Lopsided interior

OK guys, bear with me here, as I'm a relatively new owner of my 355. Well, I keep looking at my car in the garage or after parking it (who doesn't look back as you're walking away?) and something is lopsided about it. Of course I was going through all the "is something wrong with my new car?" stuff, when it finally occurred to me: the interior, especially seat placement, is assymmetrical! I noticed the "center" console wasn't! It is displaced significantly towards the passenger side of the car-- most noticeable when the car is viewed from directly in front of the car and viewed through the windshield. The seats are placed equidistant from the console, but not equidistant from the doorsill. The reason this was not so obvious is that the parking brake occupies much of the area outboard of the driver's seat.

Of course, realizing this was what was up with my "lopsided" interior made me think about why Ferrari would do such a thing. Then of course I remembered perhaps the ultimate sports car, the Maclaren F1, with its center driver's seat. Being centrally placed, the driver can more easily maneuver the car on tight turns, with less A-pillar blocking of vision. Also, side-to-side balance is improved over placing the driver to one side. While the 355 doesn't have this degree of central driver location, at least some is better than none. I next had to go from one to the next of my cars to confirm that this is a rare phenomenon, and sure enough, it does not exist on any other cars I own or have noticed parked around me (including P cars and even my '95 RX7, which is just wierd enough to maybe have such thought put into it as the 355, but no).

So, the moral of the story here is that although we hear all this talk of maintainance costs, reliability concerns, etc we have to appreciate the simply phenomenal purpose these funny machines have. Some engineer came up with this before Gordon Murray insisted it be part of his Maclaren F1. You guys probably noticed this ages ago, but I just did now.

Continuously amazed,

John