There was a sharp rise in demand/value since 2020 on cars like the 355 and 550, and some bit rarer but still significant in number cars like the 360 Challenge Stradale and 430 Scuderia. Especially for the 355 and 550, which exist in significant numbers, before 2020 these cars were $70-100k, but now with nice examples going from $150k-225k, it can make a lot more sense to import one from a softer market like Europe or Japan (especially since Japanese market examples are often extremely well kept and LHD), even if the cost of importing is $10-20k.
The ship example maybe wasn't the greatest, in the cases of the Ever Given and MV Aman, the crews were required to stay on the boats as custodians while dealing with these issues, in the latter case a single sailor was on the ship for 4 years, the last 2 alone and without power.
Another interesting case with ships is the Trieste and several other Russian oligarch mega yachts being held in Italy. Italian law requires them to maintain the value of frozen assets, so they are spending millions per month to keep these yachts maintained.
The second case was apalling. No human would inflict such a cruel punishment like a blind bureaucracy can. A similar case is an iranian who was stuck in a French airport for 18 years. Completely pointless.
I was in the same boat as you and sounds like others in this thread, >1000 hours in Blender over the past few years, but learned Fusion360 to be able to get parts lasercut and machined so had to go to proper parametric CAD format. The simple answer is use both - some things like making a simple bracket or fixture are just much easier in CAD. For organic shapes with lots of complexity, sub D modeling is far faster and easier IMO in Blender than the ways to achieve that in CAD (like T splines in Fusion).
The space between those 2 things is where you have to decide what you are really trying to accomplish. The program you use will have an impact on what your result looks like, you see this in the evolution of product design alongside the evolution of design software (boxy cars in the 80s, soap bars in the 90s, and the last few decades of cars with flowing designs with body line defining creases which modern A surface modelers seem to draw you towards). I find parts made in Blender with my workflow often look a lot more interesting and visually pleasing, using edge crease/bevel modifiers and sliding loops around vs. using fillets in CAD for instance, they both aim to soften an edge, but look far different in the end. If you are only ever going to 3D print parts and never CNC, you are already fast in Blender, and part strength vs mass doesn't matter much (especially to a degree where you don't care about FEA), Blender is plenty viable to make printed parts with.
You can footgun yourself easily with both programs, but I find Fusion to be worse for this, half because of the UI, but using tools like sketch projection for me has caused really diabolical issues in the timeline. The whole trick to CAD is being very careful with the design intention as you progress forwards, which is hard to learn coming from 3D modelers where that doesn't matter much and you can just shuffle around non destructive modifiers. This might just be due to my own experience difference in the programs though, I definitely remember going down some roads in Blender I never returned from on meshes when I was learning, normally by either applying subdivision modifiers, doing too many loop cuts, or using a tri/n-gon somewhere thinking it wouldn't be an issue or I would fix it later.
Making a high performance, expensive, rare car is a small part of the recipe. Most Ferrari owners own more than one Ferrari (65% according to Ferrari of North America study from a decade ago or so, not sure if there's an updated number). A significant number of owners own more than 2. Ferrari famously has dealer prioritization and waitlists that reward you for buying more cars, just like Rolex which another poster mentioned below. When I was servicing these cars around 2015, many customers would buy FFs and Californias that they didn't necessarily want just to have the option to buy something like a first year 458 Spider, not even one of the particularly rare offerings. If someone got something truly low production like a LaFerrari or F12 TDF, chances are that customer had already bought 10+ cars from the dealer and immediately trades in many of their cars at a multi hundred thousand dollar loss to them as soon as they are able to get out of a "regular" model into a special edition. Ferrari drives/meets also serve as social clubs/networking which certainly does provide some positive value for many owners of these vehicles. Very few customers I ever met really cared about outright performance/$ and would have been cross shopping a Ford GT with a 430.
Also they are very specific owners. There's one guy here in LA, specifically the San Gabriel Valley neighborhood who realized there were a ton of visitors from mainland China flush with cash who were either coming as tourists or buying property, i.e. the "fuerdai" phenomenon. Cue a few strategically placed watch/jewelry and lambo/ferrari dealerships later, and I think he's one of the top sellers of their cars in North America...
I've seen an interesting A-B test with this seeing the difference in clutch wear between the Ferrari F1 transmission in the 599 and 612 and the DuoSelect transmission which is essentially the same box in the Quattroporte. The shifting strategy and technique is more of a controlled variable here because the shifting is automatic though it's a somewhat traditional manual gearbox with hydraulic actuation. The QP is a bit heavier but the Ferraris make a lot more power. From what I saw the cars that fared far worse were the Quattroportes, and those that ate the most clutches by far were the ones putting around the city, especially in San Francisco, Marin, Los Altos Hills, etc. where people are slowly creeping into parking spots on hills. On the Ferraris that are weekend warriors that get driven hard the clutches could go 30k+ miles no problem, Quattroportes would come in with smoked clutches in a few thousand miles sometimes.
I've never driven an automatic Ferrari or paddle shifted Ferrari to compare, but the QP that I drove (Ferrari V-8, I think that it even said Ferrari on the valve covers maybe) didn't have anything outstanding about the transmission that I remember. I thought it was a regular hydraulic automatic with a torque converter, so they really did tune it nicely. The robotic Toyotas I could feel. Maybe had they not tuned it so nicely it might have lasted longer?
I think their point is that you eat clutch when you slip it e.g. when you’re getting in and out if parking on hills, or in city stop and go traffic. When the clutch is fully engaged there’s little wear even hard-driving, and doing a straight in-and-out does not bother clutches much.
Hence Quattroportes eating clutches like nobody’s business while the harder-ridden higher-power Ferraris don’t.
As such downshifting would not wear clutches much.
And anecdotally I’ve never suffered from or heard of engine braking causing clutch issues.
I semi-daily drive a DuoSelect Quattroporte, but usually in light traffic. The clutch-eating problem is sorta inherent to the car. First off, it uses extra clutch to smooth out shifts in non-sport mode, and you don't always want sport mode because it stiffens the suspension a lot. But even in sport, you can't always get it to behave predictably. So given an experienced driver with both cars in city traffic, the DuoSelect will eat clutch faster than a stick. Some install an aftermarket box (Formula Dynamics) to improve this, but still.
Idk how the Ferraris are different. They're lighter at least. Think they also have a different version of the "Superfast" software.
Anyway... I do engine-brake it. The real brakes appreciate not having to stop that limo by themselves.
Forgot to clarify, there is a clutch-eating problem when driving the car properly, but it's not THE clutch-eating problem people talk about where it dies in 10-15K miles from treating the car as a regular automatic.
To the parent posters point though, those manufacturers are holding outsized control over what can be retrofit to their machines, so to disrupt them, you have to make your own machines. Working on and owning heavy equipment myself, I of course have looked at it and thought there's a lot to improve, but at the the same time, I don't really see where the big brain Silicon Valley + venture bucks ethos can be applied to the space, it would be a long and slow grind of doing mostly straightforward mechanical engineering and supply chain/vendor agreements to build something like a bulldozer, just to enter a near impenetrable market due to many existing sunk costs and long relationships between buyers and the existing manufacturers.
my understanding is that the barrier to entry in this space isnt manufacturing the equipment, but rather having a large dealer network for people to use for service and repairs. my impression is that people largely buy whatever has a nearby dealer for this reason. and these dealer connections are more and more important as they make it more and more impossible to work and maintain the equipment as an individual
The manufactures are aware of monopoly laws and will give you the 'key' to put your own thing on and even sell it - for a 'reasonable fee' which may be six figures and proff you will care about safety. Universities have got the key for student projects (under nda)
disclosure: I work for jonh deere but am not speaking for the company. The above is all I feel I can say on the subject
Venture hasn’t managed to make a dent in Nvidia despite massive investments.
Maybe they aren’t as powerful as you think outside the comparatively trivial “build
some software” markets. Hell even in networking, compute and storage there are only three or four real success stories in the last two and a half _decades_.
I was thinking the same thing but the cost of an equipment operator isn't that significant compared to the expense of running and especially maintaining these machines, and if teleop incurs more maintenance cost or efficiency loss due to clumsier operation, it's definitely a step in the wrong direction financially.
Every technological leap has it's Chuck Yeagers and Yuri Gagarins that will put it all on the line with early tech for humanity to take that next step - we have to accept the inevitable and hope that luck is on these brave soul's side
Check the results here - https://bringatrailer.com/ferrari/550-maranello/ Example EU market car, imported 2023 - https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1999-ferrari-550-maranello... JP market car, imported to Canada 2018 then US in 2024 - https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1999-ferrari-550-maranello...
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