It’s 1999 and Ferrari reveals their latest stallion: the Ferrari 360. It sure had to live up to something, since the mighty F355 it replaced was considered one of the greatest. It came with a brand new look, more downforce, faster acceleration, a lighter chassis, and many other improvements. Tiff Needell of Top Gear said “the King is dead, long live the King!” and even referred to it as the new best car in the world.
But something was wrong in my opinion. I looked at it and saw beauty, but something was missing. It was coolness. Somehow the car didn’t look as cool as the F355 did. Contradicting maybe, as I did find the 360 more beautiful. How could this be? It didn’t matter, as I couldn’t afford one anyway. Nine years later, the price of 360’s came into my reach. Shall I buy one? I started negotiations with the dealer for a red 360 for sale from another customer, but no deal came from it. “We do have another 360 for which we can make a better offer”, they said. We walked towards this other 360 and then it hit me…
A car’s colour does matter!
The black 360 that was parked in front of me did not only look gorgeous, it looked utterly cool as well. That same evening I bought it. What made this car look so different? It clearly was the colour of the car. But Ferrari’s are know to be red, or said differently: red seems to be the perfect colour for Ferraris. So why not here? I do not know, but I do find that for almost every new Ferrari, red isn’t the best colour. The 360, F430, the Roma, 599, the Superfast etc…. I would take a greyish or black paint on those.
This car is modern enough to be used for daily commuting, which I did with my 360 (even when it snowed!). While I felt blessed arriving at work in a Ferrari, after a while I realised that I wanted the car to be more hardcore: I wanted to do more trackdays with it, and I wanted to race. After a long stay at Forza Service in Oss, The Netherlands, my car returned in a more racy state: adjustable improved suspension, magnesium rims with semi slicks, challenge front and rear grills, bucket seats and harness, and racing steering wheel with larger carbon gear levers.
The difference was massive: the car’s annoying understeer was gone, grip was fantastic, sound too. I entered a time attack competition at the Papenburg racetrack in Germany, with which the the previous years I managed to stay the top two, but never first place. With this new setup of the car, victory was mine. Many wonderful track days followed.
But as I also kept using it for daily commuting, the mileage increased and when it hit 100,000 km, problems started to occur.. (in fact the first breakdown occurred so close to that round number that it makes conspiracy theory lovers wonder if this was pre-set in the car!). Gearbox issues, the car refusing to shift beyond first gear, clutch and gear sensor problems (issues that I still regularly see with 360’s during e.g. Challenge and GT days), and each problem with a required removal of the gearbox. Bills started piling up.
With the 360 not eligible to race in the Ferrari Pirelli Trofeo Classic, I decided to sell it. Mind you, a Ferrari with over 100,000 km plummets in price compared to the same cars with lower mileage. I took a big loss by selling the 360, and bough my 348. Should I have kept it? Any regrets knowing that ? I owned the car for six years and drove 60,000 km’s with it, during Italy trips, to work, during time attack races, Nürburgring visits, Spa Owners days, Modena Track days, and even visited Disneyland with it. I may regret a thing or two in my life, this certainly isn’t one of them.
Picture credits: Phan Vu, Michel Poot, Andrew Furnell and Bob Santifort
Ciao!
Robin
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