model FOCUS: FERRARI F430
Mar an el lo melded performance and usability with the F 430, and you can even get it with a manual gear box! by Adam Towler
The F 430 is arguably the First truly modern, mass-market Ferrari. it’s a car no excuses had to be made for, one that could be used every day without issue. it was also the point where the ‘ junior’ Ferrari took off into the performance stratosphere, offering nearly 500bhp and a price to match, the car retailing in the uk for around £117,000.
the all-new 4.3-litre engine (fundamentally shared with Maserati) was chain- driven, so the belt- change maintenance regime of older V8 Ferraris was a thing of the past. Overall, it really was good news in terms of reliability and running costs, as our two experts (right) attest.
there are four variants of the F430: the berlinetta and the spider ( both 483bhp, and arriving in 2004 and 2007 respectively), plus the 430 scuderia and its roofless scuderia spider 16M counterpart ( both 503bhp, and launching in 2007 and 2009 respectively).
tony glynn at Foskers says: ‘it’s a shock they’ve gone up in value so soon – 18 per cent in two years. the strongest sellers are manual-gearbox cars – people perceive them to be the last manual Ferrari, and good to have in years to come. the scuds and 16Ms are very strong, too. you can expect to pay around £95,000 for a 15,000-mile spider with the F1 ’ box, with a coupe perhaps £5000 less. a manual car would be around £110,000, with a scuderia £200,000 and a 16M £275,000. the collector market wants sub-10,000-mile cars but these can’t be driven. up to 20,000-mile cars can be used, but over 30,000 there’s quite a tail- off in values. a scuderia with that mileage is almost unsaleable – it would need to be kept long-term.’
if the thought of paying £200,000-plus for a scuderia you can’t drive sounds absurd, you’ll be interested in the prices of those leggier examples. We’ve seen a 42,000-mile scuderia priced below £130,000 at an official Ferrari dealer. such cars may not appeal to investors, but they’re begging to be bought, loved and – above all – driven.