By Mike Duff / Saturday, October 22, 2022 / Loading comments
The climax of love between Maserati MC20 Cielo commentators this week led the Brave Pill Selection Committee of the Whole, meeting in a deserted greyhound stadium, to wonder if it would be possible to find something similar with a significantly smaller budget.
A discussion that led temporarily, through the 56k connectivity of the Nokia 9210 Communicator of the editor, to this Ferrari 360 Spider at a very attractive price in the Classifieds. Well, then the asking price of £54,945 is hardly a pocket replacement, and it’s almost part of the price. Previous £113,000 options that this 2002 example would have a charge, but it still means it’s a twenty-first-century Ferrari convertible for less than a quarter of the value of this new modern Maserati.
What impresses most about Heaven, besides its striking appearance, is the minimum commitment it asks buyers to make with its coupe brother. Which wasn’t the case before: In the ’80s and early ’90s, roadsters and spiders were inevitably heavier, softer, and more dynamically forceful than their fixed-roof brethren. People probably bought them more for posing than for driving.
The Ferrari 360 Spider was one of the first cars to replace it. It was completely conceivable to buy one exclusively with the aim of showing up, and that was probably a big component of the motivation behind a really extensive percentage of sales. But he was almost as smart to drive as the coupe, and he was actually smart.
Go back to the arrival of the Ferrari 360 in 1999 and its specs sound like science fiction. Early reviews were as thorough as a misspelled state criminal in California for what was, by all accounts, the ultimate mid-engined Ferrari to date. Just as impressive was the fact that the company’s engineers had controlled to extract a 395-hp spike of just 3. 6-liter naturally aspirated V8. It was a production record specific to road cars that was only narrowly damaged when the Honda S2000 arrived a few months later. measure how supernatural the Ferrari looked, the fact that the Porsche 911 Turbo of the 996 generation that was presented some time later needed two turbochargers to inflate its 3. 6-liter six-cylinder engine to a slightly higher power of 414 hp.
Of course, the Porsche had much lower torque than the Ferrari, with the 360’s 275 lb-ft peak peaking at 4,750 rpm. But it would have been perverse to complain about this deficit given the joy of the V8’s hard work. The engine built to run on a flat crankshaft and titanium connecting rods, with a maximum force reaching 8500 rpm, only two hundred rpm before the red line. with the factory exhaust that many owners later exchanged for something more fruity. It was a technical excursion of strength and a publicity success, temporarily fitting the most popular Ferrari to date.
The open-top Spider was introduced a year after the fixed-roof Modena, and on-road testers were inspired to notice how dynamically similar the two cars were. The Spider weighed just 60kg more than the coupe, and although its aluminium design lost some strength, the decapitation process, the clever structural reinforcement meant the perceived difference was minimal. The garage on the roof also allowed for a much greater appreciation of the 360’s rough exhaust note, and the tiny fabric hood even allowed the Spider to retain the glass hood of the Modena’s engine.
A new 360 Spider logo appeared in an article in a winter-themed magazine I participated in. An organization of convertibles and convertibles met in central Wales in mid-winter, with orders that roofs should remain low despite the high air temperatures around. zero. Most of the cars there were downright miserable, no matter how many hats and sautomobileves were worn on the icy trails; the MGTF’s radiator was slightly hot, probably because it was busy digesting the cylinder head gasket. But while the Ferrari was far from toasted in arctic conditions, it was special enough to warrant a blue nose and tingling ears. with the V8 sounding even squeaker than the same old man in the rarefied, bloodless air. This car was manual, and my eternal memory of the day was the almost painful thrill of the forged steel gear lever on its open door. This desanimó. de me not to turn gears as possible.
On the right, until today. The good news is that our tablet is in the most desirable component of the Ferrari 360’s Venn diagram. While the Spider 348 and 355 are less expensive than the coupes, this equation is reversed for the 360, with the convertible asking for an extra. Similarly, the manual gearbox is now compared to the fast, automated single-clutch “F1” transmission that Ferrari’s sales managers in the early 2000s worked hard to convince buyers to specify. So, as a manual Spider, our car won either coin shot.
So why this tempting price? There are two apparent reasons why this is the cheapest spider in classified ads. First of all, silver paint in a market component where punters prefer the classic Rosso or anything more flashy. Second, having traveled 69,000 miles, a figure that, as ridiculous as it sounds, is double the average of the other 360 recently indexed on the site. Since the youngest 360 is now 18 years old, there have been many owners who have made minimal use of their dream cars.
Assuming the color and odometer didn’t make him run through the hills, there’s a lot to love about our pill. The paint and ornaments are stunning in the pictures, as is the fabric cover. indexed almost the entire service history, with the largest timing belt replacement performed by a specialist in April last year and the previous one in May 2019. This is attractive given that a look at the history of the ITV, darkened plates show a discrepancy between blank passages in April 2019 and February this year, suggesting that the last owner diligently followed the maintenance regime even with the car off the road.
There’s nothing more sautomobiley about recent control history, but the rewind to 2014, just 1,000 miles ago, produces a prodigiously red list of errors that includes the stupid “missing backplate,” which has to be the most egregious technical inspection. Failure of preparation in history. He also missed worn tires, a wobbly headlight lens and a non-working handbrake while getting a series of warnings about worn suspension components. Claiming that the most recent owner owned the car for seven years suggests he has been pampered ever since.
Maintaining the compatibility of any Ferrari will require a lot of ongoing expenses, however, the 360 is widely regarded as the clan’s easiest to use, much more so than previous V8s that require engine removal to change the timing belt. Clutches probably wouldn’t last more than 20,000 miles, even with the manual gearbox, let alone an F1, and suspension ball joints would largely be treated as a service item. distressing.
Big, scary spiders are usually anything you need to inspire to feast in your garage. Here’s one you could.
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