Monday, July 6, 2009

Yellow Ferrari 355 Spider - a future classic?

The Ferrari 355 Spider was introduced 1995 and was after the Ferrari 348 Spider the second fully open 8 cylinder Ferrari. Of course it inherited all the good ingredients of the 355 Coupé, specifically the 3'495 ccm engine with 381 HP. It was delivered with manual 6 gear transmission or the F1 sequential gear change unit. With 1'350 kg weight and 4.25 meter length it was a fairly compact and lightweight car. Acceleration was below 5 seconds for the sprint from 0 to 100 km/h. The 355 was a good looking car, certainly more pretty than it's successor, the 360. The styling and design have survived the last 10 years quite well, the car still looks slick and modern. Technically it's a good car and maintenance usually should't make the wealthy owner wrong. Not too many things usually go wrong with a 355 if it's well maintained and cared for. Prices today are around 40 to 60 percentages of when it was new, cars rarely have covered more than 50'000 km, most come with 20'000 to 30'000 km. A majority of cars traded these days have been equipped with the F1 gear change. But I would prefer the 6 speed manual transmission. There's nothing better than the open polished gear change gate.
So, is this a car worth collecting? Well, this goes back to what I wrote about the 575M a couple of days before. Ferrari produced approx. 3'714 355 Spiders, most of them (85%) LHD. So, it's not rare. It's clearly gorgeous and a blast to drive. In yellow it looks great and is a good alternative to the usual ferrari red. If you buy one now it will probably hold the value quite well for the next years. But most probably you won't make real money on this car. But it will give you a lot of pleasure and that's probably much more than what shares of a financial institutions will deliver to you.

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