Unless you’re the Sultan of Brunei, ownership of a Ferrari comes with a lot of challenges - mainly where to get the money to buy one and deciding what kind of light jazz to play in your Ferrari-themed glass garage. However, these two Ferrari F430s come with a whole ‘nother set of issues. Here’s how to solve them - the fun way.
This 2005 Ferrari F430 is one of the lightest Ferraris you can buy today, not because the Italian manufacturer sought to employ extreme weight-saving measures, but simply because of the fact that it’s completely stripped. Yes, this car had the drivetrain, interior, and electrical components taken out of it because the car was involved in a flood, rendering its regularly high-strung parts remarkably ineffective. The body, however, looks intact. Apart from some brake rotor rust, the shell is quite a straight example. At the $42,000 asking price, it wouldn’t be a bad deal if you sourced some drivetrain and interior components - but where?
Enter this 2006 Ferrari F430 Berlinetta that’s seen the wrong side of a Arby’s drive thru with all of the drivetrain and interior components to make the flood car mentioned above driveable. If you’re thinking that it would make more sense just to buy a running and driving car from the start, allow me to retort. If you buy this smashed-up Ferrari and transfer all the bits over, you’ll have a running, driving car that you rebuilt yourself. You’ll also have a spare Ferrari from which you can sell parts and recoup a sizable chunk of your initial investment.
Doing some back-of-the-napkin math, you’d be left with a shell that a usable brake system, rear bumper/diffuser, steering wheel, suspension components, body panels, and rear hatch, not to mention the various odds and ends (bonus parts) that you’ll end up with after the transfer of parts. With any normal car, the sales of these parts could add up, but with a Ferrari, they damn near multiply. At the very least, you’d have more than $20,000 of parts to sell, not counting the car’s frame, with an entire running, driving Ferrari F430 on top of it all.
I’ll also mention that it’s an insanely cheap way to start racing a Ferrari without the massive sticker shock associated with building a car. You’d already have a stripped chassis. Just add a roll cage and racing seats and a minimalist dashboard made of aluminum, sell off the rest of the creature comforts you didn’t use and have a real-life Ferrari race car for the price of a loaded BMW 3-series.
This project isn’t for the faint of heart, but it is one that I wouldn’t mind taking on if I had the space and funds for something like this. It’s the ultimate weekend project and one hell of a story to tell your grandkids.
Tavarish is the founder of APiDA Online and writes and makes videos about buying and selling cool cars on the internet. He owns the world’s cheapest Mercedes S-Class, a graffiti-bombed Lexus, and he’s the only Jalopnik author that has never driven a Miata. He also has a real name that he didn’t feel was journalist-y enough so he used a pen name and this was the best he could do.
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