Ferrari F355 Spider

It's tough enough to build a perfect sports car. The essentials include a frame that's both lightweight and superrigid, a racetrack-ready suspension, brakes more tenacious than those on a mile of Santa Fe freight train, and an engine that combines high-drama power output, environment-friendly exhaust, and the basic reliability of a blacksmith's anvil. Oh yeah, the perfect sports car also needs drop-dead looks, air conditioning that actually works, and a high-rpm wail sensuous enough to have you at 8000 rpm while backing out of the garage.

No mean feat, this perfect sports car, but Ferrari has created just such a machine: the F355 Berlinetta. Our July '95 issue's test raved about this Italian mid-engined coupe's blistering performance, fawned over its creature comforts, and openly gushed about its Pininfarina-sculpted beauty. Whether trolling for action along Sunset Boulevard or blowing the snot out of some race car on the track, the F355 Berlinetta never makes excuses and never lets you down. So, herein lies the embodiment of the best Ferraris of all time: The F355 can not only trace its primordial DNA to the blood-engorged Testa Rossa race champion and masterpiece 275 GTB Lusso, but it operates with such a delicate touch that Madame Curie could set fast time down Coldwater Canyon on a moonless night-without the benefit of radium.

As tough as it is to create the perfect sports car, it's even more agonizing yet to build that car as a convertible. Hack off a major structural member like the roof, and you can watch your beauty's formerly taut framework turn into a metropolis of creaks and rattles. The resultant loss of torsional rigidity negatively affects ride, handling, and overall feel. It's a cold, hard fact that only a select few convertibles in the world feel and handle as well as their coupe counterparts.

So we had our initial doubts about the new F355 Spider. With its curb weight vaunted to be the same as the Berlinetta (2976 pounds), how could Ferrari's engineers have done the proper reinforcing job? Well, even if you recall that the first Ferrari ever built was topless, and that the most recent 348 Spider was a pretty solid package, you won't likely be ready for the bank-vault-like structure of the latest Spider iteration. You can feel some extra weight in the doors as a result of the rework, but all of the other patches go wholly unnoticed-as it should be. Ferrari claims only a two-percent loss of torsional rigidity vis--vis the lift-out-roof-panel F355 GTS, but hasn't commented about the loss as compared with the awesome Berlinetta. It can't be much.

We also harbored some initial skepticism over the operation of the convertible top-power operated for the first time in a Ferrari, yet still requiring a bit of driver interaction. With memories of the weird monkey-motion gyrations required to operate the 348 Spider's Nautilus-workout top mechanism, more than one MT editorial eyebrow was raised askew as details of the F355's top operation were described. However, our fears were wholly unfounded.

To lower the top, both doors must be closed, the handbrake set, and the ignition key twisted to the "on" position. Release the single header latch and give a firm push up on the top to fold it partially back. Then activate the electric switch located on the rear of the center console and the lid automatically drops, pausing momentarily in mid-droop to move the seats forward about seven inches (the buckets are now electrically adjusted fore and aft, and feature unique backrest sculpting to facilitate the storage of the folded top) before articulating the stack of canvas to rest. The operation takes less than 20 seconds and will only require exiting the car if you own legs long enough to be scrunched by the auto-glide seats.