Following on from my previous post on fake service histories, I have been passed another counterfeit booklet – this time for a F430. Looking at the materials and printing it is clear that it came from the same forger who made the 360 booklet I wrote about in September. This post will run through some of the errors in the fake and will hopefully prevent buyers falling foul of an unscrupulous vendor.
Firstly, the fake book is slightly smaller than the real thing. A genuine F430 service book measures 210mm wide by 150mm tall – the counterfeit (on the top in the picture below) was 10mm too thin and 7mm too short.
Staying on the outside, the red was far too washed out and the quality of the print was poor – click on the picture below to see what I mean(fake on the left).
Flipping the book over, the picture of the cavallino was terrible (fake on the top)!
Turning attention to the inside, there were two blank tear-out pages. If you are presented with these in a book then be suspicious. They are supposed to be copies of the warranty card retained by the factory and the dealer.
Unlike the 360 book, the warranty card had a printed copy of the VIN sticker. If you see a book with the VIN details printed on the paper then be careful. The VIN is supposed to be entered via a sticker (since the factory couldn’t print all of these pages individually). Click on the picture below – I have cranked up the contrast so you can see the edges of the genuine sticker (above).
The quality of the black and white print is terrible, just look at the straight lines in the picture below.
The colour printing isn’t much better, the titles are supposed to be printed over a very fine line made up of individual dots (see the lower book in the picture below). The fake could not replicate this effect very well at all.
Finally, the quality of the Ferrari logo on the inside of the back cover was quite telling…
As I said in my previous post, I do’t think there are many cars out here with fake histories but it does pay to be careful when examining documents that are presented with any car.
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Aldous Voice 
Aldous
I guess it would be easy to contact the dealer who purported to have carried out the services and confirm one way or the other if it was in fact done. I guess we don’t have the issue of fake service books as it appears that no one ever fills them out except for the PDI — well as far as mine is concerned that is the case, not sure of others experience.
Alan