1995 Ferrari F355 Challenge - Ex Jim McCormick - Project

Recently purchased an original 1995 Ferrari F355 Challenge car from FChat user Jaffster. He was incredibly knowledgable and more than helpful in the entire process.

Immediately upon receiving the car I could not decide whether to leave the car with its "race driven" patina or restore the car.

After a massive amount of research I decided to move forward with restoring the car and making the car completely original as it was delivered new to Ferrari of Washington on January 19th, 1996.

Thanks to Jaffster he provided me with two binders filled with Challenge certificates, receipts, bills, historical paperwork and even the original crate that came from Ferrari with all of the Challenge parts. The car has a great racing history and am in the process of documenting a ton of original photos.

The car will be going back to all one color. Originally Rosso Corsa over Tan interior.

I have sourced a ton of original parts from Ricambi, FerrParts and Foreign Cars Italia. Stay tuned....
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Sounds great. I will stay tuned for sure.

Robb

 

Awesome! Thanks for sharing. I've also been thinking about how to proceed with my Challenge car. I'm going the route of servicing it for race/track worthiness, returning it to its original livery while preserving most of its race patina.

 

Cool stuff. It's current livery reminds me of a McDonalds nightmare.

 

Awesome. I will be watching this with great interest.

 

I love the idea of restoring it. That's what I would have done!

 

What a Great buy, well done and thank's for sharing! Keep us informed please.

 

Good luck on your project

 

It looked good when it raced...

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Was it delivered as a factory-built challenge car with the kit or was it delivered as a street car and then converted with the kit? I know that 348 Factory Challenge cars were hot-rodded at the factory and delivered with a kit where the street cars were basic street cars that the dealers converted. I don't know if the 1995 355 cars were factory built challenge cars with a kit or street cars that were later converted with a dealer kit.

Will be very interesting to watch. Very cool.

 

This car was not delivered new to FoW in 1996. McCormick did not join the FoW team until 1997 and brought this car race-ready with him. The initial prep work was done by his previous team - Wide World of Cars?? Miller?? Can't remember at the moment, but can probably find out....

Was it disclosed to you that this car was rolled at least once (Sears Point '97), maybe twice (I have a vague memory that it might have happened again at Lime Rock....)? It was pictured in it's post-roll, pre-repair state in a magazine ad ("Speed Lingerie"? photo taken without permission behind the old FoW facility). Sorry if this is previously unknown bad news for you.... The good news is that the repair probably got the car back straighter than when it was new.

FYI - I was part of the FoW team from January 1996 (how I can state unequivocally that it was not delivered new to FoW in Jan '96, or even '97 for that matter) thru the end of 2004. I have thick photo albums from each season and might even have race qualifying and/or results sheets. Jim won, or at least "podium'd" at Road Atlanta and planted a big wet one right on the lips of Ferrari Challenge series coordinator, Maria McNeil (nee' Homan, at that time). It's in my photo album. Ummm, uncomfortable!

gp

 

I am in the process of going through all of the documents now from Miller Motorcars, Wide World of Cars, Ferrari of Washington and Classic Coach....

From what I can see the car was delivered with a USA Passenger car VIN but never titled and sold as a "Challenge" car ONLY.

 

Very cool!! Correct the car was delivered NEW to Miller. Any pictures you can share would be amazing! Send to [email protected]

It was and is a Ferrari race car... **** happens. Amazingly we had the car on a alignment machine and it is perfectly straight. Even looking at all of the body work we found only the drivers door appeared it needed work.

 

subscribed... would love to see some of those pictures!

 

We started by completely disassembling the car in preparation for paint. The car will go back to its original Rosso Corsa 300/12. All the interior facias, exposed floorboards and door panels will be repainted in a matte black epoxy identical to the factory products used.

The original OMP roll bar will be cleaned and then touched up in the original satin black used.

The car still has its original carbon fiber OMP Ferrari Challenge seats. With some effort I was able to source some original red Nomex material used by OMP and will have these re-trimmed.

We will be redoing all of the tan leather interior parts that were left original in the car. This included the lower portion of the dash and the center console.

New OMP Steering wheel, Ferrari emblems, turn signals etc have all been purchased while also maintaining as much originality as we can.

I have found a receipt circa 1998 to install the original door panels and windows but am not sure what the original 355 Challenge cars had. Any insight would be greatly appreciated!
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Subscribed! It sounds very interesting project.

 

as i understand it there was stretched material on the doors .. though i have never seen a picture, mine has carbon panels now....

share you view of the difficulty to restore not to restore.

looking forward to following this thread


speedline are selling the decals for the wheels btw ... i just refurbed mine

 

i think originally they had omp harnesses ?

corerct me anyone

 

do you have both exhaust .. the loud is forsale on ebay

 

"Speedline are selling the decals"? Do you have a link?

 

They did. I have a set. I also have the original 355 Challenge steering wheel. But having said that, there's no reason to not use the newer belts in the spirit of safety.

 

Do you sell the seat? Thank's

 

Please consider recovering the seats in blue nomex. It would look amazing, and pay homage to a few select vintage Ferrari race cars.

 

So true... But not original...

Thought about it...

 

I found a great resource for original Challenge Series photos and have purchased a ton from both the 1996 and 1997 races.

I will post these over the next few weeks!

#77 ran both White and Red/Yellow Speedline wheels... We will be going back to the White Speedlines...
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