Has anyone bought crashed/damaged Ferrari and restored it?

I bought a wrecked 97 F355 spider, in the process of getting it repaired right now, i can tell you off hand used parts are not cheap lol.
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You're going to find body parts to be outrageously expensive. Every now and then somebody sells a salvage "parts only" Ferrari on Fleabay. You'll be stunned how much professional breakers will pay for these cars because they know how much they can get for the parts. If I was going to do this, and I'm not, I'd look at a flood car. Replacing electronics is a lot cheaper than body parts.

 

The only economical way to make this work is buy 2 salvage cars of the same model with different areas of damage,... and sell off the extra parts (but you may want to keep some spares) when done / or as you progress.

If you can swing this,... financially you'll come out ahead.

 

Have you concidered buying a nice 355 with clean history, financing it with a bank at a decent low rate, and going to work 9-5 mon-fri to pay the note so you can actually enjoy the car on the weekends etc while your young.

Tinkering and polishing keeps you smiling, building from salvage may leave a frown.

 

I think you're missing the larger point. You're saying you want to buy (damaged) for $50K, not (undamaged) for $100K. For the damaged car, you're going to spend more then the initial $50K, yes? So - given the costs of repair, just in parts - how much over $50K are you willing to spend?

If the answer is something like "I'd spend $85-90K total", then don't restore the damaged car.

 

Could be done, but that $25K figure (depending on the model) is probably low.

Hop online and price out an assortment of body parts, and other parts that would likely be involved in fixing a front end or side impact damaged car. If the labor is free like you've mentioned, you might squeeze by with 25K in parts, but others have said, and they're not wrong, these parts are insane.

 

You can buy a 355 for $75K - that isn't wrecked - right now, today. Why wouldn't you do that, instead?

 

I had this idea at first, and read several threads about this but looked into doing it anyways. Mind you I was looking at 360, 430, and California cars but the cars themselves sell for a **** ton of money, like might as well buy a clean car to begin with because you will spend more money. I’m not saying it’s impossible but just a for instance there is a 2006 f430 spider that needs new/used front and rear bumper covers, new/used rocker panels and probably the belly cover replaced on Copart now and they want nearly 80k for it buy it now and that’s just the damage you can see. It’s been thru a couple of times and has gotten up to around 60k but has been a no sale. You can get into an f430 spider that ain’t storied for around that or maybe 10-15k more. Smart money would pass on that car. Seen a lot of the flood californias selling at or near what I damaged californias are selling for so unless you get a good deal it’s more then likely better to pass on a salvage Ferrari.

 

If you are looking for the enjoyment of bringing a wrecked car back to life, and driving it, then yes. But just understand, that if you purchase a wrecked 50K ferrari, and put 20K into it (in parts), you will not sell it at 70K. You would be lucky to get your original 50K back. Most Ferrari buyers walk away from any car that has had even a minor scratch. Everyone is worried about future resale. Hope this helps.

 

GFL


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Do if it you want a track-only car. Otherwise you will have a hard time getting your money back. Not even sure how you'd go about insuring it let alone registering it as a salvage/rebuilt car for street or resell to someone that wants to finance it.

 

The reason they total cars is that it's not worth the repairs + the diminished value.

 

There is certainly some truth to this. While most of the recent Ferrari cars I have seen in salvage auctions were either flood or rear/front end damage cars there have been plenty of other cars that didn’t appear to have that bad of damage that were titled as salvage. Most didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

I also noticed newer cars that don’t appear to be unrepairable titles as certificate of destruction, I heard that is so an owner can’t collect the insurance claim then rebuy the vehicle and repair it but don’t know how true that is but in a lot of instances sure seems like a waste of a decent repairable vehicle.

 

Not just Ferrari

 

In early 80s I bought a vandalized 246 for about $12k.
Fixed it up at a cost of about $5k (including repaint) and sold it for $19k.
I was ecstatic I made $2k......

 

Indeed I had payed attention.
I will try again to explain one possible strategy.

If you buy a wreck of a 355 at 45-50K then you spend 25K on parts, materials, and free personal labor. It will hypothetically take you 2-3 months of searching and repairing etc to end up with a salvage titled or at best “bad carfax” Ferrari 355 with some flaws from self repairs.

At that point you have $75K in a car that would not sell easily even if you only ask 45K!

My advise is to work harder for 3 months to make up the difference after you put your 50K down at a bank and finance the remainder of a nice 355 that you buy for only 56K like this one https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/l-Used-Ferrari-F355-d1120#listing=185866000

Be sure to negotiate!

Now your loan balance is only 6K plus interest
That equates to roughly $78 a day which you could make by staying a little later at work.

As far as you enjoying to work on cars, I can assure you that owning a nice 355 will present a wealth of happiness in that department.

Good luck

 

If you want a cheap one that you have to work on, and you're going to end up with a salvage title car anyway, just buy a repaired car. Get a 348 or 355, you'll work on it plenty! heck, for 50k, you can find plenty of fine cars.

Check "ferrari area" craigslists... miami, dallas, LA, etc...

sjd

 

Here is a convertible in red for 60K asking

https://www.carsforsale.com/used-car-dealer/tradenet-calabasas-ca-d239653/inventory/details/32720463

 

There was a guy on here who bought a 612 and pretty much restored it. I can't remember the condition he bought it in though. Wrecked? Flood? Someone help me out.

 

Yep, I was thinking of the same thing. He was an automotive engineer who bought and fixed up a 612 with a hydrolocked engine. That thread's a great read.

https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/threads/heres-a-pic-of-me-pulling-the-engine-out-of-my-612-yesterday.453306/

Noticed that the OP seems to be permabanned, though. I don't know what ended up happening there.

 

Yeah I noticed that too, there are several other models that get totaled for minor damage I’m assuming because the owner insists because the wait time on repairs/diminished resale value. Rob Ferretti (not sure how to spell his last name) talked about how there was some minor damage to one of the Gotham rental ferrari’s and the insurance company totaled it as well.

But from what I have been seeing unless you get lucky, and it does happen occasionally, you aren’t going to save anything buying a salvage Ferrari, lambo, mclaren, and a few other high demand cars and if anything you will spend more. The comment about buying 2 cars makes a lot of sense considering you could sell the parts from the “donor” car. And if you have the time and enjoy doing that it might be ok. Me personally I don’t know that I realistically have the time to rebuild anything. Plus the frustration of not being able to drive it until you finish it and clear an inspection pretty much seals the deal for me. But I still enjoy at least looking at what they sell for. Sure seems like since the big influx of flood cars the exotics have been selling pretty darn high.