Ferrari Mondial . Net

* Update Aug 2007: Please read this post before calling Hendon Way Motors about Mondials

After deliberating over the bank holiday weekend between a private sale 1986 Mondial QV 3.2 and the Hendon Way Mondial QV I was still undecided. As sometimes happens in life things were soon polarized when I performed an HPI check at www.mycarcheck.com. The private sale car had been declared a category D insurance write off in 1998! That was one minor detail the seller forgot to mention…. Despite category D being the lowest on the scale of write offs (Cat D being not seriously damaged, but cost of repairs exceeds insured value of the car, Cat A being car only fit for crushing) I did read that insurance companies should be told about a car being previously declared a write off, they would be unlikely to insure it for the full value. Also re-selling would be a problem, as who wants to buy a write off!? Dealers would not touch it. The fact that the service history was missing for most of the car’s life (including the time period where it was written off and subsequently repaired) was not a good sign, no way to know what exactly happened, what was damaged, and who carried out the repairs, even knowing those things I’d still be worried paying big money for a write off, so that was the end of that inquiry.

It was time to give Anthony at Hendon Way motors a call…

As the car had been stored since 2001/2 (so 5/7 years) I did insist that include in the price a cam belt/timing belt service and replace all the hoses, as these would be liable to perish, plus check that mysterious, possible leak.

* Update Aug 2007: Please read this post before calling Hendon Way Motors about Mondials

Went to see the Mondial at Hendon Way Motors again.

• 3 previous owners
• 36000 miles
• Full service history, including all the Maranello stamps upto and including 30k miles
• Dry stored since 2001/2002

The first time we went was at short notice, so it had been stuck at the back of the warehouse. Even in the gloom of the warehouse I could see the bodywork was immacluate, no rust boils at all. This time it was out front and ready to go! As we kind of expected it looked even better in the sunshine than in the dim light of the warehouse. The interior was in great condition too, complete with an old school Motorola car phone attached to the dashboard (very 80s!).

It started first time, just a little white smoke from the exhaust when starting up, but then fine. We were taken round the back streets of Hendon by Anthony Pozner, on these kind of residential road there obviously wasn’t much scope for really pushing the engine, but Anthony did manage to put his foot down at one point uphill. The engine sounded pretty good!

One thing I noticed on returning to the garage, after the car had stood waiting at the gate to be let back in, there was a small pool of clear, slightly slimy liquid where the back right of the engine would have been over. On pointing this out Anthony was quick to say it was from another car earlier in the day, but after parking up I showed it wasn’t. I’m guessing it could well just be harmless condensate from the air conditioning as I had switched that on to test it about five minutes before the end of the test drive. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t oil, anyway Anthony said they would take a look.

After the test drive we were invited to review the service history and documentation for the car. Everything seemed in order, and it appeared to have been well looked after. Anthony did then try to give us the hard sell…. we had no intention of putting pen to paper on the spot, as I pointed out to him I like to think things through. He was really reluctant to take this answer, and indicated that there was another party who was very interested, if I didn’t decide by the end of the day the other party would be buying the car in a part exchange deal. I said I was going to decide over the weekend and if it was gone then hard cheese to me. Somehow I had a feeling the car would still be there come Monday. I don’t have much experience in buying cars, but I was expecting some hard sell tactics at some point in the day. I don’t hold that against Anthony as his job is to sell cars, and I did promise to call him as soon as I’d decided.