Ride for the Day!!
 

Friend of mine lent me his F430 for the day....dont get me wrong...I love my Box...but it now feels a bit tame...

...and you gave it back!

You should have done a quick engine swap!! :)

thats a nice and brave friend you got :D

I need better friends...

Y2BOX,

That's one hell of a friend you got there !

Nick

Note to self. Make new friends with sports cars they will lend to friends.

Dang, what's driving a Ferrari like?

The F430 was amazing, first thing I noticed was the sound (need to buy a sports exhaust for the box now!)...blipping the throttle makes heads turn....(if you get the chance blip the throttle going under a bridge!)took a while to get used to the paddle shift gears. The speed felt exactly like when I went from a normal car to the boxster...except this was from the boxster to the F430, and getting to XXXmph (for bruce!!)did not feel so bad, because it got there so quickly and back down again safely, with the boxster it does take a while to get to top speed and the risk becomes greater...the Ferrari did it in a flash...more controlled.
Loved the carbon fibre interior, the yellow rev counter, the glass cover to the engine, loved the switch on the steering wheel which you can turn to race mode.......best of all.......the sound.

I did take it kind of easy...did not want to stop future rides!!

Amazing ride... I would be lucky if a friend lent me a Fiero.

lol, I did a double take on the Fiero part.

That sounds like a good way to spend a day.

Very nice car - it's OK to have room in your heart for both.

I agree with your assessment. Actually what surprised me the most is that from a standstill, just a little bit of throttle causes the rev to jump to 4k, and the rev never seems to fall below 4k. The sound is really amazing. Unfortunately, no matter what you put into a boxster, it can never approach f430's sound.

Sound is such a huge deal. The sound of blipping the boxster throttle is one of the joys that sucked me in over the M roadsters I was comparing it with. One thing about the C6, despite all its power, it had a pathetic exhaust tone. Maybe the Z06's butterfly exhausts are the way to go..

-David

I got to drive the Maserati coupe with the same transmission in a situation similar to yours. There's a big difference between 400hp and 250hp! The Maser will certainly move quickly. The steering was overboosted, though, which really surprised me. Porsche's steering is much more natural and communicative.

I wasn't impressed with the F1 transmission personally. I prefer the involvement and control of the manual clutch. The feel of the shifts is nice, definitely superior to the automatic-based tiptronic, but I'm not a big fan of it in a sports car.

Bella Ferrari!
 

I bought my first mid-engined car (an NSX) after driving my Dad's 360 Spider. I probably put about 250 miles on that car over the course of a few visits, and they were the best miles of my life. I've since driven a couple Porsche Turbos, a Ford GT, Ferrari 575M and a bunch of Vettes. Nothing has really held a candle to the Ferrari 360 for the ultimate driving experience. I've yet to drive an F430, and until I can afford one myself (that's a big if) I probably won't. That's precisely why I'm back in a roadster. You can get all the horsepower you want, but if it's not mounted in the middle of Ferrari, you're just missing the whole supercar thing.

The Boxster S is as close to a 360 in steering feel and ride as I've ever experienced. Plus, it's got the great lightness and flingability of my old Miata and Dinan (signature car of course, not I have strut brace so it's a Dinan) Z3 2.5i.

The Ferrari V8 spiders are my absolute favorite cars in the world. Now, I could be tempted by a Zonda F Spider though.

On the upside, there are plenty of relatively low-cost aftermarket exhaust kits for the Vette that make it sound mean as hell. There is a lot to work with in that car.