355 - very, very fast

Probably an F430, not a 360; F430 is another 100 HP and quite a bit more torque, as well.

 

I will have to agree with Robb! The 355 has many design improvements, that IMO make it far better than other ferraris or even other sports cars within a 10+ year window .

Once the 355 is sorted, I cannot think of another car that is as good looking or as visceral as the 355. The engine on the 355 was a huge jump in technology for Ferrari ....... it was so good ... the base 355 engine, design was carried over to the 360 and the CS .....

I have driven 360s and the only real improvement, is an increase in midrange power. The 360's upper RPM, WOT power seemed unchanged to my 355 .... and that was back when I only had high flow cats and stock muffler.

With some nice bolt-on additions, the 355 can surpass the 360, CS and approach F430 power ...... and IMO ..... not be as ugly .

 

Like:
A) significantly wider track
B) longer suspension A-Arms
C) wider tires
D) bigger brakes
E) significantly lower center of gravity
F) significantly lower polar moment
G) significantly more power
H) an extra gear in the box
I) underbody aerodynamics
J) larger cabin

 

I have to agree with all here. What suprised me most was how fast it was when really getting on it and driving hard. I got to do that on a couple of spirited FCA drives this past summer and the car just gets more composed the faster and harder you drive it. Keep it above 4k rpms for a good 1 hour drive and she just loves it.

Even though many cars today can boast more hp and even better power to weight ratio nearly all of those cars fall short in all around high speed performance. Braking, chassis balance, turn in, ect. It just begs for more speed as you drive it. Just amazing all around.

Also, as Goth stated, once sorted out and performance modifications are done it takes it to another level.

 

Define what you mean by "fast". Do you mean street driving or track driving? I have a 355 and 360 and the 360 "feels" much faster in everyday driving because its got much more torque early in the rev range and revs much faster with a much lighter flywheel. On the track the 355 is much easier to drive fast than the 360 and feels much more stable but you can lap the 360 faster. Fwiw both of my cars are setup virtually identical performance wise and the 355 feels weaker for sure and there is enough of a jump in the two cars overall to make the 360 a worthwhile step just because they're so different in so many ways. Having said that I also got in a Scud this weekend at Sebring and now ur talking another big difference but if you just made the move from 328 to 355 ur probably not looking to go that far, and again., it depends on what you mean by fast

 

meh,
I've driven 355s on several occasions and was never impressed by the acceleration.

Severe lack of torque down low, decent power above 6000rpm, but thats really it.

Its a moderately quick car, but fast it most certainly is not.

 

That pretty much says it all.

 

Today is the second week I've had my car out. Approx 750 miles in two weeks. I got on first gear hard today (not full pedal) and I chirped the tires going into second gear. My smile was pretty large but not as large as people watching ;-)

 

There are certainly many faster cars than the 355 these days - after all, it is a 15+ year old car... but don't forget, it's a Ferrari. I'd say 0 - 60 in 4.6 seconds is still a very quick car. To put things in a bit of perspective, if you wanted to get a similarly quick modern luxury car, you could buy a Mercedes CL600, which boasts 510HP and gets to 60 in 4.5 seconds. The CL600 also STARTS at $160k and would never handle like the 355. Granted, it's modern... comes with all sorts of luxury toys and a warranty!

Likewise, you can get similar "quickness" from a 414HP BMW M3, starting at around $60k and well-optioned in the mid-70's. It's V8 revs to 8,400RPM... but it's still not a mid-engine Ferrari.

At the end of the day, the 355 is no-doubt a fast car. After so many years, many of the world's foremost luxury car makers are still just catching up to its performance. And you need to remember - you can dump endless ponies in ANY car to make it "quick"... you can make a 1990 Ford Taurus get to 60 in 4.5 seconds, too. But you can't make just any car handle amazingly, be strikingly beautiful and timeless, or set your soul on fire!

I think anyone who simply wants the fastest car out there should never consider a 355 for obvious reasons. You can easily get cheaper cars to move as quickly. You can get much more expensive cars to handle as well and better. But I think you're hard-pressed to find another car in this price-range that performs remotely as-well and provides the same exotic experience.

 

This is different for each person, but to me there is a point of "quick enough", and "fast enough". And at that point the subjective intangibles start to become far more important.

I've only had ride alongs in the 355, but to me it is solidly "quick enough". Anything that dips into the mid 4's to 60, I've found, and can push up above 170MPH, ends up being "enough" for me both on the street and the track. Anything quicker/faster starts to move beyond what I would consider "usable speed" for most use cases and for my skill set. I mean how quick does one *really need* to get to 60 in 99% of scenarios and how much speed can you *really* carry safely down a straight if you are an average driver on the track?

The quickest car I've owned was a Cobb Stage 2 09 GTR, pushing 600HP, that was *significantly* quicker than anything else I've owned and, honestly, significantly quicker than most Ferraris, but I found that I grew bored with it pretty quickly (just over a year), and just never really fully "connected" with it for whatever reason (largely subjective). The main things it had going for it were *massive* acceleration, and the ease of it all. The former is what made me realize there are diminishing returns.

Right now I'm in an E92 M3 which is nowhere near as quick as the GTR (about 4.2 to 60 for the DCT coupe that Im driving), but is a car that I find a lot more fun and engaging (feels more intimate)

I think some folks are *purely* motivated by straight line acceleration though - particularly on the street. Or they visit the drag strip often. For these folks I suspect they would say that the F355 is *painfully* slow, as they do with the E92 M3. These folks gravitate towards the torque monsters like the GTR, C63AMG, CTS-V, ZR1, Z06, Viper, GT500, etc. Unless they're experiencing neck snapping straight line, at superbike #s (like in the 10s with trap speeds pushing to 130MPH and beyond), they're not happy. Even then they're often not happy!

Anyone more focused on total experience is likely to find the F355 completely rewarding even in a modern context IMO. I found it to be the most rewarding car I've ever gotten extensive time in topping even the favorites of the cars I've actually *owned* (#1 being my regular old 6 speed 3.6L Carrera 2 and #2 being my 1999 6 speed comptech supercharged NSX... the E92 DCT M3 slots into 3rd)

 

I sold my 06' Z06 and purchased my 355 in Jan of this year. The Z had 483 RWHP with 461 Torque stock. I tracked it regularly, in terms of being fast there are very few cars that can carry the speed of the Z06 on a road track, also it saw 0-60 an honest 3.5 secs. That being said I chose the F355 because of its sound, size, balance and styling. If you are looking for a faster car you have many choices, but few will have the "sex appeal" of the 355 IMHO.

 

I just sold my 2010 M3 and it crushed the 355 in every way performance wise but its just not a Ferrari and looked like every other soccer mom driving 335 on the street.

The important thing is that if you get off on the 355 as much as it seems you are then that's all that matters! Just stay away from a lot of the newer cars that the rest of us have owned and driven because as they say ignorance is bliss!!

 

At the track my mostly stock '95 355 was turning the same lap times as a C6 with z51 package and sticky tires. My buddy had his c6 z06 and I went for a ride in it and it was definitely faster, but only by maybe 2 seconds a lap. We were on track together and his advantage was obviously on the straights but it also had really good brakes. I had slightly better tires so the cars were even in the turns, if my car wasn't slightly faster.

I could have bolted on the Hoosier R6's I had brought and been faster, so it's all relative and depends on a lot of factors whether a car is 'fast' or not.

Still, 0-60 in 4.5 seconds and 183mph top speed is pretty fast. It's way more car than you can safely use on the street.

If you're worried about lack of low end torque, you're not driving the car right. It will never matter if you're driving hard as the car will never be below 5000rpm, so who cares? The only people that care about that kind of thing are those that just want to do burnouts in a parking lot, it's pointless in any actual speed contest unless you're too lazy to shift gears.

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^THIS^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

And it looks WAYYYYY Better than any Corvette of M3 will ever.... Plus, in my area, I'm one of maybe 2 (at best) 355's so it turns almost every head ;-)

 

This is so true. I have a buddy who is a PDE instructor for BMW. He also takes freelance gigs on the side.

He was doing an event one day and had brought along his S2000. One of the students brought along a C5 Z06 and was getting incredibly frustrated because he couldn't post better times than the little Honda (never mind the *teacher* was in the Honda!)

When my friend overheard him making comments about "needing mods" he decided it was time for a demo. He made a friendly bet that if he couldn't take that Z06 and put up a lap at least 4 seconds quicker then he had in his S2k (and he had *never* driven a C5 before... This was back in 02), then the guy was free to mod it. If not, the guy had to STFU and start listening to instruction.

Needless to say there was no modding and lots of listening that day

The vast majority of drivers can't take any of these cars *near* their limits, but sort of bandaid that deficiency by seeking more power and more electronic assist. Nothing wrong with that, if its what you enjoy, but just realize that the *car* being quicker/faster doesn't mean you will be quicker/faster in it