The Plunge into Ownership - what’s it really like?
Getting into the world of Ferrari ownership is not something I had really considered for very long. I’d always admired Ferrari as a racing team and an automobile company, but never really had any ambitious ideas of ownership, especially since my interest in beautiful cars has been, and still is satisfied as an Alfa Romeo enthusiast and owner. For some reason that remains a mystery to this day, I had the bug to get another car. As I started to day-dream, a Ferrari predictably entered my mind. I initially considered a 348, and to this day, I still really am big a fan of this model. But tragically for the 348, it’s successor the F355 often steps in and steals it’s thunder.
When I realized that owning an F355 might indeed be an achievable goal, I became very intrigued. If I consider the entire « modern » Ferrari lineup since the 1970s; the F355 is, perhaps, my favorite model (with an obvious exclusion of the breathtaking 288GTO and magnificent F40). And that really means something, because Maranello has produced some absolute masterpieces.
I distinctly remember seeing a yellow F355 in Florence, Italy, parked in the city center near the Arno river, and the shape of they car truly made my heart beat differently. The aspect in particular was the rear end of the car; drawn out to house it’s mid-ship engine, then truncated with the kick of the small Nolder spoiler. It’s timeless and it’s absolutely perfect. Very few cars have a design that is so widely accepted as beautiful, and many consider the F355 as a high tide mark of Ferrari (and Pininfarina) design for modern to semi modern cars. I certainly do.
Further research ensued, and it quickly became clear to me that a 1995 model was the car for me. It has the same M2.7 OBD-1 engine of the F355 challenge cars which includes better air delivery to motor, higher flow fuel injectors, urban legend says the early cars have more power from better cylinder heads,. It has the simplicity of OBD-1, and no (now outdated) alarm system. And it of course needed to be a Berlinetta.
Berli’netta
The pure form of the design, and frankly I just love the word itself, especially the way it is elegantly scripted across the rear of the car under that perfect little spoiler.
I got some advice from friends in the car business, and my friend Rob, who manages car collections, sensing my hesitation on purchasing a F355 gave me a very firm push off the cliff. Cheers Rob.
I wasn’t particularly looking for an ultra low mile car, frankly I don’t understand this obsession. It was the configuration of the car as mentioned above that was the important search criteria for me. Little things to correct were fine, to be honest I was looking for a reason to go through the car and get it completely sorted. Luckily, with an F355 you get a great opportunity to thoroughly inspect it every 5 years or so !
Exhaust manifolds and valve guides are what light internet research will reveal as the Achilles heel of this model. I didn’t want the hassle of replacing the valve guides, so wanted that to be taken care of already, and ideally a respectable amount mileage on it after the valve guide replacement to ensure that there were no follow up issues. I had considered in the purchase price that I would be replacing at least the exhaust manifolds, and likely the rear muffler to really get the full 355 experience (yes I mean that SOUND! but I’ll get to that later).
Being relatively handy with a wrench (and at this point I must confess, fully infected by the F355 virus), I was not about to let the concern of maintenance stop me.
If anyone has referred to the internet to get an idea of how much it costs to maintain a F355, one can only conclude it is nothing short of devastating, but I just couldn’t accept this as fact. Sure, the engine needs to come out to change the belts which seems excessive these days, but to give some perspective, I can have the motor in my Alfa out in 2 hours flat. Is it really such a big deal on a Ferrari? especially with all that space around the motor? And the F355 was even designed to be removed as a unit on the rear subframe, right? It just couldn’t be such a chore. And for the record, now that I have done it, and granted I did take a very long time to do it; I can legitimately say : it isn’t such a big deal.
I managed to find a car relatively quickly, had some phone discussions with the owner who was an honest, straight up guy, and it all seemed a decent transaction. I had the PPI done, which was positive, just typical wear items and scrapes one would expect for a 25 year old car with 37k miles. The car had it’s belt change done about 3 year prior to purchase so I had some time to drive it before doing the major service. And there you have it, I bought my first Ferrari before I had ever had the opportunity to even sit in one.
Before doing the engine service, I managed to get a couple of years and around 8000 miles (~13000km) with the car, and as it turns out, there are several good reasons for wanting to get some seat time in the car beyond the simple sheer pleasure of driving it. First of all, I was initially very nervous driving this car, I’ve never had a car with such wide hips (or an engine behind me), and this does take some getting used to. I wanted to be able to “drive it like it was meant to be driven” and this certainly requires some time to get to know the machine. Let’s face it, there is nothing cooler that throwing a Ferrari around a corner with a sense of urgency. Additionally, I needed to get some time to develop this weird “trust” that you need if you plan on truly enjoying the car. Case in point is my 1969 Alfa Romeo 1750gtv. I’ve had it for nearly 20 years; I do all the work myself and I’ve put nearly 100,000 km on the car. What this means is that I didn’t bat an eye to drive it 800km home to Nancy, France from the shipping terminal in Hamburg, Germany when I had it shipped from Canada to Europe. While I had the car in Europe I took it on frequent trips through high altitude mountain passes in Switzerland and Italy, all over France, the Mediterranean coast etc. I was able to enjoy the journey rather than fiddling and worrying about the car during the entire trip. The only way to do this with a « delicate » sports car is to get it fully sorted and establish a strong level of trust.
When I got the F355, I was a little cheeky in suggesting to my wife that we take a trip up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco (from Los Angeles), this was over 1000 km return trip in a car that I knew very little about. The trip was brilliant, the car performed flawlessly, and the beginning a of man-machine relationship was forming.
After 4 years and approaching 10k miles on the F355, I feel like the trust level has been well established, and the level of care and detail I’ve taken while doing the engine service should be a good testament to my enthusiasm for the car. Has the ownership lived up to what I had hoped? Absolutely, and so much more. This car really checks all the boxes. It is a physical representation of desire. It makers you bore others with philosophic ramblings about what cars are supposed to be like, using words like visceral, exhilarating, and connected. I would go so far as to say that owning it has even made me a better engineer.
The car is a superb combination of engineering + design. It was designed at a time where all the right technology advancements were available, yet it retains the simplicity and elegance of a real sports car.
The Ferrari F355 is indeed, a very special car.