is a 360 challenge a viable daily driver?

ok, well thats about where the value is here. the seller wants more, but i wont be paying it.
thanks for the tip on the tcu

 

well we are stalled on price. not by much, but enough that i dont currently want to hit the offer.

 

yes it is. the only one in europe, and only one of 2 i know of in the world.

 

well its all over.
the seller has started to back away on his price by adding another 10k, taking the extra wheels and other parts out of the price and making them extra, and just not making things easy.
besides that, i had dinner last week with a local exotic dealer and race sponsor, and the 4 time challenge champion of france, and both did their best to dissuade me from buying this car. they said that it would eat parts and that getting it track ready would end up taking more time and money than being there and would end up souring the whole experience. and that i was paying too much anyway, hearing the stories i alluded to above.

so, i have passed on this car. sorry to have disappointed all of you that have followed this saga for the last year, but sometimes its better to walk away. i did give it thorough reflection, research, and thought.

then i went out and bought a 360 cs today ! more on that in that section.

 

hi everybody,
i thought i might be a good idea to revisit this thread now that i have done the tracking season in the cs.
it was great fun, and for anybody on the fence i encourage you to take the plunge and do some circuits since it is a great way to improve your driving across the board, and a good time as well. even if you dont want to do it in a ferrari, there are actually many more economical and still fun cars to track.

so, the cs; i went to imola, and mugello, and did some longer road trips to monaco. it is a reasonably comfortable car despite being aimed at track days, and of course it is pretty good track car. but it does neither exceptionally well. as a road car, it is loud and hard riding, which for 30 minutes is incredibly exhilirating and thrilling, after 2 hours is a pain, after 4 hours a hardship, and after 6 hours, just agony. it sits pretty low, so you end up bottoming out and scraping many times. it is not subtle so no escaping anybody's attention - good and bad.
as a track car it is brilliant - until you start getting a little better and want more of everything. it is still more car than i can maximize for sure. but i can see how the scud is easier to drive quickly, and same for the 458. the brakes are not quite as good, the power is not as great, there are fewer driver aids, and the suspension is not hard enough.

so the compromise of track vs road, leaves the cs sort of 80% towards the middle of the two extremes, but still closer to the 'road' side than one of those models mentioned above, and certainly compared to a dedicated track car like a challenge.....

hence, i am starting to understand the raison d'etre of the 360 challenge gt that this thread was based on. that car is also a compromise between road and track, and yet it is likely about 40% towards the middle, and hugging the 'track' side of the spectrum. so as i remember it was much more difficult to live with on the road, and would likely yield better result on the circuits. that may not bother me anymore since i would not be driving it willingly on the road for too far anyway, and the few times i would be doing so would be for the express purpose of driving to a track.

so which is better to own for me?
frankly, if i had a bigger car budget, i would now go and buy the challenge gt for next season, and keep the cs to terrorize other drivers in tunnels. and if all turns well by dec 31st, then maybe thats what i will do.....

 

i may have come off overly harsh on the cs in my last comments. that was not the intent. i was just comparing it to the gt for my purposes.
further to that i will say that in the ferrari track car world, the cs is the absolute best value for money that exists. bar none. you can take that car out and get within seconds of the scud, and the cost is 50-100k less. you can get within a few more seconds of the 458 and it costs 100-150k less. really there is just simply no contest in value for speed.
IF you are looking for a track car that is road legal, and you are not trying to be mario andretti but simply looking for some competitive fun in a ferrari, the cs is the answer.

the other reason why i would consider getting the gt, is to conserve the cs since i truly believe it will gain in value as time moves on.

 

well a 'real' michelotto built 360gt is a whole other thing altogether. the car featured earlier in this thread is a challenge car that was converted to gt spec (sort of), but not the full blown original michelotto.

you are right though about that being a good investment. but the entry cost is a lot higher too.

 

here is another pic i found of what it looks like now
not sure i like the extra decals. and i am not sure i like the scud stripe that was applied. seems like it should have stradale stripe if anything.
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