Owning a Ferrari: The real costs of maintenance, insurance, and daily driving

Many car lovers dream of one day having a Ferrari in their garage but have you ever wondered how much it really costs to own one?

Aside from the initial outlay for the vehicle there are various other factors to consider when buying a Ferrari.

From insurance to planned and unplanned maintenance – costs can stack up.

So, what’s the real life cost of owning and running a Ferrari?

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Maintenance

There’s no denying that buying a Ferrari will set you back a lot more than your average car – the Ferrari Daytona SP3 costs around $4 million while just a set of wheels on the Ferrari Purosangue costs more than a new Mustang GT. 

However, you may be surprised to learn that when it comes to maintenance, it’s actually pretty cheap. 

Since 2012, all new Ferraris sold come with seven years complimentary maintenance. 

Ferrari Genuine Maintenance covers things like oil changes, fluids, filters, and spark plugs. 

Not only that, but Ferrari doesn’t put a cap on how often you can have a service during those seven years as long as you’ve done 10,000 miles between appointments.

“The maintenance schedule is once every year or once every 10,000 miles,” a Ferrari dealer told Consumer Affairs. 

“That means if you drive 20,000 miles in a year, you can come in twice a year for free.”

The service can even be transferred to successive owners, as long as it’s within the seven years. 

So, if you buy a three-year-old Ferrari you can still take advantage of four years of Ferrari Genuine Maintenance and if you sell it on within a year, the next buyer can take over the remaining three years. 

Once your seven years is up, the dealer says you can get a V8 service for around $2,800 – around the same price as McLaren, but a little more than an Aston Martin, which is an estimated $2,200 per year. 

Ferrari insurance

When it comes to insurance, there’s a whole bunch of different variables. 

Insurers take into account the make, model and age of the vehicle as well as your age, how many years you’ve been driving, where you live, how often you drive, and whether you’ve got any sanctions on your license. 

But as a bit of a general guide, price comparison site Value Penguin looked at four US insurers and 10 Ferrari models – including the Roma Coupe Turbo, the 488 GTB Coupe and the Portofino – and found an average rate of $448 per month.

This puts insurance for a Ferrari at more than two-and-a-half times that of your average car. 

However, the price comparison experts also noted that Ferrari drivers could get themselves a better deal if they went to a specialist insurer who deals in high-end vehicles. 

For example, insuring a 2009 F430 Convertible with a standard insurer costs $340, but that drops to $260 when insuring the same vehicle with a specialist insurance firm. 

So, as ever – it pays to do a bit of research. 

Daily driving and fuel

Much like insurance, the daily running costs of a Ferrari will vary based on all sorts of factors such as make, model and age, as well as how much you use your Ferrari, where you drive it, and how you drive it. 

However, fuel costs are a little higher compared to your average daily driver because Ferraris have pretty low fuel efficiency. 

According to the US Department of Energy’s handy fuel-cost tracking tool, the 2023 Ferrari Portofino and the 2024 Ferrari Roma cost around $5.30 per 25 miles, with an average annual fuel cost of $3,250.

Whereas the 2023 Ferrari F8 Spider is a little more expensive, coming in at $6.39 per 25 miles and $3,850 annually. 

Another cost consideration with regular driving is repair costs, again the price varies a lot depending on what’s gone wrong and how easy it is to fix. 

But – for a rough idea – replacing a side head gasket on a V8 Ferrari can cost around $12,000, while a clutch replacement can be as much as $22,000. 

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