F355 Seats for petite drivers

Hi all.

My wife and I are starting to look into our first Ferrari. We currently have a stable of Alfa Romeos; some for track use and some for street use. I've grown up around Alfas, and she's owned her Milano for almost 14 years now.

Outside of the usual performance and maintenance questions, answers to which are plentiful on this board, we haven't yet come across any information regarding driving positions in modern Ferraris. To be more specific, we are somewhat set on an F355, most probably in the 6-speed guise. Will it fit us?

Both my wife and I are rather small; I'm 5'3" and she's 5'2". I'm concerned about the location of the controls in the F355 - would we be comfortable piloting one?

The biggest complaint my wife has for my Alfa 164 (5-sp manual) is the location of the gear selector (why did the site blank out s-h-1-f-t-e-r?). In order for her to reach the pedals, she has to move the seat all the way forward, which puts 2nd and 4th gear in an awkward position for her.

Then, there is the question of pedal travel and effort. How does the clutch on an F355 work, closer to a 'street car' (short travel, relatively low effort), or a race car (stiff pedal)?

What do you guys think?

BTW - I was dispatched here by few alfabb.com members, who also happen to be F-chat posters. A lot of my initial questions have already been answered by other threads and the archives. This site is great!

 

Thanks for the welcome, the pic, and the offer, Dom and Vincent. Unfortunately, I won't be going to Infineon Raceway this weekend; maybe I'll catch ALMS when they go to Laguna Seca in the fall (as I have in the past couple of years).

I haven't yet made up my mind on which color my, er, our F355 will be. All I do know is we're avoiding Rosso Corsa. Don't get me wrong, I love red Ferrari's but ours will have a slightly uncommon color. All my Alfas are blue, and I'm partial to NART, and TdF but the missus says I can't have another blue car. You see, she's the one that maintains the paintwork on all our cars and dark blue is a 'very high maintenance color', she says.

At present, I am leaning towards a lighter blue, like Azzuro California or something close to it. In browsing through the picture threads, Rosso Fiorano has also caught my eye. This color is interesting to me because original racing Ferraris (and pre-war Alfa Romeos) were painted this color.

Will you, or anyone here be going to the Monterey Historics this year?

 

Hi Luke! Yes, I remember you from my ARA days. Good to see some old friends on this board!

As for the askew seating to the right (I presume, to the right of the steering wheel centerline) I thought that "privilege" was only built into Alfas, like the GTV6 and Milano? Glad to know such design parameters were built into Ferrari's too.

LetsJet is right, however, in that if we went with the F1 transmission, this would be an easier equation to solve.

 

Dave - pop me an e-mail -> nizam at mac.com. My wife and I will be at the Historics on Saturday, and we'll be parked in the Alfa Corral, right at turn 2. It would be cool to check out your 95 F355. Thanks for the offer!

Speaking of seats, how many different versions of factory seats were offered? I thought I saw some pics (I think off Doug Hayashi's website) of a carbon-fiber framed seat in his '99.

 

Alright boys and girls, time for a quickie seating report from us lil' midgets now that the Monterey weekend is over. My wife and I got to try out some cars this weekend, and as a bonus, got to drive a few too.

Here's a summary.

F360 6-speed: the seats are a bit low, but it has many adjustments and I was able to find a position to comfortably work the controls. My wife, too, as able to get a seating position although the steering wheel had to be a lot closer to her. Might be uncomfortable on the twisties, but OK otherwise.

550 Maranello: oh man, this was a cool car. I got to make a short lap around the block, definitely a very different beast from the F360, but I could definitely drive around in it all day. Unfortunately, believe it or not, my wife couldn't get to the pedals comfortably. I might actually be looking at 550's because of that V12 instead of the F355 ... but may have to pass unless I can modify the seat rails to fit her comfortably too.

'69 365 GT: amazingly 70's Italian driving position. Both my wife and I fit in this car immediately, and immediately recognized the smell and ambience of the interior as 'home'. She drove this one and even without power steering, it was hardly an issue. That V12 is just pure heaven, and the clutch felt amazingly 'modern'. I don't know if I'm ready for a 365GT since this will be my first F-car, but we really did like this one.

'82 512BB: you need long legs for this car, I could barely get to the pedals while being comfy with everything else. My wife couldn't drive this one safely so we declined the offer for a spin. But lemme tell ya, that flat-12 boxer is simply lovely.

... and you know what? I couldn't track down an F355 to interview all weekend. I know that sounds impossible since every F355 on the west coast probably showed up, but the F355 drivers/owners were either enjoying the race or had walked away

Oh well, at least I got to check out the Maranello and depending on year and condition, it could be in the same ballpark as a F355, give or take 20-30G's. I guess it depends on what we both can live with.

 

Oh whoops, forgot to add the

456GT: thumbs up from both of us. Very comfortable, easy-to-reach controls, and by far the one we could both live with. It has the allure of the 'practical Ferrari' too with the extra space in the back some of us could mistake for seats

Don't read me wrong, all these Ferraris were lovely, but we will pick one as the first. Not considering the 365GT, the Maranello definitely caught my fancy, and the wife liked the 456GT best. We hope to check out an F355 Berlinetta at some point so we could get even more confused!

Argh, so many F-cars, so little money!

 

Luke - incoming PM.

 

Hmm, I did a search for "456 reliability" and "456 maintenance" followed by "buying a 456" and read through the resulting threads but not one mentioned anything about blown engines. Although, I did run across a thread that compares the 456GT with the Maser and the replies favored the Maser as a daily driver over the 456GT.