1996 355 GTB/Coupe

PM sent. (Hi everyone, newbie here from the San Francisco area. Shopping for my first F-car!)

 

WITH A NAME LIKE 8500 RPM...THIS IS YOUR PERFECT FIRST FERRARI!!!

 

Wish you would be willing to trade for my Noble M400. This is exactly the car I want.

 

Car is gone.
Thanks.

 

car is now here for $15K more than owners ask on here

Fusion Luxury Motors

wow!

 

Just like I predicted. Guys, the times are a changing. Don't give your GTBs and GTSs away.

These dealers know what's up!

 

Lol!!!! Not a chance in hell! I almost bought this car for $60k with a fresh major last year. The seats need to be recovered since the past attempt is poor.

 

I was looking at a few different car sites the other night, and I noticed the same thing. Seems like the 355's asking prices are rising. This also includes cars that do not have exceptionally low mileage. It will be interesting to see if this continues...

 

It's no different then what is going on in the Lamborghini Diablo market, dealers buying cars in the 75's to 115's and then charging 140k plus for the same cars... However, people can ask whatever they want in order to inflate the market, I am much more interested in what the public is actually paying, because I see most of these jacked up priced cars either being "sold" to other dealers or sitting for long periods of time.

 

I personally think F355 prices have bottomed. I've been poking around the market for a little over a year now and have seen it do nothing but rise. Cars seems to be selling as well...they're not sticking around for sale long which makes me believe they're getting close to asking price.

993 Porsche's have gone up astronomically. Although they were the last of the aircooled and that's what gives them a lot of their value, I think the F355 is a much better investment at this point. 993 Carrera S and 4S' are moving for close to $100k in low mile / excellent condition. An F355 owner could only dream of getting that today. For a 90's collector car, the F355 is looking really good right now.

I'll keep poking around until I find the right one for now.

 

But you didn't. And no they don't need to be re-covered. That was a ridiculously clean car.

 

And boy am I ever glad I did not. Sometimes things just workout for a reason.

The seats are very loose as commented by others too.

But, it is still a very nice car, very nice.....just not $79K nice...

 

I had the seats in my former 355 re-covered and it ended up appearing loose also. The reason was that on the factory OEM covers, on the insets, the leather was glued to the foam backing whereas on the replacement leather covers, the leather was just stitched and not glued so that no matter how tight the cover was pulled, the leather appeared looser. I saw this before re-covering and the upholsterer told me that because of that, he couldn't make the replacement covers as tight as the originals. From my photo, you can see that even uninstalled, the OEM (on the left) appears tight vs. the replacement (on the right) looks loose. Even then, there's absolutely nothing like having new leather.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Why can't the original process be duplicated?

 

It probably can if you sent the full seats to the person doing the work.

 

I'm not sure why the replacements weren't glued. They were made from a shop in Italy and the quality of leather was absolutely top notch. I'm sure the leather could have been glued to the foam by the shop in Italy which would make for a tighter looking fit.

Sending my seats to Italy would have made no difference. My local upholsterer has done other exotics and it was mainly the way the covers were made.

 

yron,
Do you remember when you looked at the factory seats if they may have been sewn on a thin layer of foam to give the seats their definition? I'm not sure if merely gluing foam would do it unless multiple pieces were used.

Sorry for the continuing hijack of the thread, but I think quite a few people may be contemplating reupholstery.

 

Hi vracer ... hope I can help in anyway. The new covers and the OEM covers both had foam backing. Both were stitched through the leather and foam at the detail stitching. The foam on the OEM was glued to the back of the leather which gave the leather more firmness to prevent wrinkling of the leather, I believe. The OEM also had a cloth fabric backing covering the foam which was not glued to the foam as I remember. In the new covers, because the foam was floating and was not glued to the leather, the leather was not as stiff which gives it the loose appearance no matter how tight it's pulled.

One more thing. On the new covers (mine anyway) two triangular pieces (with metal rods) and two tabs were not sewn on the back. My upholsterer had to remove these from my OEM covers and sew them on to the new covers. These are the white/black triangular piece and the greenish tab in the second photo. You will need these to pull the covers tight to the seat.

I'm trying to search for my old photos but can't find too much. Here's what I got of the new covers. You can see the loose foam and the absence of the triangular pieces/green tabs in the first photo.
Image Unavailable, Please Login
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Oh, one more thing. The OEM cover also has a metal rod towards the top of the back that slides through a sewn seam. This sewn seam was omitted in the new covers and this is also needed to pull the cover to the seat back.

Here's a photo of the OEM back which shows the horizontal seam (in black). Triangular pieces removed and one green tab removed.
Image Unavailable, Please Login