I do!!! I hear you Pete, the 1994 LM cars were obviously the 2 GTC LM's. What's not clear to me is the distinction between the 11 "Michelotto" GTC's that almost everyone refers to and the cars you refer to from the Michelotto website. Interestingly the GTB's had a number of modifications including the 119H engine, I know that Michelotto made many more mods but I am genuinely interested in the GTC lineage and what was what when....if you get my drift?
Ok, can do some more digging if you like. Taking an example though, on the website you posted http://www.348gtc.com it speaks of car chassis number 95380 as a GTC and winning the '93 and '94 Italian GT championships? It wasn't a GTC, at least not as far as Michelotto are concerned it was actually called a 348 CSAI-GT. The Michelotto site says: "In 1993 the Ferrari F40 CSAI-GT and 348 CSAI-GT were realized, destined for the Granturismo Italian Championship, winning in '93 and '94 two absolute titles and three category ones." This is one and the same car, there was only one Granturismo Italian Championship in '93 and '94 and this car won it's class - Michelotto called it the 348 CSAI-GT, most others now call it a Michelotto 348 GTC. Looking at the chassis number 95380, and comparing to this list: Ferrari 348 Registry*- 348 List Cars with later chassis numbers were first registered in 1992 and were TBs so it had to have started life as a TB and couldn't have been a GTB. Does that kind of clear things up, at least a little?
It does, but welcome to my world. The "real story" behind the GTC is very elusive. Check out the official Ferrari website and the info there is SFA. In fact there isn't even any performance data quoted for the GTC. Whatever you can dig up whilst you are waiting to tee up for the next drive will be welcome Pete
No worries Daz, anything I find out I'll let you know. Re the '93 Michelotto cars, as I say it's really just what they were called, I think you can list them under '348 Competizione' as in effect they were the forerunners to the Factory GTCs.
Pretty much although having used second hand info there is a slight amendment to what I originally wrote (was checked with another source too !!) Anyway, in 1993 the 348 really did burst onto the scene in the Italian GT Championship, and won almost all the races in it's class. They referred to them as Division I and Division II that year but they equated to GT1 and GT2 in other series. The F40 was trading blows with the XJ220 at the time but came out on top. With the 348 it was more definitive than that, no other car was really that close. In 1994 it's difficult to definitively say if it won its class but I believe it did, I just don't know the points system that was used and I haven't managed to track down the GT2 standings. That said, the 348 wasn't quite so far out in front at the beginning of the year partly because they had an accident in the first race, won their class in the second but then had reliability issues for a few races. Got to also bear in mind that there was only one 348 competing whereas there were several Porsches competing. Towards the end of the season they got the car firing a bit better though, they won the last 3 races they entered. I'll just qualify that - they won them outright beating 3, 3 and 4 F40s respectively as well as the rest of the field. They didn't enter the final race of the year, possibly because they were making their team mates look a little foolish - I believe all 4 F40s racing were from the same team as the 348. And so ended the 348's racing 'career' in the Italian GT Championship. Not a bad way to go out for a car that can't handle
winning the the national Italian GT race championship series is hardly dominating in the FIA GT1 and GT2 classes at the world stage. victory at LeMans is a far cry from winning the local race at Vallalunga or Misano with little more than a dozen privateers. Ive been to a few FIA GT1 and GT2 races in the mid to late 90's, the results where a far cry what you were implying earlier. in fact the whole Italian GT race championship series collapse due to the lack of entries as i recalled. please dont take it as diminishing what you are trying establish in the thread. Im also in the camp were i feel the 348 was misrepresented in many ways. But I can tell you this, I dont recall any 348 coming close to dominating the porsches or vipers on the international stage. i believe the mac F1 won the BPR/GT1 championships before the cheater porsche GT1 arrived...but thats another story. Respectfully
Sorry, didn't mean to imply anything other than what I said - I was refering to the Italian GT Championship, nothing else. It didn't collapse, not sure where you got that from but has been contested every year since. Previous to the 348 the Porsches had dominated it, after the 348 they went back to dominating it, for the two years when the 348 competed they didn't. I really didn't mean to imply anything else really. Regarding Le Mans a 348 was 4th in it's class I believe, so not victory but not too bad. p.s. That was actually 11th overall which beat both Vipers that entered, which were actually GT1 cars, 348s always competed as GT2
Please no apologizes need. Like i said, the Italian GT series was mostly privateer series. With an experience team like jolly club you would expect them to do well. Have you ever seen the entry list of the cars they raced against? RX7,944,300zx at monza a whole fleet of almost stock alfa SZ gentleman racers. the only real oppositions were the small privateer Porsche 911s. In the more competitive FIA sanction races I dont know of any 348 victories. yes finishing 4th at LM is a fantastic result but still after 3 porsches. Im not viper expert by any means but do recall them doing well a little history history here. Chrysler Viper GTS-R - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia boy I hate using Wikipedia as an source! It apparently moved on to gt2 after 97 but you can see the string of victories and championships. I reckon the 348 stopped racing by then. Heres a list of all races of the Italian gt challenge. Ill leave if for you to decide how dominate the 348 was in racing. World Sports Racing Prototypes - Italian GT Challenge cheers
Wow - those results from the Italian GT Challenge series really show the little old 348 in a REALLY good light. To see it mix with the F40's and Carrerra RSR's and beat them at times is absolutely astonishing in my book. It just goes to show how the car can perform. Fantastic handling on the track and not too shabby on a good road - if you can handle it!!!!!!! Unfortunately most drivers including Luca fall way short - they all needed a sanitized ride - hence the 355........... Pete - great article BTW.
Hyenahf (sorry, don't know your name), Ok no apologies, but I was just referring to what I had written before which was solely about the Italian GT Championship, having reread that post on its own I can see how on its own it could have seemed like I meant more. Regarding the other GT Championships, I'm not sure the 348 competed in any of them. I scoured as many as I could find including all the European championships and many didn't run in '93 and '94, those that did, didn't feature the 348. To my knowledge the big FIA GT Championship wasn't running at the time, but please correct this if wrong. I only mentioned Le Mans and it's 4th place as a little tongue in cheek as you had said that you didn't know of ANY 348 which had dominated the Vipers - just thought I'd provide one Like I said, the Vipers were actually GT1 at the time so you'd think they would be well ahead but not actually the case in that one. They did do quite well when they didn't have to compete against 348s though The Vipers did do quite well (can tell you're a fan) but this wasn't during the time the 348 was really competing - the GTS-R which really was the start of their success wasn't unveiled until after the 348 went out of production (other than the 348 Spider for a few months). Regarding the series, you're right that the field had quite a few of those Alfas and RX7s but they really didn't come anywhere close to the Class 1 and Class 2 guys (Alfas and RX7s etc were class 3 and 4 I believe). In fact I think you'll find that not a single Alfa or RX7 beat the 348 in any race, which what I'd expect. So, yes they were on the same track but not really in the same race. What is interesting is the 348 was trading blows with the class 1 cars like the F40s and XJ220. You're right that the 348 was run by the Jolly club, a pretty professional outfit, but then so were 2 of the F40s (think the other two were privateers?) and some of the Porsches were Jolly Club as well. That didn't stop the 348 from beating the F40s on occasion and the Porsches most of the time. (In fact I think the Jolly Club is probably what stopped the Italian GT Championship from folding as they raced many of the cars in it.) Anyway, in the only European GT Series that I could find which had the 348 competing in, it did pretty well, it did pretty much dominate its class in '93 (ok only a national Championship but still......... ) and in '94 it did extremely well (when it finished) even showing up the F40s by beating them in its last 3 races, even the ones run by the same outfit. This was really up against a backdrop of certain Ferrari executives slating the car and even saying a GTI was quicker. It was pretty good on a track towards the end of its development. I think it actually did quite a bit better than the cars that went immediately before or came immediately afterwards. NOT slating them at all, just putting it in perspective.
brilliant article and thanks for showing that the 348 was used as a racing machine at times! i think they dominated hill climbs in the UK as well....so yeah the "piece of crap" can run fast in the hands of the the right people!!! i think the engineering and the way things have to be tweeked/changed/maintained is racing pedigree.....
Other than 2nd gear........... To rectify the situation of the "bad mouthing" of the 348.......Drive one. and yes that is a period at the end....drive one .
