We Found a Unicorn Ferrari on Facebook

so we're at a point now where we have to at the at the quality of cars that we're buying and i think we've you know and i say this in a humble way at the place curated is we've tried our best to just continue to evolve and buy the best of the best and buy better cars and and evolve as we grow in the sense that we're pursuing you know bigger cars we're pursuing you know only the best of the best quality and that's also because we're a boutique dealership so we you know uh it's it's the same amount of effort of selling a 30 000 mile you know murcielago with a big wing as it is a perfect car um and and for me i'm just so ocd and i really believe in the dna of the company that we'll always be boutique because you have to have your hand and you have to have a small team to review the details of each car i don't i don't you know um you know managing a countach service or managing a countach when it comes in is a lot of work so it's not like we could ever sell 500 cars a year it's not going to happen so we've evolved in the way we look for cars and and the quality of cars we look for and it's gotten down to the point now where you know i would say other dealers from around the world call us other collectors call us when they hear of an incredible car uh hey john i've got a thousand mile countach are you interested and even through youtube um we have gotten a lot of people that have reached out to us recently the original owner of the miura sv time capsule car actually called us um i'm sorry he sent us an email and he wants to call us at some point so i mean all these crazy people have reached out to us um that that i would say have helped us also get where we are today and we're constantly digging it's information it's cold calling it's all these things to find our inventory when i first started i used to look on things like craigslist i used to look on things like all these you know hemmings and all these things to potentially find a deal and listen the reality is it's just it's very difficult um to find anything there i for myself have been looking for sort of a daily driver car i have to admit it sounds uh a little um i'm sort of embarrassed to even say this but i'm i'm looking for an automatic um because my commute is probably going to be you know 20 30 minutes um i plan on moving a little further south so i've been looking for some sort of a maybe a 996 turbo automatic or an e55 uh a w uh a 99 to 2001 e55 super cool car and and a lot of car for the money it's something i could drive it's not going to lose its value and it's affordable i could afford it so i've been looking on things like facebook marketplace and all these different sites not for necessarily curated inventory but for something for me that could be anywhere between seventeen thousand or forty thousand um as i was looking uh one night um i stumbled upon an ad that was um it was like a collage of photos um so so that sort of like it didn't look like real photos and it was an ad for a 1999 355 gts one owner car with 6 000 miles now if you're not a 355 expert i would say that most of the 355s on the market today or cars that you see are very high miles and majority of the cars are f1 transmission especially in the us so um when you're talking about a 355 or if you're a 355 connoisseur you know that okay a gtb or a gts are very rare to find in the u.s a manual gtb or gts is impossible to find and now a low mileage six thousand mile one owner and oh wait it's the last year of production gts is basically a 355 unicorn so i see this ad and and and the price was um it was actually not a bad asking price and i said oh i should try to reach out so send facebook message and i get a a a sort of a cryptic message back um you could tell this probably english was not the first language of this person but they were pleasant and they said that i should call their sister i was like okay um and and they mentioned that she owns the car now listen i'm i'm talking with someone that doesn't speak great english on facebook marketplace they're telling me to call their sister about a car they're saying the cars in miami which is sort of random but they're saying that i need to call their sister who's in another place of florida and all the red flags are just i mean if there's a scam this has got to be a scam but again as i've said before you have to sort of be optimistic and chase these things so he gives me a number and that being said it's an illinois cell phone number so it's not even a florida cell phone number so i called the number and um uh i don't get anything back for a couple days nothing i don't hear back i sent a nice text message nothing so i figured you know it's probably a scam i introduced myself as i have a boutique dealership in miami but we're also collectors you know we'd love to talk to you about your car so i think it was like a monday uh you know two or three days later i get a a message back and i get a phone call back from this very sweet lady um who you could see was sort of skeptical of what was going on with what is at that time i wasn't even sure if it was her car but basically a car that she was in possession of and she said yes i'm i'm the owner of this 355. my cousin basically told me you know he'd help me sell the car he put it on face facebook marketplace and um if you're interested in the car you know i really gotta see who you are and you know i'm not sure if i'm ready for you to come and see the car yet so she was being a little evasive and and i have to admit that that sort of scared me a little bit but i said listen here's my business address you can come any time i'm here to you know you can see our inventory you know we're legit um i'm not going to try to you know steal your car kidnap you or anything um which who knows in today's world on craig on facebook marketplace um so you know i basically she disappears um and again a week goes by i figure it's a scam another week goes by and uh guess what get a call from this sweet lady and she tells me she's coming down to see us at our dealership with her daughter so we make plans uh she comes in and she's this really sweet um i would say she's probably in her 50s um did not look like a typical ferrari owner by any means um her and her daughter were probably some of the sweetest people i've met very sincere and she starts to tell me the story of her 355 and she tells me that she bought it brand new when she was pregnant um with one of her daughters and uh basically she barely drove the car and um she told me this whole story she bought at lake forest sports course which a famous ferrari dealer out of the midwest when she moved to florida she had always had the car service at ferrari fort lauderdale so i was like wow i mean i i don't think you get a better example of a 355 at this point this is a one owner it's low mileage it's last year production i'm talking directly to the original owner that told me about the car it's history it's all serviced and i basically just say listen i'm i want the car um she then tells me that she priced it wrong she wants more money for the car um and and you know what honestly at this point i said listen i'm probably paying a little too too much for the car i'm probably paying retail but i think the car is so special i'm okay with that because that's what we buy now i haven't seen the car i do know she's a sweet lady but listen anything can happen i've met some really nice people in my life that have also turned out to be scam artists so you never know what you can encounter i tell listen i want the car i'd love to see it and again she was hesitant and i'm it's like you know i'm not i'm not just some you know i'm not a serial killer off of facebook marketplace uh but but okay i'm fine so another week goes by and she tells me she's traveling and again i'm again a little skeptical i haven't seen more photos of the car yet um uh i don't know how tech savvy she was so you know again i'm i'm waiting for more information from her and then one day i get a message she goes you know what if you're free this thursday i'll meet you at this location so she sends me an address and ironically it's not her house um it's a gas station uh in about an hour north from miami and i say okay you know what i'll make the drive i'll go so um i jump in a car and i start driving north and you know i have to admit the last five ten minutes i'm like you know am i being set up here like you know i haven't seen more photos of this car she's being a little invasive i mean she's seen my showroom am i like am i gonna get kidnapped but anyways i realized okay we're gonna be at a public place everything should be fine i basically pull into the gas station in the corner of my eye okay there it is this stunning red 355 gts so um i obviously i pull up to the car and and i get out of the car and the second i get out of the car i realize that she hasn't been lying um she she definitely represented the car perfectly well which again you know everyone says their car is perfect everyone says you know oh i'm the original owner um this car looked like a new car um i i couldn't even have a poker face i mean i you know i i told her immediately i said i don't think there is any you know i'm in business to negotiate i'm in business to try to make a deal i don't think i can negotiate with you because this is probably the best 355 i've seen years um original paint uh interior was immaculate and then i realized which i had not realized before because there were no photos of the car for me to really look at it was that it was because it was a 99 so 355's the early cars you didn't really see a lot of cars with interesting options the last year of production you could order things like shields which were a factory option you could order red calipers from the factory you could order red carpets from the factory so it had red carpets shields calipers and it had these great options and the car was flawless it smelt new she had the cover she had the books she had the tools so i think there was only one thing wrong with the car um and that was that the original radio which was a sony cassette that actually says ferrari on it was missing the little frame around the radio big deal um and the tires were not i mean they were new tires but they were probably not brand correct i think there are bridgestone tires so definitely wanted to change the tires and do a few things and i basically said listen i i want the car i can't negotiate with you i'm happy to pay you what you want let's make a deal she then says well you know i don't know i'm i'm too attached to the car and i had to tell her at that moment and be transparent with her listen i don't want to force you i'm always here i can write a check at any point if i see a copy of the front and back of the title you get funded in 24 to 48 hours it's as simple as that so now i think about two three weeks went by um i'd randomly nudge her and i said listen i don't want to pressure if you don't want to sell it's fine but i'm a buyer finally one day she calls me she goes okay i'm ready here's a copy of the title we wrote up a purchase agreement and we bought the car so we brought the car here and you know it's funny it's one of those things that it's not the most expensive car we've ever had by far i would say our average car is about five hundred thousand to six hundred thousand and you know we have cars that are two and three million dollars but the car presence of of a 355 i mean listen let's face it the 355 is probably one of the most iconic ferraris ever made in this generation um there's a there's a a following of those cars there's almost like a cult following of those cars and the second it got in the showroom everybody was asking about it everybody had questions everybody wanted to you know like look inside and touch it and blah blah blah blah blah so it was definitely it was probably one of the most surprising transactions we ever had because what are the chances of finding a true ferrari unicorn on facebook marketplace um but again it further illustrates why you can't give up um you have to search and you have to dig you have to be tenacious and you never know where you could stumble across something and you have to be somewhat optimistic um if i had you know blown through you know if i had a you know seen red flags and just said ah no this is a scam probably wouldn't have ended up with the car and um it's definitely one of the stories that i'll never forget um and we've got plenty more coming so thank you guys again for watching don't forget to subscribe don't forget to like and much more vintage supercar content coming soon

Channel: Curated TV by John Temerian

Views: 65,736

Rating: 4.9207478 out of 5

Keywords: ferrari, 355, 6-speed, save the manuals, 355 GTS, car collecting, car hunting, collector cars, ferrari collector, rare ferrari

Id: BYW2Of5en3A

Length: 13min 48sec (828 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 29 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/AutoModerator]

Thanks /u/AutoMughal for posting on r/ferrari. Please remember to read the rules and report rule breaking posts

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/cherydad33]

The whole idea of “low” vs “high” milage is silly to me. Unless that’s your thing and want a true garage queen they need to be driven!

With such little miles things can go bad, like gaskets/o rings or just items that need to be sorted from use.

Either way cool story.