Ferrari has decided to recall all of the 458 Italia cars it made this year, following reports of a number of the luxury cars catching fire. Ferrari said its engineers had flown around the world to investigate five reports of "thermal incidents". As a result, it will be asking the owners of more than 1,200 of the supercars to bring them in for modification work. There were reported incidents in California, Paris, Switzerland, China and one other unnamed location. Ferrari said the problem had been traced to adhesive used in the wheel-arch assemblies. In certain circumstances, the glue can begin to overheat, smoke and even catch fire, a spokesman told BBC News. In extreme cases, the melting of the adhesive can lead the heat shield - the liner which protects the engine - to deform and move closer to the exhaust, causing the lining to catch fire. The handful of owners who first reported the fires - and that were later confirmed to be due to this problem - will now receive a new model, Ferrari said. For the rest, their cars will be modified to replace the adhesive with mechanical fasteners. Ferrari launched an investigation last month after photos purporting to show 458 models on fire or burnt out emerged. From BBC News
"thermal incidents" :lol: ut: Reminds me of BMW's response in the 2008 NHTSB Report on EHPS pump electrical harness failures causing a localized, non-propagating "smoldering condition" ... Yeah, right.
I was curious when they were going to do that. Didn't know they made 1200 cars. Thought it was around 4-500, so I was figuring with 5 fires that I knew of it had a failure rate of 1-1.25%. It is actually only about .4% then. To put that in perspective that would be equivalent of 1,600 of '09 model year Camry's catching on fire. Can you imagine what effect that would have on Toyota sales? I mean NTSB went medieval on them over a 100 or so reported gas pedals.
We had one of these at the racetrack yesterday, what a beautiful car! Interesting to know what caused the problem - and that those few people who lost theirs due to the "thermal incident" are going to get a new one! Schweet!
Huh..... Now that Ferrari has announced free replacements, I wonder if there is going to be a sudden rash of fires?
I saw that car about 2 weeks and looked amazing. I guess when you read this you can't complain about BMW/Mini reliability lol
Or you still can for the simple fact Ferrari is REALLY taking car of their customers on this one. Though they also spent 7x the money, so i would certainly hope so. IMO Kudos to Ferrari.