Recently a good car mag(I think GRM) did a thing about now that we are older and our "dream" cars are cheapish now, how you can own one.
The Ferrari was a real deal killer. Old Porsche turbos, BMW M3's, Lotus Esprit etc, all are kinda tricky to maintain, hard to find good shops to work on them and parts are more than for a normal car. But they all do the great things we know they do.
The Ferrari 308/328(Magnum style and a bit newer) are affordable, yes, but they are slow, hard to drive, unreliable and still slow. They were very dissapointed.
Then they started looking at maintenance items. 4 wheel brake job, $2500 US is a good example. No matter how well you take care of your car, you will have to do brakes. Clutch is $6000-$8000 depending on where you take it. Break a door handle? Good luck. Have a mirror switch fail? Yea right. You simply can't go to Lordco/NAPA/Wakefields etc to get parts for these cars. And I have been to many junk yards, and never have I seen a Ferrari in there
so, you could buy one(there are two on Craigslist right now for $25,000 and $29,000), but realistically you could never drive it or ensure it.
And if you could afford to buy it, drive it, maintain it and ensure it, you would probably buy something newer, faster, better handling and much much nicer to drive.
I have actually driven an 82 308GTS. It was, frankly, a POS. And it wasn't. It was in beautiful shape, everything worked well, everything was in good shape. Its just an Italian sportscar from a completely different era. If you wanted the style, prestige etc of a Ferrari in those days, you just lived with the BS.
Now, newer ones are a completely different story, but they are 2-3x the price of the old ones, and are hugely expensive to maintain and ensure.
They sure as shit are sexy tho.
