Introduction, hello from a Ferrari-fever'd enthustiast

Hello Ferrari people!

First of all, let me introduce myself. I'm Eero, a car enthustiast from Finland, looking to buy my first Ferrari ever. Naturally a 348, as it's if not the most beautiful car in the world, certainly very much in the top of the list and a long dream of mine. The car sums up the 80's so perfectly, with pop-up headlights, the side air vents, the rear grille in front of the rear lamps, the orange meters etc, that as 80's child I just can't not love the ultimate beauty. Truthfully, I can think of only one car that sums the 80's up quite as nicely and that's the Testarossa, which has pretty much of the same 80's features.

While the other new Finnish member, Finpat, started to talk about pondering a 348 or 355, I ended up with calculator and realized that I finally could fullfill this long dream.

At some point in time, my brain has jinxed in a position that says a sports car should have an open top and I've been mainly looking at TS's and Spiders - though I ruled Spider out because it's a bit too 90's and the body is missing some curves on the rear end, because the soft top just doesn't do them the same way. But I might finally be getting over this jinx and went today to look at a Berlinetta version, this one: https://www.nettiauto.com/en/ferrari/348/12142535

It's quite low mileage and according the sales guy the major service has been done under 2 years ago (I didn't check the service papers yet, but I will before signing anything) . Couple of chips and some slight patina, but hey, it's 32 years old - a slight patina belongs to a car of this age. Absolutely beautiful car. The weather was quite horrible so I didn't request a drive, but I think I'll do that on a better weather. I did, however found an answer to at least some of my questions, especially "will I find a good driving position" (yes, I will and quite easily even!).

But, I'm still pondering a bit between TB and TS. The TB is even more beautiful than TS because of the solid roofline. And after setting the seat in TB I can see I'm sitting quite far back, which leads me to wonder: is there an extra space in TS for the roofpiece (ie. is the rear wall of the cabin further back in TS), or is the space for the roofpiece practically off of the driver's legroom? Because if I'd need to take the seat even 1-2 inches forward for the TS roofpiece to fit behind the seat, it would ruin the driving position surprisingly much, which speaks for the Berlinetta in my book.

My Ferrari-Fever is quite high, and seeing this TB live didn't lower it at all, more like boosted the fever to double or so. And this is while the weather is near freezing and a freezing rain in the air - knowing myself, summer will rise the fever to really, really high temperatures if I don't sign the cure (purchasing papers) before.

I'm quite sure I'll finally buy my first Ferrari this year. I'm about as freaking out as when I was buying my first house

 

Thanks all!

Not so surprisingly I've already found a huge bunch of expertise here, while ramping up my fever . I've read Ernie's service stories, a lot of other interesting 348 threads. And, of course, I've read through the today's pic of 348 -thread, even though there's not so much technical, but a lot of beauty. For the past 2 months, I've been surfing information and beauty so much that most of significant others would have packed already, luckily mine understands me (and agrees on the beauty of 348).

And yes, a proper history and condition of the car is important while buying and that's one reason for me to be quite interested on the TB I linked. It's been serviced earlier at Team F40 and later at Luxury Collection (official Ferrari dealership), who bought at least some of the service functions (including, but not limited to at least part of servicing personnel) of Team F40 some years ago.

I don't have a vitrin or a showroom for my cars. As it - at least according to me - should be, I buy my cars including minun Ferrari (yep, that's the correct way in Finnish ) to be driven. Occasionally to the office, occasionally to the stores, on summer trips, on trackdays. The condition of a car is an important factor.

The TB vs TS -"battle" in my head is pretty much on even scale. TB looks better, probably it's slightly better at track, too (even though I'm not fast enough to notice the difference) and TS would give some wind in the hair (which I will have anyway, as my convertible TVR is not going anywhere). TS roofpiece takes a bit of space and the option of leaving the roofpiece home is only option on rare occasions, as I'm not used to limit my cars to trips of couple of hours and I don't trust the Finnish weather too much. Currently I'm concentrating in finding a good car in good condition and to see what kind of roof I will have .

By the way, I've heard that there's a saying that everyone wants theier first Ferrari to be red, but the second one to be any other color than red. I'm not that picky on the color, but my 348 won't be black, white or grey (well, there is one metallic grey, I think the name is only Grigio, that looks good on 348) - black and white tame the curves and lines of 348 too much (hey, the girl has curves AND strakes, let them show!) to my eye and I just don't like most of the greys. Rosso corsa is a kind of cliche on Ferrari, but it does suit the 348 (and many other Ferrari models) very well - and the selling market of 348 is vastly weighted on Rosso corsa.

And oh, I think I read somewhere that the original black skirts of 348 were actually painted black, instead of having the color casted in the parts - which means that it wouldn't be a huge deal to make them back to the original look (which would shout out "80's" even more) eg. on the TB I linked. Can someone confirm this and does anyone have the colour code for this black?