New Ferrari F355! '90s Icon Perfected？ ｜ 4K

This is the 355 by Evoluto, a 420 horsepower Ferrari 355 Restomod that's been totally restyled and re-engineered to improve everything about the car that Clarkson, back in 1996, called the nicest car I've ever driven. Oh, and it sounds like this. More of that in a bit when we're going to be hooning around North Wales. But first, you probably noticed that car over there. That is an original, unfettered Ferrari 355. Look at it. It's gorgeous, isn't it? And the reason it's here is because we're going to be comparing all the details between new and old and detailing all the changes that they've made to this thing, of which there are a lot. Ultimately, we're here to find out whether 90s supercar perfection can really be improved upon. The question is, should you spend £100,000 on a good used one of these, and then probably the same again, making it factory fresh, or £595,000 plus VAT, plus a donor car, plus options on the Evoluto, of which they're only building 55? And yes, that adds up to the scary side of £800,000. But before we answer that, we need to get those 90s vibes going. Hang on a minute, not bad, not bad, but needs a little bit more, smoke, perfect, lights, yes that's excellent, filter, job done. The 355 represents a crucial chapter in the Ferrari story. When Luca di Montezemolo returned to Maranello in 1991, he admitted that the cars weren't good enough. But it was the F355, replacing the unloved 348, that signalled Ferrari was back to its best. Pininfarina's redesign was masterful, softening the 1980s edginess and reintroducing curves. Although this one has the open-gate manual gearbox, the 355 was the first production car to feature a paddle-shift gearbox, but it wasn't particularly good, which is why the manual commands a considerable premium. OK, so let's start with the beating heart of any Ferrari, the engine. So over here in the OG corner, we have the 3.5-litre flat-plane crank V8, spinning to 8.5... 1,000 rpm so back in the day this was a big upgrade over the 348 which had about 312 horsepower this This, 370. 375 horsepower or so Ferrari claimed there are whispers that they left the factory with a few less horsies than that Ferrari fudging power figures Who would have thought it but back in the day this was a proper serious piece of kit and the highest specific output per litre of any naturally aspirated engine at the time including the McLaren F1. Criticisms? Not that talky and not that musical either until you are over about 5,000 rpm, but don't get me wrong this is a seminal high revving Ferrari V8 engine and one that you can use all the performance you can keep your foot in without necessarily losing your license straight away. Let's see what they've done over here. A lot of carbon fibre, an incredibly clean and shiny engine bay, but still a 3.5 litre V8, still revving to 8,500 rpm, still naturally aspirated of course, but there's been a whole lot of work done internally to this engine to make it more responsive and to unlock more power. So 420 horsepower now compared to 375 on the original, about 400 newton meters of torque compared to 365 to 370 Newton meters on the original. Internally, you've now got ported cylinder heads, you've got bespoke camshafts, you've got equal headers on this, bespoke. Stainless steel exhaust system, which I'm very much looking forward to listening to later. Around 200 components are new in this engine. But if that's not enough, you can order your 355 by Evoluzione with a 3.7 litre engine upgrade. So that one gets 480 horsepower revs to 9,000 RPM and has 450 newton metres of torque. So loads more work done to the engine. You've got higher lift. You've got cams, you've got titanium conrods, you've got a titanium exhaust. Thank you. Confusingly, you'll be able to tell who's ordered the optional 3.7 by the engine covers. They should be red on the 3.7. This is a 3.5, and that comes with black engine covers. But just to confuse everyone, they've put red engine covers. on this one so the question is do you need the extra power and the extra torque do you need the 3.7 liter upgrade apparently most customers have gone for it already but um let's go find out for ourselves okay confession time i've been a fan of the 355 for forever but i've never driven one Until yesterday, when Jason Barlow gave me a go in his car, and honestly, I loved it. I loved the way you had to work the engine, I loved the no-frills interior, the unique driving position. But it did feel a bit older than I thought it would. A proper time warp driving experience, back to a time when supercars were visceral. but quite a bit cruder so how does this Evoluto compare well straight away you can feel the DNA in the seating position you sit low you sit reclined the pedals down there are offset to the left the steering wheel It doesn't adjust for reach, only for rake, but that's less of an issue here because you've got this gorgeous thin rim steering wheel that's deep dished so the rim kind of reaches out to meet you. You don't care about that, do you? Nah, you care about this. Oh, my God. Oh my word, that is simply one of the best sounding, the rawest engines I've ever driven. It's really interesting, there's this slight kind of pause, almost like a flat spot in the power delivery just before 4,000 rpm, but I don't mind that, it's like the engine's taking a breath, and then above 4,000 rpm, it just unleashes pure savagery all the way to the 8,500 rpm redline. I know spine tingling is the most horrible cliche, but my spine is, it is literally tingling. Thank you very much. What I love here is that when you compare it to something like the Ferrari 12 Cylinder, yes you've got that incredible naturally aspirated V12 and you know the top end is going to be spectacular but by the time you get there you're going so quickly that you've lost your license or you've run over a sheep but here the stakes are so much lower. You can work the engine, you've got time to rev it out and enjoy it and experience it and when you do, You're not doing triple-figure speeds. OK, so the gearbox. We have the same ratios as you got in the original 355. They replaced first and second gears because those are the ones that take an absolute beating. And surprise, surprise, it is glorious. However, you have to be very deliberate with your shifts. You don't flick this around. You force it. You place it in the slot that you want. Fourth. to third gear it's not as oily as a manual gearbox you get in something say like the R8 manual but it is so much fun trying to get everything right you've got a time your clutch inputs selection of the gear blips of the throttle and when you get it right it's just so satisfying when i first saw this gear knob here i didn't actually like it that much the the ball the metal ball you get on top of the lever in the 355 is just so iconic and just so right and why change it but to be honest it's really lovely to use and because it's got this loop design there's somewhere to just rest your thumb on the side of it like that yeah i might be getting a bit giddy and carried away but this It's how I always imagined the 355 would drive, how I built it up. In my head, so in many ways, this is the supercar I've been dreaming about the noise, the tactility, the size, the fact that it has just the right amount of performance, which brings me to the question of whether you need that 3.7 litre engine upgrade. And the answer is no, you don't need it. But if you're going to be spending such an enormous amount of money, an extra 60 horsepower is always nice. Okay so let's look at the styling differences first shall we and we'll start with the fundamental change here which sort of snowballs into everything else that has happened and that is the width. So 77mm wider at the front, 66mm wider at the rear and they've done it the hard way by moving the hard points rather than just adding... spacers in there and if you look at the front of that original 355 you can see how narrow the front looks and how much space there still is in that front wheel arch compared to this one. They've essentially squared it off and it's that width that gives this car, it looks almost shorter when you're looking at it in profile but that's because it's lower, 25mm lower than stock but you do get a hydraulic nose lift system which is handy. And because it's wider, the body panels, you find yourself flicking between the two. But I'm assured none of these body panels, it's all carbon fibre, are the same as this car over here. It's a proper job. They've gone through everything. So let's start at the front. And we can point out the similarities and the differences. Great story down here with the front grille. So this grille, if you look at that one over there, is carried straight over from the donor car. And that is why you will find the Ferrari Cavallino on the front there. If it's a carryover part, you can still use the logo. There's no badge on the bonnet here as there is over there. Other places you'll find the Prancing Horse on the glass, the side glass because that's carried over, on the open gate on the manual shifter because that's carried over as well and on the engine covers which we'll have a look at in a bit. But around that grille you've got this carbon fibre insert, you've got a carbon fibre We have a splitter along the bottom here, of course, the star of the show. the pop-up headlights albeit with modern LED lights in them now and then there are these little embellishments dotted around the car so an extra intake in the front flank here these louvres behind the pop-up lights you won't find those on the original car over there and if we come down Turn down the side. Get a look at these wheels. Gold wheels, a bit controversial. I think they look pretty good if I'm honest. These are the special ones, the option wheels, forged magnesium, four kilograms lighter per corner and that's unsprung mass so that is significant weight saving. They're 19 inches, the originals over there are 18 inches. Brembo cast iron brakes, they are working on a carbon ceramic. Option for some customers as well. Tyres, they're wider, of course, Michelin Pilot Sport 4S. So tyres that you can get anywhere around the world. Let's come down the side of the car. This is all new. This is all wider. These intakes here, the signature move on the 355 design. They're bigger, they're deeper, more air being fed into the engine through here, more cooling for the rear brakes through this one. And because they needed this to be so much bigger and deeper, they had to completely redesign the door mechanism. You'll notice the handle on the original one is under there and you pull a lever from under there. Here they've had to move it up here and it's a push button to open the door there. Right keep coming around the back a couple more things to show you. Some more louvres here behind the rear wheel arch that you don't get on the original one. The engine cover here it's clear polycarbonate this has been designed specifically for this car so it doesn't go opaque, it doesn't go milky like you get with the older materials. Of course the four circular lights but here in this Mesh that runs the full width of the car. And the four exhausts on the stainless steel exhaust system. It's a big question whether this looks better than the original car. It actually pains me to even think about something looking better than that car. For so long, that has been my dream car. The perfect, small, compact, delicate supercar shape. The quintessential 90s supercar. So is this better than that? No. Because it's not the original. And I know there are some haters out there that will be saying, oh, you're messing with perfection. But you know what, they've done it sympathetically. It's wider, it's more aggressive, it's lower, it's more modern, and it looks fantastic. Right, let's take a look at the interior where the differences are even starker. Welcome to the interior of Jason Barlow's F355, which can only be described as period correct. And the first thing I'll mention is he has the highly desirable carbon shell seats. These are worth an absolute fortune, as are the magnesium alloy wheels, which he tells me are worth over two grand a corner. I mean, he could break this thing into parts and make a tidy profit. Perfect. The other thing we've got in here is that annoying 90s Ferrari thing where the plastics eventually just give up all hope and turn into sticky mush. Jason told me not to touch them, I didn't listen to him and now I've got black stuff all over my fingers. But the fundamentals in here are just so good. I'm not a very big person so the manually adjustable seat is as far forward as possible and that is About the right driving position for me. You can adjust the wheel up and down but not towards and away from you and the wheel is tilted away in that lovely old-fashioned way. You've got this gorgeous open gate manual with this metal wand here. I mean this really is all you need. Oh and of course a face-off tape deck complete with highly tasteful tape collection down here. It doesn't feel particularly premium in here but it is very special. That badge in front of you, the seating position, the general ambiance of this car It's just wonderful, so have a good look, hold that thought, and we'll head over to the evolution. Right, so inside the Evoluto now and the first thing is it doesn't smell like the 90s. It smells like very expensive leather and Evoluto it pains to tell me that every single surface is either carbon fibre, it's either leather, it's either billet metal or you've got plenty of carpets down here and an alcantara headline. So it looks and smells and feels Expensive. Everywhere in this interior they have cut no corners. But it is essentially an entirely new interior design done by their in-house team led by Wayne Burgess. The dials straight in front of me, those are original dials. They've just been refurbished with this new carbon fibre binnacle around them. There's new air vents. They are in the same place, but they're a new design for the air vents. Hence, you've got these three. Circular dials in the middle like you get on the original but here they're sort of floating in midair with your nose lift button and your hazards and your window switches down here. Now this whole centre console again is brand new and the whole thing feels amazing. It's beautifully Machined out of metal has that really expensive feel and here's a nice little story. You see these switches down here, they're engraved with their function and then have what appears to be orange paint in them but no that is luminescent paint and back here we have four UV lights set into the roof behind us and when that shines they appear to glow. It's a better and more longer lasting solution than trying to backlight all these buttons down here. We've got two cupholders, which is always nice, and this open gate is the original one from the car, they've clearly polished it up, we've got this stick here with this kind of carbon fibre loop on top, it feels slightly higher than the stick that you get in the original, but it's in that perfect place, just next to your left knee, right there. And then in front of me, of course, this steering wheel, fantastic, really thin on the rim, which gives you that little bit of extra feel through it. I think there's a bit of an epidemic at the moment with modern car manufacturers making these fat, chunky steering wheels, which we absolutely hate. Oh, in terms of screens and infotainment, well, there isn't any. This is supposed to be peak analogue, this car, but you can option a phone holder. Down here, which can connect to the car via Bluetooth, you do have speakers and you can use your own nav. Although, there isn't a USB socket in here, so make sure you bring along a power bank if you're on a long journey and you're going to need your sat-nav. Is it a step on from the original? Yes. Massively. Does it feel like a million bucks? Well, does any car feel like a million bucks? It does feel Expensive it feels like attention to detail and no expense has been spared but the real test with this car the thing that will make this feel like it's worth all those hundreds of thousands of pounds that they're charging for it is what's happened under the skin how does it drive does it bring those old school 90s analog vibes and just turn them up to 11 with modern supercar dynamics let's find out Right, time to detail the chassis changes. First of all, the steering, which is still hydraulic, but the ratio has been reduced from 3.25 turns lock to lock to two. There's an entirely new rear subframe that can unplug and drop down, making what was previously major engine out maintenance a whole lot quicker and easier. Bits of carbon strengthening in the chassis and the carbon body, Up stiffness by 23% and fully re-engineered suspension includes new mounting points, upper and lower arms, uprights and three-way adjustable dampers. And thanks to all that carbon, the Evo Luto has a dry weight of 1,250 kilograms, 100 kilograms less than the original. Okay, back to Wales. Okay, let's start with the steering because that much quicker ratio makes... All the difference here, it's two turns lock to lock now, pretty much the same as you get in a 296 GTB but it doesn't feel overly light and hyperactive like the steering tends to do in modern Ferraris. There's just a lovely clarity to the feedback, it feels crisp and it feels direct. Okay, so you could take this car on track, but it is a car that's been designed primarily for the road. You can feel that straight away with the way it rides so beautifully. It's something I noticed when I drove the original 355 actually, just how compliant it was. And I was worried they were going to just shove stiff springs and dampers in this thing. Yeah it would have been flat and fast around the corners but it would have felt wooden but no, straight away you can feel the structure is so much stiffer. Everything feels tighter and when you've got that stiffer platform the suspension's got something to work off so it can be that much more supple. And when you've got that supple suspension you can get into this beautiful flow Down the road. So the car just breathes with all these humps and hollows and cambers and you don't need to be stretching the engine out too much. I'm just cruising here in third gear, fourth gear and then when you get your shot and the road straightens up a bit you can absolutely nail it. What a car! Grip too but not through big downforce numbers, wings and skirts and spoilers. Now this is good old-fashioned mechanical grip, properly sorted suspension geometry which means you can keep those fatter tyres in contact with the road more of the time. So this isn't a car that's been designed for lap times, 0-60s, top speed or big downforce numbers. It's all about the interactivity, it's about the analogue thrills and a little bit of theatre. It does feel Like a very exciting modern supercar, albeit seen through a 90s lens. It's a car that joins a long list of recent blockbuster restomod projects like the Chimera Evo 37 and Evo 38, the Singer DLS and the Eccentrica Diablo that take the genre to a whole new level. These cars are no longer extensions of the tuning community fitting high quality components and hoping for the best. They're properly engineered cars conceived from the ground up to produce the sharpest and most characterful driving experience possible while preserving the essence of the original. And that's precisely what's happened here. Look, I know there are going to be purists that are going to hate this car on principle. They're going to say it's a bastardisation of the 355 and that it costs a colossal amount of money, which it does. But look, I'm the biggest original 355 fan on the planet. And it's won me over. It's more fun than hypercars that have four times as much power. It sounds pretty much better than anything. It's essentially the car that Ferrari probably like to build itself, but they can't because they're being forced towards turbos and heavy, complicated hybrid systems. Look, the poster on my bedroom wall. It's always going to be the original 355. But when I close my eyes, the car that I'm going to dream about driving This one.