for you vintage Ferrari guys

[captcarb]

I saw this in a TV ad and was not happy until I figured out what it is.

[captcarb]

more

[BarryStrawn]

Looks like a kit car of some kind. What is it supposed to be?

[BarryStrawn]

I noticed the Factory Five coupe in the background.

http://www.factoryfive.com/table/ffrkits/spyder/spyder.html

[chynewalkr]

this thread should have been titled for all you 5.0 mustang guys!

[Raceman]

It's a shame what they've done with some kit cars over the years. Probably the very worst was the F40/Pontiac Fiero conversion. That think wouldn't have fooled anybody after 2 12 packs.

[ROLF]

I was getting coffe one Saturday morning two summers ago in the Stewerts gas & go in Lake George N.Y. when a filthy 1957 250 Testerossa pulls up to fuel .One of my favorite all time rides!When I went to look I asked whose knock-off it was I thought the guy was gonna puke/faint.THIS IS AN ORIGINAL! He says with great disgust.Sure as **** this fella drove it almost three hundred miles to the Ferrari meet at the Sagamore resort .That takes Balls! not to mention the acquisition price.I will never forget seeing that beauty in the flesh and the sound of the exhaust when he screamed away.
Rolf

[Ilovespeed]

kinda reminds me of a tvr :confused:
Tyler

[captcarb]

?

[Ilovespeed]

maybe not, owell
tyler

[David]

Last Halloween I saw a red Ferrari Daytona convertible stopped at the side of the local expressway going the other way.

It is the only Daytona convertible I've ever seen and I could not stop to look at it (or offer help, it was a goofy place to park unless it was broken).

Sadly for me, Halloween is about handing out candy to kids so I had to rush home.

I have no problem with replicars. They don't park them with the real ones at the shows. I would not spend my money on a replicar but its a free country and the real cars are anything but free.

David
Lotus Elan Plus 2 (underpowered sports car but fun on track day)
Virage/XR4 (underpowered tunnel, also fun)

[Raceman]

Rolf, I can beat that story. At an FCA track event in Savannah Ga. 6 or 8 years ago, a local Plastic Surgeon was bringing his GTO out for many people there to see for the first time. This was the old car from the 60's, not the 288. The talk was that the car had been worth over 3 mil at the peak of Ferrari prices. There was some difficulty with the car not having a tag and the owner getting stopped on the way to the track or something, I don't remember the exact details. Anyhow, he got out a cordless drill and drilled holes in the rear of the car and bolted a tag on with sheet metal screws. I almost fainted.

[RedAllison]

a vette thats supposed to look like a "Redhead"??? KEWL either way!

DONT negate the modern "kits/replicars". They have come a LOOOONG way. To be honest with you the real European sports cars are a heartache to mess with. I havent had the pleasure yet of an Italian car, but sampled Britains best with a Lotus Espirit Turbo that was a BLAST, but was afraid to run it hard very much because where in the hell would you get one worked on in western TN? They typically run like **** most of the time and keeping them running good is a 50/50 proposistion at best. And parts... lets just say you cant order clutch disks for a 348 at AutoZone.

There are some builders who actually build cars that absolutely will EMBARASS the originals. Anyone remember the Lamborghini Countach "replicar" sold lastyear at the Barrett/Jackson in AZ? (LOL it was yellow with purple "suede" interior!) It was built on a chromed tubesteel chasis, had fully modernized electronics and A/C and behind the drivers head sat a 520+ cubic inch Donovan BBC. The thing would DUST anything built by the ragin bull and yet it only brought $26k! You can drive an original only so much before the mileage affects the value and they typically require a THOROUGH service at least every 12k or 12 months and that service runs into the thousands. And insurance is a nightmare and typically only for so many months and thousands of miles per year.

If you have reams of cash lyin around then yeah sure the originals look great all lined up and leakin oil in a climate controlled garage. But if I buy something that looks like and runs like a modern sports car you can damn well bet I am gonna DRIVE IT. And with a hot replicar I dont have to worry about some hommie in a ghetto sled with no insurance runnin the light and WIPIN OUT my 6 digit Italian penis extension.

Lambo doesnt care, but Ferrari actually is suing the **** out of builders and even dealers of copiers of their cars. I LOVE the idea of a convertible Testarossa/512 (something they actually never built in Maranello!) and have seen a handful of replicas. I actually tracked one down to a dealer in Fla and he said he nearly quit business as a result of fighting Ferrari over just that one car. He wont even THINK about buying or trading for anything with a prancing stallion on the badges! Lets see I could buy an original for $75-$85k and HOPE it runs every 10th time I want to take it out. Or I can buy a copy for about $25k that performs better than original and can have it serviced at the local Goodwrench place?

You tell me,
RA

ps
DONT get me wrong, I LOVE the originals. I still WILL one day meet my goal of owning a REAL Ferrari "just because". But for a driver and something to do burnouts in around town, the professionally built, exact replicas ARE something to think about!

[captcarb]

I sure got trhe whole spectrum of opinions about that car. Does anyone know what the blue car is? Do you think it is a replica?

The factory Five car is not a replica of anything. It is an original design by an individual who is a fan of the late 50's and early 60's sports racer Ferraris and other similiar cars of that era. I don't think Ferrari ever built a car that pretty. Some of their last front engined sports racers had that rear treatment, but not as well done. Many of the sports racers had similiar front ends, and I think they inspired the Factory Five car as did the Cobra Daytona Coupe. The Daytona coupe was also inspired by the Ferraris. Certainly none of the old ferraris have fender space for some nice big modern rubber.

I had a Ferrari from the sixties, and I will tell you that the engine has some really wierd stuff in it like two seperate distributors and valve adjusters that ride directly on the valve stem and get a flat spot on them after time requiring that some of them be replaced when the valves are adjusted. Needless to say that the prices for those parts make Merc parts look like bargain basement stuff. Even after having the car redone with new Borranis, I still broke even on it. I reluctantly agreed to do a tune up on a friends V-12 Lambo and it was a hair tearing experience. It did run well at Elkhart lake after that.

Driving any of the aluminum bodied race cars on the street (including the Cobras) can produce some rather complicated damage. There were no inner fenders in most of them and any stone picked and thrown inside the fender will dent it from the inside.

I have never owned a replica because I am lazy. I could buy a nice used 993 for the same money it would take to build the Factory Five car with a V-12. It sure is pretty though IMHO.

There have been some exact replicas of old Ferraris that fooled the experts for a while. The owners that discovered that they were replicas and were honest about it lost a ton of money. That is why Ferrari is so sensitive about that subject.

Jim

[BarryStrawn]

Captcarb - The blue car look like a Reventlow Scarab. I don't pay a lot of attention to cars anymore but I seem to remember someone making them again. As in real replicas made just like the originals. Might have been Dick Troutman whose shop made the originals.

Raceman - How does the line go about the Ferrair 250 GTO? Only 49 made and 80 originals survive? A number of regular Ferrari GT cars were rebodied. Some were done as fraud using chassis number from cars that were destroyed or not accounted for. Others were just for the guys who wanted to drive one. I think they are even welcome in the registries as long as they are listed as "rebodied".

[Raceman]

That's probably about right on the 250 GTO's Barry. (I couldn't remember the 250 number in my post above) It's about the same percentage wise as the 67 427/435 Corvettes which probably have at least double the number now that GM ever produced. I've always wondered where all the intake manifolds come from since they're one year only.

My buddy that has the Ferraris had a Daytona Spyder which was a conversion from a Daytona coupe. A lot of people at the Ferrari meets used to ask if it was a real Spyder or a conversion, so I guess they were hard to detect also. It was another one of those cars that was bought high and sold low after the market adjustment in the 90's.

[captcarb]

Ferrari did some serial number switching in the 50's. This really confused the collectors for a while. I got involved with one of those deals and missed the buy while I was checking it out. It was a 1952 Carrera Panamericana car and the accompanying story was pretty unbelievable. It turned out to be true and is documented now. That just makes the history more interesting to me. They did many rebodies of competition cars that were damaged. Some of it was probably poorly documented and hard to research. Ferrari did not build bodies in those days.

This is one of the replica examples that hurt a collector and riles the factory:

http://www.mroks.com/inventory/030613Ferrari250GTL_SWBreplica/Ferrari250GTL_SWBreplica.htm

Jim

[clydecleinmark]

I always thought a Cobra kit car would be kinda neat. There really isn't much to them but it doesn't take much to make a really fast one. Regardless of what people ask for them in the newspapers, I've rarely seen one go for over 25k at auction. The Porsche Speedster kit is also neat. Not fast at all but always struck me as being a fun car to drive. There's a guy that always has some on ebay up in Wisconsin--with leather, top, etc. Some even have AC.

[sms]

Here are a couple shots of our old 330 GT 2+2. This is the car most often butchered to make GTO replicas. Too bad in my opinion, because I think they are beautiful. Then again, you can have a real Ferrari powered GTO to actually use for less than $4 million!

[sms]

At the track.

[Raceman]

That car looks familiar. Was it ever in Ga?

[BarryStrawn]

Here's a site I tripped over while looking for the Scarab info the other day. Thought some of you might enjoy it.

http://www.tamsoldracecarsite.net

SMS - Is that a four or two headlight? I can't remember the models anymore. GT or GTE? The four headlight models were homely and used to be less expensive. But either was a very nice car you could comfortably drive every day. I remember going to inspect one that was stored with a 1964 Maserati 3500 GT in an old school gym in Riley, Kansas. Had a full maintenance history in a binder but it was all in Italian! Ended up financing them both for a guy I knew from college. He ended up with some nice stuff including a Ghibli Spyder.

[captcarb]

In the late 50's and early 60's there were a lot of road races in FL also. In addition to Daytona and Sebring, they were racing on airports like Kissimmee and Bartow. A lot of the cars on that site raced here too including the Scarabs, Bocars etc. The races were pretty informal with little or no crowd control.

Roger Penske was still driving then. He would show up at a local airport race with the latest Porsche spider and run off and hide from everyone.

Jim

[sms]

Raceman, we bought the 330 from Boston, but the alternator had a name engraved with a hand scribe, probably from when it was out for service to be sure the correct unit came back. The name was Chinnetti(spelling?) and this was also the dealer sticker tag in the back window. Louis Chinnetti was an importer/racer from the early days. If my memory serves me right, they were east, possibly down your way, but I can't remember for sure.

Barry, it's a 2 headlight car. I have a hard time looking at the 4's!

BTW, I love the old Ferrari Owners manual and kept a copy when the car was sold. Where US car manuals focus on proper use of the restraint systems and radio, the Ferrari manual details how to set valve lash, balance carbs, etc... Also the run in procedure is desribed:
Do not exceed 90 MPH on roads with steep inclines in top gear for the first 2000 miles. After run in, the maximum recommended speed is 152 (6800 RPM) in top gear.

Ah yes, those were the days!

[Raceman]

A friend who lives in SE Ga. and was prez. of the Ferrari Club for one year had a very similar car during the years I used to attend the club events. I figured it might be the same car, but this was early/mid 90's and I doubt that it would've gone to Boston and back here by now. His initials are AW.

[sms]

Keeping with the vintage theme:
Inside the Goodman racing shop.(this is a real 64)

[sms]

Same shop.

[sms]

Drool.

[CDave]

That FFR car is a Spyder GT. Don't think that FFR cars are cheap replicas. They are well engineered cars that allow the not so Rich and Famous to enjoy a high performance sport GT.
The kits are set up to use 5.0 Stang parts but it ISN'T a rebodied Stang!

The Spyder GT isn't a Ferrari knockoff. It is a convertable Cobra Daytona coupe with a redesigned rear. They use to sell a convertable Daytona Coupe but the big back end lines were all wrong for a convertable. http://www.factoryfive.com/images/videos/SyderGTV8.wmv
http://www.factoryfive.com/table/ffrkits/spyder/spyder.html

BTW, the Spyder GT is my reasonable/can afford it one day dream car.

FFR Cobra spec racers are well respected performance cars at the track.

Go to this link and watch some of the videos. I think you'll change your mind about this being some Fiero type replica.
http://www.factoryfive.com/videos.html :cool:

[stokernick]

I`ll take the blue `vette convertible by the back wall,thank you!!:cool: :cool:

[sms]

Darn near everything in that shop has a real history.
To refresh your memories on the 82-83 Gold Cup winning hydro, check out this link. www.82atlas.com. See the history section.

[Yamaha 225]

Maserati Biturbo 222 4v.

[Ted Stryker]

That plastic surgeon should have been drawn and quartered:mad: .. Some people think nothing is sacred, and he may go to hell and burn for eternity for his inexcusable behavior.. That's all I have to say about that.