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My Dad had 348, 355, 360 V8's and 550 and 575 V12... I got to drive those cars whenever I wanted and both the Ferrari V8 and V12 engines are just... unique. It was really cool when Tuerck did the GT4586 build...
Wouldn't really fit with my goals to build in additional reliability where I can though
My Dad had 348, 355, 360 V8's and 550 and 575 V12... I got to drive those cars whenever I wanted and both the Ferrari V8 and V12 engines are just... unique. It was really cool when Tuerck did the GT4586 build...
Wouldn't really fit with my goals to build in additional reliability where I can though
Man my favorites are the 550 and 575... those things sound amazing.
Last edited by TheChunkNorris; 05-02-2021 at 09:33 PM.
Man my favorites are the 550 and 575... those things sound amazing.
The 550 was my favorite street car I have ever driven. Front engine V12, gated gear shift, Carbon everything.... Huge burnouts.
On another note... Took my car for a merciless rip today, mufflers may make some difference at idle and really low engine speeds but I can't notice a difference in the cabin when ripping on it, so, we'll see what it does for the DB meter at Palmer next weekend. The little catch can stayed firmly affixed and at least for the moment, nothing is leaking so thats good. I must have some oil in the intakes cause its letting out a puff of white smoke on startup after it sat... PIA... SO I beat the **** out of it in hopes of burning whatever is in there off...
Will change the oil and nut and bolt the car tomorrow and she'll be ready to go again.
My Dad had 348, 355, 360 V8's and 550 and 575 V12... I got to drive those cars whenever I wanted and both the Ferrari V8 and V12 engines are just... unique. It was really cool when Tuerck did the GT4586 build...
Wouldn't really fit with my goals to build in additional reliability where I can though
All of those are on my want to buy list, ride report/comparison por favor.
The 360 really stepped up the game. The 348 and 355 both felt built in the OLD Ferrari way - ie... the quality was only where it needed to be. What you touched, heard, felt. The 360 felt like it was a big step up in build quality and you could feel it. It was also the first flappy paddle box I had messed with and to be honest, going from the gated shifters to that thing was a kick in the dick. Yes, it worked pretty good (for the time) and was faster than I could shift... but it took away some of the romance of driving one of those cars. They handled very well, confidence inspiring with a lot of grip. The controls all felt weighted right and steering very sharp. The 355 was probably my favorite and if I was going to buy a Ferrari, it would be a 355 Challenge that I would figure out how to convert for road use and I'd put TE37 wheels on it.
The Sound... Porsche engines (NA ONLY) sound special, and great...but they are not a flat plane crank V8, exhaust, induction, mechanical... just the best sounding engines that rev so freely... really feel like nothing else... Kind of like a liter bike... feels like endless revs I guess is how I would compare.
V12 Ferrari:
The grand touring cars, build quality really high - pretty comfortable, rolling pieces of art. The lines of those cars will look beautiful to me forever. The V12's have this ridiculous combination of pretty good grunt down low to this unending shove as the revs build... They sound powerful and combined with the gated shift... It feels like the perfect combination of mechanical parts married together for fun, and comfort. My Dad and I would take the cars down to Newport, sit at an outdoor pub or coffee shop and just chat and look at them... forever memories.
Honorable mentions:
V12 Astons:
Beautiful engine noise, manual gear boxes, even when everyone was going to DCT's... also really good GT cars.
V12 SL65:
This car was an absolute freight train. Story...my friends Alex and Bill owned a shop in Norwood, MA - Dent Sport Garage. They built my Evo and I would hang out there, a lot ! They had a Dyno Dynamics Dyno... popularly referred to at the time as a heartbreaker dyno for the low numbers it would put out compared to the more common Dynojet... Now the Dyno Dynamics IMO was a vastly superior dyno because of the steady state tuning you could do on it, but I digress... Anyway Al called me up and said they had an F350 diesel on the dyno and it put out 700 FT/LBS to the wheels... This got me thinking, I wonder how much torque the Benz will put down... it was rated for some stupid number... I knew, from the fact that if you mashed the gas at 70 at like 2500 RPM it would lay 11's down... whatever it was, it was a lot ! I called my Dad, told him I wanted to borrow the Benz for the afternoon and a couple hours later we were loading it onto the dyno... I don't remember exactly what is was but I believe it ended up putting somewhere in the 750 FT/LBS range and like 550 HP... I brought the car back to my Dad that night with the dyno sheet for him to keep.
A picture from a little while back - He's in an SL63 now and loves it...
Thanks guys... really fun times - very lucky to have not only gotten to drive them but to do it with my Dad...
And thanks for the kind words on the write-up... it was fun to write and go back in history a bit... that was a much simpler time in my life and writing it brought me back to a place that was primarily filled with various types (can’t write about all of them !) of fun
Track prep for this SAT at Palmer is done. Changed the oil, magnetic plug looked great and nothing interesting in the filter... Gave the brakes a mini bleed to get the fluid in the calipers out and replaced with something that got cooked a little less from up stream (thanks for the tip Aaron).
Looks like at least some rain for Sat... First track day with rain, First time running Palmer in this direction...not awesome, but hey, we'll make the best of it. Kinda wishing I still had the PS4S though as a rain option
So, I'll give the oil a top off tomorrow night and off to Palmer early Sat AM.
I was thinking about getting a 348 to add to the stable, since I don't mind the looks and I'm a fan of the unloved. Is the car that much worse than the 355 in terms of driving experience/quality? I don't need the car to be insanely quick - moreso canyon carving, and the occasional autocross/track day.
05-02-2021, 12:37 PM
Well written!
