I'll go along with the 288, but it's not really a road car. I'll still take the 308 over the 355. Part of the reason is that it really is sculptured steel. No fiberglass bumpers, lower door panels and rockers (referring to the 308 front with shallow spoiler). No bolt on fenders. It's shaped steel, hand fitted and welded to the tube chassis. It is truly art. Doesn't mean I don't love the 355. I just prefer the simplicity of the 308.
But,but,but....they're spiders! Funny thing. Took the car out today for a few hours but before going for a drive I washed it. Left the top up when I want to gas up so it would dry. All I could think of was, "where did the sound go? Is this what it sounds like driving a 355 coupe?" Then put the top down, got the wife and took off. Actually took it up to 7500. My ears were ringing but I couldn't stop smiling. Nothing like the sound of a 355 spider with the top down.
Although I grew up as an 80’s kid, sports cars from the 80’s don’t do much for me except for the F40 which is a late 80’s early 90’s car. Something about the cars at the time having rubber bumpers and plastic accents just put it in an odd retro transition period. I like cars from the 70’s and 90’s. 70’s have a clear classic look. 90’s have a refined look without looking like it is trying too hard. I had a framed poster of a 288 GTO my pops hung in my room for a good decade. I never knew it was a 288 GTO. I didn’t even know a 288 GTO existed. I always thought it was a 308 lol. No joke. But I was a kid. I saw a 288 GTO in person for the first time in my life at a local Ferrari Concorso in Old Town Pasadena maybe 5-7 years ago. A free event open to the public. Ferraris parked everywhere on the streets. Mostly casual viewers who know little about the marque. As I was walking around, I noticed a car no one was really looking at parked in a regular parking spot like every other ordinary Ferrari. No special presentation. I had to do a triple take to make sure I was seeing what I was seeing. A 288 GTO in the flesh and no one paid any attention to it. I was with a buddy, who doesn’t know anything about Ferraris. I asked him, “Do you know what this is? This is an ultra rare $2 million dollar car right here.” I looked at this car and explained to my buddy what made the car special from a standard 308 for a good 30 min. I was in awe, fascinated, and excited as I was not expecting to see one. I’ve always thought the car looked beautiful in pictures. It seems to have presence. However, in person, It didn’t seem to have striking presence like an F40. It did just look like a nice road-going car to me. Not every feature looked as beautiful as the images I had in my head either. I felt the trunk had too many rakes like an industrial cooling panel. I also felt the car was too pointy front to rear. It was also boxier than I picture it to be. In pictures, it looks refined. In person, it looks retro. Even till this day, when I look at images online, it looks amazing to me, but I always think back to that moment I unexpectedly saw it for the first time in person and walked away not liking it as much as I should. One of those, don’t meet your heroes moments. F40 on the other hand… when I saw a euro-spec F40 for the first time in Japan, it was just as good, if not better than I expected. Image Unavailable, Please Login
I keep forgetting how young you are. You had a poster of a 288 on your wall. I almost bought one in 1985 for $80k. You might of had a different opinion if you saw one then. F40 never did it for me. My wife calls then shopping carts.
MotorTrend 1995 - I remember reading it. I think I have it in my collection. Will dig around. Totally Nails it! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
My late father almost bought a Koenig 512BBi. Oh so close. Bought a 911 Turbo instead. At 6’4” as well, he did not fit comfortably. That car was stunning - slightly ugly, in an over the top way. Not like he would have kept it anyway. Like me, it is the chase, the moment, the thrill and then “squirrel!” …..on to the next one. The 355 is the only car I have bought and continue to buy in all versions and love them. Porsche Cab, not a Spider. - Honestly, Porsche has never been pretty or sexy, thrilling to drive. They are well made, designed to be driven hard. Generally a better car, but lacking that aura. Ask Ken Block what he thinks about Porsche right now The 355 is the last car to elicit this type of passion. As a life long car guy on multiple forums, the 355 does it the best - passion, thrilling sounds, 80’s to the modern 90’s good looks, technology, etc. It saved and help create Modern Ferrari as we know today. The 996 did that for Porsche, and it is a turd compared to a 355. Ferrari owes a lot to the 355 and we owe it to our fellow car guys to explain how special they are one zero and multiple comas at a time Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Ferrari F355 Spider - Road Test - Update The Perfect Sports Car Just Got Better Randy Lorentzen photographers C. Van Tune writers Oct 2, 1995 (Motor Trend) It's tough enough to build a perfect sports car. The essentials include a frame that's both lightweight and superrigid, a racetrack-ready suspension, brakes more tenacious than those on a mile of Santa Fe freight train, and an engine that combines high-drama power output, environment-friendly exhaust, and the basic reliability of a blacksmith's anvil. Oh yeah, the perfect sports car also needs drop-dead looks, air conditioning that actually works, and a high-rpm wail sensuous enough to have you at 8000 rpm while backing out of the garage. No mean feat, this perfect sports car, but Ferrari has created just such a machine: the F355 Berlinetta. Our July '95 issue's test raved about this Italian mid-engined coupe's blistering performance, fawned over its creature comforts, and openly gushed about its Pininfarina-sculpted beauty. Whether trolling for action along Sunset Boulevard or blowing the snot out of some race car on the track, the F355 Berlinetta never makes excuses and never lets you down. So, herein lies the embodiment of the best Ferraris of all time: The F355 can not only trace its primordial DNA to the blood-engorged Testa Rossa race champion and masterpiece 275 GTB Lusso, but it operates with such a delicate touch that Madame Curie could set fast time down Coldwater Canyon on a moonless night-without the benefit of radium. As tough as it is to create the perfect sports car, it's even more agonizing yet to build that car as a convertible. Hack off a major structural member like the roof, and you can watch your beauty's formerly taut framework turn into a metropolis of creaks and rattles. The resultant loss of torsional rigidity negatively affects ride, handling, and overall feel. It's a cold, hard fact that only a select few convertibles in the world feel and handle as well as their coupe counterparts. So we had our initial doubts about the new F355 Spider. With its curb weight vaunted to be the same as the Berlinetta (2976 pounds), how could Ferrari's engineers have done the proper reinforcing job? Well, even if you recall that the first Ferrari ever built was topless, and that the most recent 348 Spider was a pretty solid package, you won't likely be ready for the bank-vault-like structure of the latest Spider iteration. You can feel some extra weight in the doors as a result of the rework, but all of the other patches go wholly unnoticed-as it should be. Ferrari claims only a two-percent loss of torsional rigidity vis--vis the lift-out-roof-panel F355 GTS, but hasn't commented about the loss as compared with the awesome Berlinetta. It can't be much. We also harbored some initial skepticism over the operation of the convertible top-power operated for the first time in a Ferrari, yet still requiring a bit of driver interaction. With memories of the weird monkey-motion gyrations required to operate the 348 Spider's Nautilus-workout top mechanism, more than one MT editorial eyebrow was raised askew as details of the F355's top operation were described. However, our fears were wholly unfounded. To lower the top, both doors must be closed, the handbrake set, and the ignition key twisted to the "on" position. Release the single header latch and give a firm push up on the top to fold it partially back. Then activate the electric switch located on the rear of the center console and the lid automatically drops, pausing momentarily in mid-droop to move the seats forward about seven inches (the buckets are now electrically adjusted fore and aft, and feature unique backrest sculpting to facilitate the storage of the folded top) before articulating the stack of canvas to rest. The operation takes less than 20 seconds and will only require exiting the car if you own legs long enough to be scrunched by the auto-glide seats. As the top lowers, the F355's body lines metamorphose into an even more graceful and sinewy shape, if that's possible. A leather boot easily affixes with snap-down fasteners and stores in the tiny front trunk when not in use. Surprisingly, wind buffeting at speeds up to about 80 mph is less harrowing than in many luxury convertibles outfitted with windblocker screen panels, although the Ferrari is devoid of such add-ons. Once the top is back up it snaps shut with a weathertight seal that keeps extraneous wind noise at bay. While the upsides of this cabriolet's design are obvious (and numerous), the only real negative aspects are the large rear blind spots created by the small, plastic rear window. This is largely a function of top-up styling dictates, as considerable effort was expended to have the shape of the raised softtop mimic the Berlinetta's aluminum body lines-including its semi-flying rear buttresses. Enough about shape and structure, let's go tear the asphalt off a few hundred miles of rural roads. All the delectable mechanical components that make the F355 Berlinetta such a heart-pounder are fully intact here, from the technoparty of its longitudinally mounted 3.5-liter DOHC five-valve-per-cylinder, all-aluminum V-8, to the uniquely Ferrari feel of its transverse six-speed gearbox and gated shift bezel with polished aluminum shift knob. With 375 horsepower (at 8250 rpm) and 268 pound-feet of torque (at 6000 rpm) awaiting the slightest urging of your size-10, you'll want to pump super-unleaded dinosaurs into its Bosch Motronic port fuel-injection system for hours on end. The EPA claims 10/15 city/highway fuel economy figures for the thirsty F355, but we couldn't restrain ourselves long enough to elicit anything even close to that. A morning of testing at Sears Point International Raceway followed by an afternoon of hightailing it to various Northern California wine-country photo locations left us laughing in a giddy hysteria, weak from the repeated adrenaline surges, and proud of the best use of fossil fuel since our '96 Porsche 911 Turbo flog. Because we were testing at a different location than our regular facility, we weren't able to clock skidpad and slalom performance, however we doubt the Spider is anything off the 0.93g lateral acceleration, 70.8-mph slalom speed benchmark set by its fixed-roof sibling. On a dragstrip with less-than-optimal starting-line traction, the Spider smoked its 265/40ZR18 Pirelli P-Zeros wrapped around 18x10.0-inch magnesium five-spoke wheels for 75 feet on its way to a best 0-60-mph time of 4.9 seconds and a quarter-mile run of 13.4 seconds at 106.8 mph. Compared with our F355 Berlinetta test, that's a performance 0.2 second slower from 0-60 mph and 0.6 second/3.4 mph less dynamic in the quarter. Braking tests experienced a similar level of decline due to the surface, lengthening the 60-0-mph stopping distance from the Berlinetta's 118 feet to 126 feet for the Spider. Ferrari quotes the Spider's acceleration and braking specs as identical to the Berlinetta's, including its top speed of 183 mph. Priced slightly higher than the Berlinetta, a $130,000 F355 Spider is an open-air, ultra-high-performance sports-car value. That the F355 can produce its blistering performances and traditional Italian driving feel while also maintaining such a high level of intercity civility and ease of operation is a tribute difficult to overstate. There are only about 300 F355 Spiders coming to the States in '96. It's worth whatever you have to do to get one. Really.
^ Another great Motor Trend article! Thank-you, John. I like the F355 in all three of its iterations. And this is from someone whose first Ferrari was a 1976 308 GTB Fiberglass. I had to sell that car ten years ago when it started to become a collector's car. It now sits, undriven, in someone's collection. It's a pity, really. I drove and serviced it regularly. I even tracked it on occasion.
The former Motor Trend Editor-in-Chief. Typically he would sign a reprinted article. He gave the writer and photographer credit under the title of the article.
“Because we were testing at a different location than our regular facility, we weren't able to clock skidpad and slalom performance, however we doubt the Spider is anything off the 0.93g lateral acceleration, 70.8-mph slalom speed benchmark set by its fixed-roof sibling. On a dragstrip with less-than-optimal starting-line traction, the Spider smoked its 265/40ZR18 Pirelli P-Zeros wrapped around 18x10.0-inch magnesium five-spoke wheels for 75 feet on its way to a best 0-60-mph time of 4.9 seconds and a quarter-mile run of 13.4 seconds at 106.8 mph. Compared with our F355 Berlinetta test, that's a performance 0.2 second slower from 0-60 mph and 0.6 second/3.4 mph less dynamic in the quarter. Braking tests experienced a similar level of decline due to the surface, lengthening the 60-0-mph stopping distance from the Berlinetta's 118 feet to 126 feet for the Spider. Ferrari quotes the Spider's acceleration and braking specs as identical to the Berlinetta's, including its top speed of 183 mph.” Author titles “Update The Perfect Sports Car Just Got Better” Proceeds to write an entire article indicating the Berlinetta is still better unless you absolutely need the top to come down. Can’t make this stuff up .
It certainly was the best performing with its Euro cams. I loved that car and I was sorry to see it go. But I'm not a collector and its increase in value took the fun out of driving it. But my F355 Challenge cured me of any regrets I had.
On a dragstrip with less-than-optimal starting-line traction, the Spider smoked its 265/40ZR18 Pirelli P-Zeros wrapped around 18x10.0-inch magnesium five-spoke wheels for 75 feet on its way to a best 0-60-mph time of 4.9 seconds and a quarter-mile run of 13.4 seconds at 106.8 mph. Compared with our F355 Berlinetta test, that's a performance 0.2 second slower from 0-60 mph and 0.6 second/3.4 mph less dynamic in the quarter. Braking tests experienced a similar level of decline due to the surface, You ignored the points in red explaining why the numbers were worse.
I’m going to assume they went to the same dragstrip. I’m surprised they didn’t just blame the driver .
Come on Ken, “Because we were testing at a different location than our regular facility,...." If you look you can find 0-60 all over the place. Spider even faster than B some times. It's really pretty meaningless. All incarnations are about the same. But spiders look faster. Take my car. It's really red but looks blue because it's so fast the Doppler shift makes red look blue.
Doppler shift is non-effective below 7500rpm…. I call shenanigans cause you have maybe seen it twice in your years of ownership Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I suppose it’s all meaningless. Just blame the pavement . Nevermind world record times are set on different drag strips across the globe. “Because we were testing at a different location than our regular facility, we weren't able to clock skidpad and slalom performance, however we doubt the Spider is anything off the 0.93g lateral acceleration, 70.8-mph slalom speed benchmark set by its fixed-roof sibling.” I see alot of placebo assumptions were made. Probably because they were told the cars weighed the same when the Spider weighs nearly 100 lbs more. “So we had our initial doubts about the new F355 Spider. With its curb weight vaunted to be the same as the Berlinetta (2976 pounds), how could Ferrari's engineers have done the proper reinforcing job?” I digress. Perhaps I have my Berlinetta blinders on, but I’m still struggling to see how the article supports the bold title. I did find one sentence. “As the top lowers, the F355's body lines metamorphose into an even more graceful and sinewy shape, if that's possible.” Beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder “A morning of testing at Sears Point International Raceway followed by an afternoon of hightailing it to various Northern California wine-country photo locations left us laughing in a giddy hysteria, weak from the repeated adrenaline surges, and proud of the best use of fossil fuel since our '96 Porsche 911 Turbo flog.” I have driven up and down Napa wine-country before and I must imagine doing that in a 355 Spider would be a once in a lifetime experience. In that specific scenario, I’d rent the Spider over the B. The curvy roads and scenery are perfect match for the car. A rare moment where time stops and simply doesn’t matter.
Rob, the F355 and the Porsche 993’s are similar. Both cars kept the companies afloat and had more traditional styling. The 360 and the 996 are improved cars but have controversial styling, and used newer technologies. The F355 and 993 are both 90’s icons.
You are correct, but I stand by the 355 saving Ferrari and the 996 saving Porsche. Ferrari just did it 4-5 years ahead. That then allowed the development of the 360. The 993 was classic product improvement of Porsche, but financially strapped. They rolled the dice on the 996 and the rest is history. But the 993 and 355 are direct market competitors and period pieces. Cheers! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
