Road Stories

A Possible Ferrari Convert?

Nights like this make it all worthwhile...

I let a friend, here on holiday, drive my shark last night. A lovely warm Australian night and
perfect, totally traffic-free road, sweeping mountain road. Before moving (to London) he'd sold
his first car - a 924Turbo (come on everyone... be nice!) for a new BMW 318 (oh dear!) and I was
keen for him to experience some 100%-Porsche grunt.

Well, he liked it a lot, drove is smoothly, but being a polite sort of bloke, he wasn't exactly
exploring its potential. I had to push him to find out what he's driving in London. He was a bit
sheepish about it, so I was expecting to hear a "Ford Fiesta" or something. Finally made me
promise not to hit him, and admitted to a '94 Ferrari 348TS. In Maranello red naturally. Hey, he's
27, it's very understandable.

So I hit him of course. "That's wonderful", I said, "now get out of my Porsche ... "

"... and swap sides." Whereupon I demonstrated (without being silly) the stickability and grunt
of the shark. I won't crow about it, but he was very, very impressed with the car's effortless
poise and predicable handling at the limit. 2nd and 3rd gear mainly. Slight understeer on turn in,
control the rear with the throttle, and perhaps a little drift. He loved it, and admitted he thought
he would have had some trouble keeping up, and would certainly have been working himself a
lot harder to do so. He knew the 5-sp 300HP Ferrari had better acceleration over the 310HP
Porsche (almost certainly true, I've got a tall-geared auto and 15 year old plug leads), but
thought the handling at the limit was much trickier in his F-car for the same levels of grip. My
car has got tired old tyres on its 16 x 7 light alloys.

Interestingly, he reckons wherever he drives the Ferrari people always go wide-eyed and always
react in a positive way. Thumbs up, smiles... I wish it were always this way...

I'm sure his car is absolutely fabulous, but it's a daily driver, and when and if he tires of the
already massive servicing costs and things like the 2nd gear that's unusable when the gearbox
is cold, I've got a faint feeling he might consider another (practical) supercar ... if he can find a
nice S4 or GT.

Stuart Greaves
'84 928S Auto mit Vorfahrt eingebauert