2013 Ferrari FF
Discussion
I've found myself in the fortunate circumstances recently to be able to justify an extra driveway slot filler.
Filling this final driveway slot would be a hindrance, in that it would make it harder to park, harder to load a 3 year old into the back of whichever car we wanted to use, make washing any of the cars very difficult without relocating something to the street temporarily... but it would fit a much needed requirement.
I've never owned a car with more than four cylinders, or with more than 2.0 litres of capacity.
I've been fantasising about what vehicle could help me fix this for years, always finding excuses to get something different. More sensible, cheaper to run or easier to maintain. I've had great fun along the way, with a series of Japanese and French hot hatchbacks, a WRC-wannabee Impreza and a small series of Lotuses' have allowed me to enjoy the four cylinder format tremendously... but with the demise of the internal combustion engine looming, and being in the fortunate position to be able to buy a car "because I want one"... now felt like the time.
I'd flirted with a few options. 911's featured heavily on the list, nothing with a GT badge on it because I wanted this car to be usable for fun family trips too, I'd still have the Lotus for selfish driving and trackdays.
The 'super saloon' also factored in. The Giulia QF being a personal favourite.
But something kept lurking amongst my classified searches. Not only would it slash the >4Cyl and >2.0litre requirement with room to spare, but it would tick off another petrolhead box... A pretty big one at that.
The Ferrari FF is not what I would call a dream car as such, but the thought of owning a Ferrari absolutely has been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember being interested in cars. I always thought that if I could ever end up in one, it would be a V8 Mid/Rear engined car that I could do the odd trackday in, but use predominantly for polishing, cherishing and just looking at. I just couldn't justify a car like that at the moment, not whilst keeping the Lotus - and that absolutely wasn't going anywhere.
The FF had been on my radar for a while, as a car that I could potentially use as a daily driver replacement for my business lease Taycan when it ends. I barely do any mileage, and haven't since COVID - so running costs are less of a concern, but I couldn't (and still can't) get over the image of turning up places in something with a Ferrari badge on it.
With the Taycan lease not due for another 18 months, it would take a pretty silly snap decision to make a serious move on an FF right now.
Enter... the auction site.
I'd been dabbling on a certain 'enthusiast car' auction site for a few months, and had a few pretty scary close calls - including one other FF. The other FF was local, in a colour combo that I was less enthusiastic about but could live with and it went for just a tiny bit more than I was willing to stretch to - so after a sweaty few minutes I ultimately lost out by £500.
Since then there were a few near misses on 911s (one of which I'm sure I would have won had I had enough cash in my current account for the auction people to take a holding deposit) and more often than not, these bidding sprees came after a few hours in the pub.
Some time later, another FF came up. This one was in the colour I loved... with an interior I loved. It was high mileage for a Ferrari (40k) but I figured it would still go for a similar amount to the last one based on its huge spec. So I stuck a bid in, a 'safety bid' that I knew would never win. Almost £20k lower than the last one I bid on, but I could do my research and come back to it later.
Fast forward a few days, was bathing the young'un not hearing my phone going nuts in the other room. After a flurry of notifications, I'd won the auction.
Now it was time for a massive panic, what had I done?! I'd done practically no research on this car, it could have been a twice-over writeoff for all I knew, so I threw some cash at Car Vertical and after a nervy few minutes, got a clean report back. Phew.
The next day I was frantically ringing Ferrari dealers up and down the country to validate the service history this car claimed to have. I have to say my first interactions with Ferrari were excellent and they leaped into action to put my mind at rest.
Finally after unblocking my bank account I was able to pay the buyer fees to the auction site, and was handed the contact details for the owner. A chat with the owner really settled my nerves, a serial car collector with a rather impressive address and a rather impressive collection of cars.
It was a pretty terrible time for me to buy a car, with no spare time to do just about anything so ended up booking a Saturday night, very slow train down to London with the aim of staying over and driving it back first thing Sunday.
I won't go full travel-blog, but it was 30+ degrees, train AC sucked and I was sat on it for 4 hours. I finally got to my lastminute.com booking of what turned out to be a glorified hostel, with no AC... but finally the sun was up, and I had 3 miles of London to cover on a glorious Sunday morning. I decided to walk it, because I was up early anyway, and I thought it might settle the nerves (it didn't).
I did pack a shirt that matched the car/interior somewhat.
The walk through London took me past a dealership where the car has had much of its recent attention:
..and I even saw another FF in the same colour but different interior on the walk... along with many, many more exotica. I could feel I was approaching the right bit of town.
Finally I rounded a corner and saw the car for the first time. It looked fantastic with the early morning sun glinting off of it, massive rear tyres just gobbling up the marked out parking spot.
I came around the front, and after forcing myself to switch on some awareness I clocked a couple of things immediately that I wasn't thrilled about.
The front bumper was clearly a different colour to the bonnet and wings, not only that but it looked like it had some sinking filler on it too. It had a scruffy PPF job, and the wheels were fairly familiar with the side of a curbstone.
The body panels looked straight, but then round the back I clocked a bit of corrosion on the rear tailgate. Hmmmm.
At this point, I've already paid a considerable sum to the auction site so I couldn't just turn on my heel and run for the nearest tube station. Had this have been a "normal" private sale, I probably would have done.
The auction listing had hundreds of photos, all cleverly taken to not show any of my main concerns. In hindsight the colour match of the front bumper is a bit obvious, but it's hard to tell whether it's just a lighting thing. The wording of the listing is similar to almost every car listed, which basically means you cannot make any conclusions about the aesthetic condition of a car - you HAVE to go view it. The wording is loose, vague and technically not lying so it's hard to argue against. The only thing that I could categorically argue against is that the listing says the car has 'full PPF'. What it actually had was 2/3 of the front bumper PPFd and the wing mirrors, nothing else.
Anyway, still a bit excited that I was here to collect my first ever Ferrari, I knocked on the door and after a quick chat, look around the car and drive round the block - I transferred the cash and was on my way.
Should I have tried to haggle there and then for what I felt was a slightly misrepresented car? Probably... but the occasion got the better of me, I had poor understanding of the auction etiquette and to a certain extent felt held hostage by the sum of money I'd already committed to the auction site.
Anyway, on to the good bits.
The engine sounds incredible. It's very toned down and mature when you're wrapped up in the double glazed, leather clad cabin but crack a window and it sounds like a warmachine rumbling through the 20mph residential zones of London.
The front mounted 2 speed gearbox or PTU is a known failure point on this car, but this particular car had a warranty replacement done just 3 months ago - and had powertrain warranty still running till November so I felt somewhat happy that the mechanicals of this car were all good.
The interior was as far as I could tell, mint. Interiors are often the first place to show mileage but this one really doesn't, whether it's been well looked after or just quality of the materials I'm not sure - but I've been in <5k mile cars that have worn worse than this.
The option list was impressive. From what I can tell almost everything non-carbon fibre has been specced. I guess the original buyer really didn't like the weave aesthetic because he didn't cut costs anywhere else! The interior alone I think I worked out was best part of £11k extra, for the upgraded leather, daytona style vented seats etc.
Other notable options are:
Front and Rear axle lift
Sport Exhaust Pipes
20" Forged wheels
Various Trim/Badge options
Passenger display screen
Upgraded stereo
Shift lights
The first few miles were nervy, after giggling at the startup growl I was then creeping through London on what appeared to be bin day.
The owner had told me that it was on fumes and that I should stop ASAP, but the dash was telling me 3 bars and 100+ miles left. With a few years' of Lotus ownership behind me I knew not to trust fuel gauges in general, but the not knowing meant for a sketchy few miles to find fuel, during which I'm pretty sure I was in a bus lane for a while, got turned around by a closed road, ended up in the freight entrance to a John Lewis and had to undertake a bus to not end up doing a massive loop and repeating all of my mistakes again.
Finally, the welcoming forecourt appeared.
Oh, it has a MASSIVE fuel tank! Easily the biggest fill I've ever done.
Pockets feeling a bit lighter, it was finally time to find some dual carriageway and head back North.
Whilst driving through London I had it in comfort mode and automatic gears and it was like driving any other car. Comfortable, quiet, smooth. The early impressions of the V12 engine were that it was just ready to go at any speed, and would surge forward without a moments hesitation. Incredible thing.
Upon finally getting to a sliproad, I gave it half a bootful and had my eyes opened a bit. It kicked down a couple of gears, and there was a massive squirm from the rear. It didn't feel like a loss of traction, but it didn't feel very good.. at all.
At motorway speeds, steady at 70mph the car was quite busy. It shuffled around in its lane and every now and then I had to tweak the very fast steering to get it back in line. Hmmmm
After an hour or so, I'd fiddled around with the controls enough to get my TPMS display up and find that my tyres were really, really overinflated. To the tune of 9psi or so. This put my mind at ease, surely these handling foibles could be attributed to that.
Some friends had agreed to come meet me part of my way home, so they brought a tyre pressure gauge with them and this allowed me to drop everything back into spec for the remainder of the drive.
We had a spot of lunch, amused/annoyed everybody with the V12 soundtrack and then I was on my way again.
At some point I had another stop, splash of fuel and a toilet break and decided to check whether the lift worked or not. It did.
I found some very "Ferrari" features on my drive home. A button right next to my left knee would switch the reversing camera off, completely useless feature in a completely stupid place on the dash.
I let a bit too much air out of the tyres which triggered a TPMS warning. With the warning displaced, it then disabled the TPMS screen so you couldn't see the values at each corner...
The lap belt of the seatbelt runs over the top of the ventilation control for the seats, so lean forward a bit and it catches on the knob and changes the setting.
Etc, etc.
Generally though, the cabin oozed quality and it was a fantastic place to spend a fair few hours.
Through my various stops, I'd built up my snagging list and had come up with the following:
Front bumper paint was awful, possibly hiding a nasty front end smash based on what appeared to be sinking filler?
Wheels a bit rashed up
Paint peeling from the inner arches revealing the aluminium underneath, which was then starting to corrode
Spot of corrosion on aluminium tailgate
Various scuffs or marks that would almost certainly polish out
And the big one was the handling issue. When applying power, the car would squat and squirm... too much to be normal, but also any sort of rut or groove in the road would have me fighting to keep it straight. Even cruising at 70mph needed a lot of concentration, and there was no hope of driving this car quickly.
Finally I got it home, sort of excited, sort of underwhelmed but very nervous that I'd gone a bit wrong on this one. I'd bought a Ferrari which to me was a massive, massive deal... but I didn't want to look at it, and didn't want to drive it. A plan was needed.
The Youngun' loved it though.
Filling this final driveway slot would be a hindrance, in that it would make it harder to park, harder to load a 3 year old into the back of whichever car we wanted to use, make washing any of the cars very difficult without relocating something to the street temporarily... but it would fit a much needed requirement.
I've never owned a car with more than four cylinders, or with more than 2.0 litres of capacity.
I've been fantasising about what vehicle could help me fix this for years, always finding excuses to get something different. More sensible, cheaper to run or easier to maintain. I've had great fun along the way, with a series of Japanese and French hot hatchbacks, a WRC-wannabee Impreza and a small series of Lotuses' have allowed me to enjoy the four cylinder format tremendously... but with the demise of the internal combustion engine looming, and being in the fortunate position to be able to buy a car "because I want one"... now felt like the time.
I'd flirted with a few options. 911's featured heavily on the list, nothing with a GT badge on it because I wanted this car to be usable for fun family trips too, I'd still have the Lotus for selfish driving and trackdays.
The 'super saloon' also factored in. The Giulia QF being a personal favourite.
But something kept lurking amongst my classified searches. Not only would it slash the >4Cyl and >2.0litre requirement with room to spare, but it would tick off another petrolhead box... A pretty big one at that.
The Ferrari FF is not what I would call a dream car as such, but the thought of owning a Ferrari absolutely has been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember being interested in cars. I always thought that if I could ever end up in one, it would be a V8 Mid/Rear engined car that I could do the odd trackday in, but use predominantly for polishing, cherishing and just looking at. I just couldn't justify a car like that at the moment, not whilst keeping the Lotus - and that absolutely wasn't going anywhere.
The FF had been on my radar for a while, as a car that I could potentially use as a daily driver replacement for my business lease Taycan when it ends. I barely do any mileage, and haven't since COVID - so running costs are less of a concern, but I couldn't (and still can't) get over the image of turning up places in something with a Ferrari badge on it.
With the Taycan lease not due for another 18 months, it would take a pretty silly snap decision to make a serious move on an FF right now.
Enter... the auction site.
I'd been dabbling on a certain 'enthusiast car' auction site for a few months, and had a few pretty scary close calls - including one other FF. The other FF was local, in a colour combo that I was less enthusiastic about but could live with and it went for just a tiny bit more than I was willing to stretch to - so after a sweaty few minutes I ultimately lost out by £500.
Since then there were a few near misses on 911s (one of which I'm sure I would have won had I had enough cash in my current account for the auction people to take a holding deposit) and more often than not, these bidding sprees came after a few hours in the pub.
Some time later, another FF came up. This one was in the colour I loved... with an interior I loved. It was high mileage for a Ferrari (40k) but I figured it would still go for a similar amount to the last one based on its huge spec. So I stuck a bid in, a 'safety bid' that I knew would never win. Almost £20k lower than the last one I bid on, but I could do my research and come back to it later.
Fast forward a few days, was bathing the young'un not hearing my phone going nuts in the other room. After a flurry of notifications, I'd won the auction.
Now it was time for a massive panic, what had I done?! I'd done practically no research on this car, it could have been a twice-over writeoff for all I knew, so I threw some cash at Car Vertical and after a nervy few minutes, got a clean report back. Phew.
The next day I was frantically ringing Ferrari dealers up and down the country to validate the service history this car claimed to have. I have to say my first interactions with Ferrari were excellent and they leaped into action to put my mind at rest.
Finally after unblocking my bank account I was able to pay the buyer fees to the auction site, and was handed the contact details for the owner. A chat with the owner really settled my nerves, a serial car collector with a rather impressive address and a rather impressive collection of cars.
It was a pretty terrible time for me to buy a car, with no spare time to do just about anything so ended up booking a Saturday night, very slow train down to London with the aim of staying over and driving it back first thing Sunday.
I won't go full travel-blog, but it was 30+ degrees, train AC sucked and I was sat on it for 4 hours. I finally got to my lastminute.com booking of what turned out to be a glorified hostel, with no AC... but finally the sun was up, and I had 3 miles of London to cover on a glorious Sunday morning. I decided to walk it, because I was up early anyway, and I thought it might settle the nerves (it didn't).
I did pack a shirt that matched the car/interior somewhat.
The walk through London took me past a dealership where the car has had much of its recent attention:
..and I even saw another FF in the same colour but different interior on the walk... along with many, many more exotica. I could feel I was approaching the right bit of town.
Finally I rounded a corner and saw the car for the first time. It looked fantastic with the early morning sun glinting off of it, massive rear tyres just gobbling up the marked out parking spot.
I came around the front, and after forcing myself to switch on some awareness I clocked a couple of things immediately that I wasn't thrilled about.
The front bumper was clearly a different colour to the bonnet and wings, not only that but it looked like it had some sinking filler on it too. It had a scruffy PPF job, and the wheels were fairly familiar with the side of a curbstone.
The body panels looked straight, but then round the back I clocked a bit of corrosion on the rear tailgate. Hmmmm.
At this point, I've already paid a considerable sum to the auction site so I couldn't just turn on my heel and run for the nearest tube station. Had this have been a "normal" private sale, I probably would have done.
The auction listing had hundreds of photos, all cleverly taken to not show any of my main concerns. In hindsight the colour match of the front bumper is a bit obvious, but it's hard to tell whether it's just a lighting thing. The wording of the listing is similar to almost every car listed, which basically means you cannot make any conclusions about the aesthetic condition of a car - you HAVE to go view it. The wording is loose, vague and technically not lying so it's hard to argue against. The only thing that I could categorically argue against is that the listing says the car has 'full PPF'. What it actually had was 2/3 of the front bumper PPFd and the wing mirrors, nothing else.
Anyway, still a bit excited that I was here to collect my first ever Ferrari, I knocked on the door and after a quick chat, look around the car and drive round the block - I transferred the cash and was on my way.
Should I have tried to haggle there and then for what I felt was a slightly misrepresented car? Probably... but the occasion got the better of me, I had poor understanding of the auction etiquette and to a certain extent felt held hostage by the sum of money I'd already committed to the auction site.
Anyway, on to the good bits.
The engine sounds incredible. It's very toned down and mature when you're wrapped up in the double glazed, leather clad cabin but crack a window and it sounds like a warmachine rumbling through the 20mph residential zones of London.
The front mounted 2 speed gearbox or PTU is a known failure point on this car, but this particular car had a warranty replacement done just 3 months ago - and had powertrain warranty still running till November so I felt somewhat happy that the mechanicals of this car were all good.
The interior was as far as I could tell, mint. Interiors are often the first place to show mileage but this one really doesn't, whether it's been well looked after or just quality of the materials I'm not sure - but I've been in <5k mile cars that have worn worse than this.
The option list was impressive. From what I can tell almost everything non-carbon fibre has been specced. I guess the original buyer really didn't like the weave aesthetic because he didn't cut costs anywhere else! The interior alone I think I worked out was best part of £11k extra, for the upgraded leather, daytona style vented seats etc.
Other notable options are:
Front and Rear axle lift
Sport Exhaust Pipes
20" Forged wheels
Various Trim/Badge options
Passenger display screen
Upgraded stereo
Shift lights
The first few miles were nervy, after giggling at the startup growl I was then creeping through London on what appeared to be bin day.
The owner had told me that it was on fumes and that I should stop ASAP, but the dash was telling me 3 bars and 100+ miles left. With a few years' of Lotus ownership behind me I knew not to trust fuel gauges in general, but the not knowing meant for a sketchy few miles to find fuel, during which I'm pretty sure I was in a bus lane for a while, got turned around by a closed road, ended up in the freight entrance to a John Lewis and had to undertake a bus to not end up doing a massive loop and repeating all of my mistakes again.
Finally, the welcoming forecourt appeared.
Oh, it has a MASSIVE fuel tank! Easily the biggest fill I've ever done.
Pockets feeling a bit lighter, it was finally time to find some dual carriageway and head back North.
Whilst driving through London I had it in comfort mode and automatic gears and it was like driving any other car. Comfortable, quiet, smooth. The early impressions of the V12 engine were that it was just ready to go at any speed, and would surge forward without a moments hesitation. Incredible thing.
Upon finally getting to a sliproad, I gave it half a bootful and had my eyes opened a bit. It kicked down a couple of gears, and there was a massive squirm from the rear. It didn't feel like a loss of traction, but it didn't feel very good.. at all.
At motorway speeds, steady at 70mph the car was quite busy. It shuffled around in its lane and every now and then I had to tweak the very fast steering to get it back in line. Hmmmm
After an hour or so, I'd fiddled around with the controls enough to get my TPMS display up and find that my tyres were really, really overinflated. To the tune of 9psi or so. This put my mind at ease, surely these handling foibles could be attributed to that.
Some friends had agreed to come meet me part of my way home, so they brought a tyre pressure gauge with them and this allowed me to drop everything back into spec for the remainder of the drive.
We had a spot of lunch, amused/annoyed everybody with the V12 soundtrack and then I was on my way again.
At some point I had another stop, splash of fuel and a toilet break and decided to check whether the lift worked or not. It did.
I found some very "Ferrari" features on my drive home. A button right next to my left knee would switch the reversing camera off, completely useless feature in a completely stupid place on the dash.
I let a bit too much air out of the tyres which triggered a TPMS warning. With the warning displaced, it then disabled the TPMS screen so you couldn't see the values at each corner...
The lap belt of the seatbelt runs over the top of the ventilation control for the seats, so lean forward a bit and it catches on the knob and changes the setting.
Etc, etc.
Generally though, the cabin oozed quality and it was a fantastic place to spend a fair few hours.
Through my various stops, I'd built up my snagging list and had come up with the following:
Front bumper paint was awful, possibly hiding a nasty front end smash based on what appeared to be sinking filler?
Wheels a bit rashed up
Paint peeling from the inner arches revealing the aluminium underneath, which was then starting to corrode
Spot of corrosion on aluminium tailgate
Various scuffs or marks that would almost certainly polish out
And the big one was the handling issue. When applying power, the car would squat and squirm... too much to be normal, but also any sort of rut or groove in the road would have me fighting to keep it straight. Even cruising at 70mph needed a lot of concentration, and there was no hope of driving this car quickly.
Finally I got it home, sort of excited, sort of underwhelmed but very nervous that I'd gone a bit wrong on this one. I'd bought a Ferrari which to me was a massive, massive deal... but I didn't want to look at it, and didn't want to drive it. A plan was needed.
The Youngun' loved it though.
Looks fantastic! Hope all goes well with the ownership.
I know where you are coming from with the auction listing though, last year I tried to purchase a 360 but couldn’t find one in the spec I wanted which didn’t have signs of damage repair. One in particular I had inspected and it was one of the worst cars my inspector had ever seen. I walked away from that but a few months later it appeared on an auction site with very careful wording and photos, and sold for a healthy sum. It completely put me off ever buying from auction as someone has bought a really dodgy car for good car money. Point being the fact that people hide things cleverly on auctions as you’ve discovered.
You car certainly looks amazing, hope you have a great time with it! You have a Ferrari, that’s top dream stuff for most car enthusiasts! Wonderful!
I know where you are coming from with the auction listing though, last year I tried to purchase a 360 but couldn’t find one in the spec I wanted which didn’t have signs of damage repair. One in particular I had inspected and it was one of the worst cars my inspector had ever seen. I walked away from that but a few months later it appeared on an auction site with very careful wording and photos, and sold for a healthy sum. It completely put me off ever buying from auction as someone has bought a really dodgy car for good car money. Point being the fact that people hide things cleverly on auctions as you’ve discovered.
You car certainly looks amazing, hope you have a great time with it! You have a Ferrari, that’s top dream stuff for most car enthusiasts! Wonderful!
Enjoyable read that. It was a lowly MX5 in my case about 15 years ago, but I shared your sinking feeling when I collected a car I'd been top bidder on that had issues not shown. 
But I'd bough a one way ticket to get it. A lesson learnt.
However, in your case, you'd actually been prepared to bid more than you won it for. Using man maths, you'd be justified in using this 'saving' to get it put right.
It was a lowly MX5 in my case about 15 years ago, but I shared your sinking feeling when I collected a car I'd been top bidder on that had issues not shown. But I'd bough a one way ticket to get it. A lesson learnt.However, in your case, you'd actually been prepared to bid more than you won it for. Using man maths, you'd be justified in using this 'saving' to get it put right.
Beautiful car in beautiful colours.
I bought an older V12 last year. Like you, the thought of the demise of internal combustion was a factor in my sense of "now or probably never." I haven't driven anything newer than a 355, so I expect something like an FF would completely reset my expectations of a car. But the mindboggling complexity of modern Ferraris is not for me. You've done well to get one with recent PTU replacement. Looking forward to hearing more!
I bought an older V12 last year. Like you, the thought of the demise of internal combustion was a factor in my sense of "now or probably never." I haven't driven anything newer than a 355, so I expect something like an FF would completely reset my expectations of a car. But the mindboggling complexity of modern Ferraris is not for me. You've done well to get one with recent PTU replacement. Looking forward to hearing more!
Thanks for the initial comments. I'm a month into ownership now so the story has moved on, a little bit - so I'll get caught up the best I can. This car was never intended to get a thread, it was never supposed to be a project!
After a couple of days to get over the initial excitement/nerves or the purchase I had calmed myself down and come up with a battle plan.
I'd got myself into a positive frame of mind in that hopefully, none of the issues were particularly exotic and wouldn't even need specialist Ferrari input which is normally where the $$$ start piling up.
I made a list of all of my gripes, but really it came down to sorting two things:
- Tidy up paint
- Sort out the handling
The paint should be easy, find a bodyshop - get them to sort it over Winter, then that's 6 months of 'free' motoring not giving a hoot about stonechips or parking dings or whatever.
The handling I'd been out and done various drives to try and pinpoint what exactly was wrong. It feels like extreme tramlining, moreso than anything I've experienced before. When sticking semi slicks on a Lotus, or piling camber onto a Subaru you experience tramlining so I know what it feels like... but this was different, worse and scarier.
Undulations in the road definitely provoked it, as did applying power or brakes. Even rumbling over a catseye could cause the steering to snatch a little bit.
I put a few posts on forums, FB groups, etc to try and get a feel for where to go with the investigation first. After the initial useless responses of "take it to Ferrari", the next most popular recommendation was to throw the Pirelli tyres away and go for some Michelins.
I'm not opposed to using Ferrari dealers, and I didn't buy this car to save costs and cut corners - but I'm also a tinkerer. Even if I don't fix the issue myself, I at least want to do some basic triage so I can point the experts in the right direction.
As for the tyres, though I appreciate the importance of quality tyres I could not believe that swapping from one brand to another could fix these issues. If Ferrari sold the car on these Pirellis, then there's no way the (very positive) journalist reports would have come out at the time. It was a horrible car to drive.
I was trying to forget about the possibility that the car had been in an accident and could be hiding some horrors.
I also had to try and figure out what the hell we were going to do to make room for this car. Our fleet to date was:
Taycan on business lease, so can't get rid easily.
Volvo V90 which the missus loves, and I use for trailering the Lotus
Lotus 2-Eleven which occupies the garage
Ferrari FF which... well, it existed.
The driveway could take three cars side by side, in theory. But between the Volvo. Taycan and FF I couldn't have picked three bigger bloody cars!
Tried a few things out, involving abandoning the Volvo with the trailer in a field somewhere.
Eventually with some well rehearsed parking, we found we could just about squeeze all three on. I would post a photo, but that will spoil something that comes later in the story.
I made time to give the car a wash. Nothing too aggressive, just lobbed a sponge at it for a bit.
It immediately made me feel a bit better. The colour had been robbed of its qualities before from being covered in dust in London, it just took any shine out of it and made the Tour de France blue look flat.
A quick clean made it look so much better:
Normally the first wash of a new(used) car is an awful experience, because you inevitably find a load of bodywork niggles that you missed when purchasing. This time it was the opposite as I was expecting more bad news, but generally was happy with the state of the paint outside of the areas previously identified.
The bodywork all looked straight, no dings in the aluminium and the one patch of odd corrosion on the corner of the bootlid. Shutlines looked decent enough, but apparently even from the factory they were a bit wonky so you can't be too harsh here anyway.
I also took the rear wheels off, just for a look. The handling foibles felt most obvious at the rear.
To my relief all the suspension components looked both "of appropriate age" (ie, no brand new wishbones lobbed in) and nothing looked bent or recently disturbed. The rear pads looked a little low, but the very expensive carbon discs looked fine on visual inspection. (I do plan to get them weighed to figure out what their life expectancy is like).
What did look a little odd though was the tyre. I took a photo but it really doesn't come across well, but the section of the tyre was extremely uneven, not so much tread depth and wear - but it was like the tyre was distorted. This give me a huge spike of hope that the tyres could indeed be the cause of my concern.
I later took the fronts off, and found more of the same. In fact the fronts were so bad, the wheel wouldn't sit up on its own - it wanted to tip forwards as if it was heavily positive cambered. The tread section was just angled down towards the front really quite bad. Again, photo doesn't do it justice.
Front of the wheel is towards left of shot.
So things were looking up a bit, bodywork wasn't *THAT* bad and my poking around hadn't revealed any evidence of impact damage, and the tyres were becoming increasingly more believable as the source of the handling issues.
I treated the car to its first modification to celebrate.
After a couple of days to get over the initial excitement/nerves or the purchase I had calmed myself down and come up with a battle plan.
I'd got myself into a positive frame of mind in that hopefully, none of the issues were particularly exotic and wouldn't even need specialist Ferrari input which is normally where the $$$ start piling up.
I made a list of all of my gripes, but really it came down to sorting two things:
- Tidy up paint
- Sort out the handling
The paint should be easy, find a bodyshop - get them to sort it over Winter, then that's 6 months of 'free' motoring not giving a hoot about stonechips or parking dings or whatever.
The handling I'd been out and done various drives to try and pinpoint what exactly was wrong. It feels like extreme tramlining, moreso than anything I've experienced before. When sticking semi slicks on a Lotus, or piling camber onto a Subaru you experience tramlining so I know what it feels like... but this was different, worse and scarier.
Undulations in the road definitely provoked it, as did applying power or brakes. Even rumbling over a catseye could cause the steering to snatch a little bit.
I put a few posts on forums, FB groups, etc to try and get a feel for where to go with the investigation first. After the initial useless responses of "take it to Ferrari", the next most popular recommendation was to throw the Pirelli tyres away and go for some Michelins.
I'm not opposed to using Ferrari dealers, and I didn't buy this car to save costs and cut corners - but I'm also a tinkerer. Even if I don't fix the issue myself, I at least want to do some basic triage so I can point the experts in the right direction.
As for the tyres, though I appreciate the importance of quality tyres I could not believe that swapping from one brand to another could fix these issues. If Ferrari sold the car on these Pirellis, then there's no way the (very positive) journalist reports would have come out at the time. It was a horrible car to drive.
I was trying to forget about the possibility that the car had been in an accident and could be hiding some horrors.
I also had to try and figure out what the hell we were going to do to make room for this car. Our fleet to date was:
Taycan on business lease, so can't get rid easily.
Volvo V90 which the missus loves, and I use for trailering the Lotus
Lotus 2-Eleven which occupies the garage
Ferrari FF which... well, it existed.
The driveway could take three cars side by side, in theory. But between the Volvo. Taycan and FF I couldn't have picked three bigger bloody cars!
Tried a few things out, involving abandoning the Volvo with the trailer in a field somewhere.
Eventually with some well rehearsed parking, we found we could just about squeeze all three on. I would post a photo, but that will spoil something that comes later in the story.
I made time to give the car a wash. Nothing too aggressive, just lobbed a sponge at it for a bit.
It immediately made me feel a bit better. The colour had been robbed of its qualities before from being covered in dust in London, it just took any shine out of it and made the Tour de France blue look flat.
A quick clean made it look so much better:
Normally the first wash of a new(used) car is an awful experience, because you inevitably find a load of bodywork niggles that you missed when purchasing. This time it was the opposite as I was expecting more bad news, but generally was happy with the state of the paint outside of the areas previously identified.
The bodywork all looked straight, no dings in the aluminium and the one patch of odd corrosion on the corner of the bootlid. Shutlines looked decent enough, but apparently even from the factory they were a bit wonky so you can't be too harsh here anyway.
I also took the rear wheels off, just for a look. The handling foibles felt most obvious at the rear.
To my relief all the suspension components looked both "of appropriate age" (ie, no brand new wishbones lobbed in) and nothing looked bent or recently disturbed. The rear pads looked a little low, but the very expensive carbon discs looked fine on visual inspection. (I do plan to get them weighed to figure out what their life expectancy is like).
What did look a little odd though was the tyre. I took a photo but it really doesn't come across well, but the section of the tyre was extremely uneven, not so much tread depth and wear - but it was like the tyre was distorted. This give me a huge spike of hope that the tyres could indeed be the cause of my concern.
I later took the fronts off, and found more of the same. In fact the fronts were so bad, the wheel wouldn't sit up on its own - it wanted to tip forwards as if it was heavily positive cambered. The tread section was just angled down towards the front really quite bad. Again, photo doesn't do it justice.
Front of the wheel is towards left of shot.
So things were looking up a bit, bodywork wasn't *THAT* bad and my poking around hadn't revealed any evidence of impact damage, and the tyres were becoming increasingly more believable as the source of the handling issues.
I treated the car to its first modification to celebrate.
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