpins, it will either
require having new bushings made to fit or finding new pins to install. 

"Plus, I went over there this morning before they had a chance to move
the car. I had seen some sort of leak, thought it might be head gasket,
but Al tried to tell me it was something else. Anyway, I went over
there and saw about a 10 inch puddle of coolant under the car, off the left bank. 

"Doing a head gasket on these cars can be miserable; I'm sure you've
seen in in your British cars. People use tap water for the coolant, the
lime builds up, there's electrolization damage - I've had cases where
it's taken me four days to get a head up a quarter inch and then had to
cut off the studs and use a hole saw to remove them. You don't need
that kind of grief.

"Call Al and tell him you're going to pass. He's going to call and give
me hell, but just tell him that for the price he's asking you should be getting a
completely restored car, not a driver. 

"Listen, there are people who put $100K into restoring cars like this
and got caught when the bottom dropped out of the market. You might be
able to find such a car, a restored concours winner, for $40K; you just
have to look."

Wow. OK, I call my girlfriend and tell her about this, and we both feel like
it's too bad, but we really don't need this kind of grief with a car. Too many
unkowns.

Call Al. Refresh his memory of who I am, and tell him we're going to pass. "OK,
Chris, that's fine, but can you tell me what John found?"

Sure, go through the list with estimates. Start a long story: the salesman's
view of mechanics instead of the other way around. The short version is that
mechanics don't really get much in life, once in a while they find a way to
control a situation and take advantage of it. That seems to be the case here.
He's vastly overestimating - Al can do the suspension for $250/side, replacing
everything but the shocks. Of course they'd do a carb and valve adjustment
before the car left the shop. They'll fix the shackle and the donut. "Show me
any 20 year old Ferrari that hasn't had the front subframe tweaked."

"You know, we've been in this business a long time. I didn't see the
inside of a high school classroom very often, but I've been selling and
driving Italian cars since 1968. We race these cars. We know what it
takes to keep them on the road. John and I went out and drove this car
hard. There's no water in the oil - it would have shown up. Look at the
compression numbers; if there was blown head gasket, there would either
be waterin the oil or no compression in one of the cylinders. There's
neither of those.

"John said himself that the engine pulled well, the gearbox worked
nicely, the diff was quiet. Those are the important things in the car.
The steering box can be rebuilt. Tell me, if we were to make the car
right, and guarantee the work, would you reconsider?"

That's the short version. The long version was half an hour long and
delved into Al's history with a SCCA national competition license, the
vagaries of pricing labor rates and parts markup, and putting 110,000
miles on his 275 GTB/4 selling vacuum cleaners in New York (I'm not
kidding). We briefly touched on price, leaving me with the impression
that he thinks that his $39,500 price is reasonable and fairly firm.

I said we'd talk it over and get back to him.

I don't know enough about the cars to judge at this point. My suspicion is that
the truth lies somewhere between John's version and Al's version. The steering
box and the water pump are unknowns that bother me, as does this coolant leak
from who knows where (do these engines have core plugs that leak?). The steering
didn't feel sloppy when I drove it, though it felt quite stiff; kingpins are
known technology to me and can't be difficult to manage, though I can believe
that parts are expensive. 

And he seems to be way out of line on the current value of the car in the market.

I'm willing to give him some benefit of the doubt - he *has* been around a long
time, he's a long-time member of the Ferrari club, he can't afford to really
jerk people around or his reputation will suffer. I could see buying the car for
$33K or so if they do all the work; that price might be a little high but not
out of line.

But I'm not at all settled about this. I guess I need to do some more research,
both in terms of the recent market and how rare this opportunity is
(hence my message asking for back issues of the FML) and the potential
cost of repairs. 

If anyone has insight into these details, I'd really like to hear them!