Best Ferrari? The F355 or 360 Modena? | The Next Big Thing with Magnus Walker | Ep. 202

in this life we're often presented with choices some of them have to do with the meaning of life who am i why am i here others are less essential such as which entry-level prancing pony purchase is right for me having owned a ferrari 308 gtb back in the 90s i'm tempted to rejoin the ranks of the tuffosi one more time call me crazy but this time around i'm torn between the 355 and the 360. and the only way to find out which i prefer is to take them both for a drive on one of my favorite roads so here i am driving northbound on pch the car i'm driving is a 1996 ferrari for 355. belongs to coco coco owns high-tech automotive he's been working on european specialty cars for the past 35 years he first fell in love with the ferrari 355 when it debuted at the la auto show in 1995 but it took him almost 25 years to find this example in 1996 because you know obviously he didn't want a red one and he wanted one that was manual so the ferrari 355 is really the last of the wedge-shaped mid-engine v8 ferraris the it stands for 3.5 liter 5 valve per cylinder so it's got a very unique whale from the mid mounted 375 horsepower naturally aspirated v8 one of the things i do love about the 355 i have to admit when i first got in it it's not intimidating at all everything's where it needs to be the clickety-click gated six-speed is a real joy of shift visibility all around is surprisingly good the steering is extremely direct the feel of it the movement the car feels super nimble feels super alive so i'm off to meet my buddy patrick liddy he's actually a race car driver and he's managed to borrow the keys to his uncle's manual ferrari 360. i'm going to drop it down to cog press on and go meet patrick lilly over at neptune's net for some fish [Music] patrick lady a lifelong la native with a need for speed he grew up around vintage porsches but he learned to drive in a manual ferrari 360. and now he's a racing driver in lamborghini's young driver program racing in something called the lamborghini super trafeo series competing in the pro-am championship and imsa gt4 cup so i convinced patrick to borrow his uncle's 360. the actual car he learned to drive in and join me in the 355 as we compare them back to back in the hills near malibu [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] the 355 was a lot of fun but let me see what a hot shoe can do in the 360. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so 1999 first year of the ferrari 360. tell me your history with this car yeah so it's been a fun history with ferrari my grandpa brought me out to uh track days at willow springs when i was little in his 328 gts and uh when i was about 10 or 11 he decided he wanted an upgrade got this 360 modena and i actually learned how to drive stick and heel toe in this thing which he was very brave of him to allow that hold on hold on how old were you i was 15 and a half so i had my permit okay stuck in the uh side door here and was learning how to drive manual on this thing so that's kind of i would say a little bit like diving in at the deep end it was it easy did it come natural no my heart was beating out of my chest i remember and the thing i remember distinctly is being stuck at a uh at a big hill start yeah and wondering what i should do with the pedals you know every time i tried to go for the clutch and the gas i would just roll back no pressure there right so how do you go from being a 15 and a half year old learning to drive in a 360 ferrari to becoming a race car driver for lamborghini how does that happen i just had a lucky break one of my friends was working for the race team and he said hey we've got middle ohio coming up in five days and our driver is uh out can you make it so i said all right when i dropped all my uh classes for the week flew to ohio and had never driven the track or car and uh we went out and won the race no way just got lucky i think in that race but i've had a win to win yeah i'll take it how does this ferrari feel you know eight years later it's got what 400 horsepower it weighs like 3 300 pounds ish how does it feel now today it feels great you can really feel the weight transfer in this car the best thing is hearing those revs wind out 8 500 rpm rev limiter and uh pedal box is perfect for heel toe you come into a corner like this third gear hit the brakes down to second right back on it it does seem effective with the power it's always different from the passenger seat it does seem a little more spirited right in the three five five the interesting thing to me is they're only three years apart but they look 20 years apart visually i think they really do and this thing you know we were talking earlier about how wide it looks compared to the 355 you have these big fenders on this little malibu canyon road but yet it doesn't really weigh much more no i think uh it's about 70 pounds heavier this thing this is a different construction right yeah so this is the first uh all-aluminum unibody from ferrari and i believe yours is steel right some sort of steel frame yeah still frame aluminum body panel and that is the last ferrari with the pop-up headlights it's the last of the wedgie angular right 78 well styling that started in the 70s with the 308 this this is the beginning of the modern era you know this has got you know digital dials and dashes carrying a boatload of speed here feels really grounded and hooked up it'll be interesting to see how it feels for me yeah let's see what you got [Music] [Applause] acceleration is rapid for sure so the first thing i notice about the 360 modern it does feel torquey it feels a little more snappy throttle responsive there's more room around the steering wheel this has bigger brakes ventilated rotors the shift is nice and buttery just like the other one with that super ferrari gated clickety click you never get tired of clicking the clicking i will say that super grippy like patrick says corner speed is fast it does feel pretty big on the tight twisty deck of canyon i mean it's not night and day difference it's incremental difference and then the main thing obviously is you know visually the difference the improvement on the 360 over 355 is the accessibility to the engine from this bulkhead panel behind me i suppose ferrari finally figured out hey let's make it where you don't have to take the engine out to do a timing belt service so from that point of view everyone does say the 360 is an easier car to live with when it comes to maintenance costs so the ferrari 360 to me has everything that makes it an instant classic it's the beginning of the whole swoopy era of ferrari's mid-engined v8 cars started here with the 360. i often say all true car enthusiasts enjoy the thrill of the chase that is researching their dream spec car but after spending hours online and talking with experts comparing ferrari models i have to admit sometimes too much data can be overwhelming and the only real way to know how you feel about a car is just get out and drive [Music] hey fella not a bad day in the canyon not a bad day at all so patrick if i had to pick one someone said hey you can take whichever one you want i still don't have a solid answer i love the way this looks for everything it is the last of the wedgie i love the way this looks for the beginning of everything without a doubt this is the better of the two driving car no doubt it puts the power down better it shifts better it stops better but this keeps pulling back because it's got all the character in the world what do you think absolutely i think the gear change everything that you feel in the 360s is a little bit tighter a little bit better but uh you know for me aesthetically that 355 makes up for a little bit older driving feel so you're going to take the 355 but with the 360 mechanicals and power train and suspension right probably not a bad choice

Channel: Hagerty

Views: 92,407

Rating: 4.9188542 out of 5

Keywords: Hagerty, Classic Car, Classic Cars, Hagerty Drivers Club, collector car, enthusiast car, collector cars, Magnus Walker, Hagerty The Next Big Thing, Ferrari, Ferrari F355, Ferrari F355 sound, Ferrari F355 exhaust, F355 review, Ferrari 355, Ferrari 360, Ferrari 360 Modena, Ferrari 360 review, Patrick Liddy, Malibu drive, PCH drive, Ferrari review, 355 vs 360, 360 Modena review, F355 Berlinetta, F355 GTS, F355 Spider, Decker Canyon Road, canyon drive, Ferrari 355 360

Id: X9BZ_9QilKE

Length: 11min 0sec (660 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 16 2021