For me, because its a more practical car. Among my collection, I have a 1965 427 S/C Cobra which is a wonderful car, but with no top, no windows, straight headers to sidepipes, manual steering, no heat or A/C, and the oh-so-gentle ride of a log truck, it flat wears you out driving it . . . and makes you deaf . . . and makes you stink like exhaust fumes. I can actually drive the F355 to the office once in a while.
Since you write a blog, I would love to hear your driving impressions of the F355 and C63 as I also happen to own both of these cars, currently. Interestingly, I did own an MX-5 at one time, as well.
If you click on the link in my original post, it's pretty much all I write about. This one was my most recent one: Cars & Food & Radio 4: A Midlife Monologue F355 v MX5, if that ever made sense! It seems we are all using similar arguments to justify a big toy. I had a 328GTS first (my teenage Ferrari, I could afford it, mid-life divorce present, still really beautiful from most angles) traded "up" to a 550, more power, more civilised, more money, but not a car I loved, (a bit like the C63 AMG as it happens) got rid of it and had two Astons for a while (DB7 Vantage for ten years, a brilliant but flawed car, joined by a 89 Vantage Volante, a vanity mistake but another childhood dream car) but missed being able to say " I have a Ferrari" (including to myself) so lurked in classified ads. 355s are the last properly pretty Ferraris, but I also do like the power steering and ABS that came along in the 1990s. Mine has a standard exhaust which is just noisy enough to let you know its a Ferrari without all that F430 shouting and bellowing. It's cheap to insure and starts first time even after several weeks on the trickle charger. If I could only use it enough to understand its limits and how to set it up properly it'd be great. Oh yes. I do like the lack of depreciation too! On the downside, it isn't as fast as the C63 so feels a bit slow when its not being revved. I am still worried it'll explode or disintegrate, especialy the roof down performance, but that's just anti-italian engineering racism on my part. And the windscreen wipers and headlights are crap, especially in combination. And I span it, so it scares me now and again.
Of course I'm bias but its the best sounding as far as I'm concerned and old enough that all the guys that seem to do own wrenching have vast wealths of knowledge and more importantly they share on ferrari chat. Not to mention the hair gel !!
