Celebrating the Ferrari F355: more than ever, this analogue hero's a crowd-pleaser

It’s called Windy Hill Road and I’ve never heard of it. I know most of the Antrim coast but this is a little further south and inland, so doesn’t get the love reserved for its higher profile neighbour.

We prefer twists and turns, as a rule, and this is pretty much a long straight, 12 miles or so connecting Limavady to Coleraine beneath Binevenagh cliffs. But what it lacks in corner entertainment it more than makes up in peaks and troughs. It’s the sort of natural rollercoaster that could reintroduce you to your Ulster fry if you’re not careful. This is a serious chassis workout.

And it’s damp. Well, of course it is. We’re in the top northern corner of Ireland, an island whose landscape is a vibrant, almost psychedelic shade of green because it rains a lot. So although I knock the car down into third and give it some beans, it’s a carefully calibrated act, not the casual move you’d think little of in a modern supercar.

Photography: Mark Fagelson

Why? Two reasons, really. The Ferrari F355 is not a modern supercar. It has no traction control and the driver can switch off the ABS. Imagine. On a wet road, such as we currently find ourselves on, things can become officially interesting rather quickly. It’s also my car, purchased 15 years ago and co-owned with my friend, Damon. Yes, we did what many people dream of doing but rarely manage – we bought a Ferrari. You know that famous Mark Twain aphorism, that only two things in life are certain, death and taxes? Well, here’s a third. A classic Ferrari always costs three times as much to service as you think it will.

It’s also not a car you’d readily stick a bunch of miles on. Too highly strung, surely. But the offer of kicking off Top Gear magazine's 400th issue relay by taking the F355 back to Northern Ireland – it was first registered there in 1995 – was too good to refuse. You might recognise ACZ 3045. It was one of the 30 Top Gear award winners that gathered at Brooklands for issue 376, and performed perfectly until its alternator expired with a bang about 20 minutes before I got home. At least it didn’t do it on the M25.

Still, as we head north towards Liverpool to catch the ferry to Belfast, there’s no escaping the fact that this car is 30 years old. It’s an Italian sports car that’s 30 years old. As well as the above average risk of mechanical misadventure, this also brings a few other factors into play. 

The driving position is as per the script. The seat is set low, the wheel slightly canted, the pedals offset in a way designed to induce long-term chiropractic distress. Yes, there’s aircon, but it has the lung power of an emphysemic mouse. The rubberised switchgear has gone sticky (standard issue problem for 1990s Ferraris). The engine is the entertainment, the weedy radio/cassette player easily overwhelmed (though I do have some tapes with me). I also find myself talking to the car. You don’t do that sort of thing in a BYD. In so many ways, the F355 has become part of my life, and I love it.

It also represents an important chapter in the Ferrari story. When Luca Montezemolo returned to Maranello in 1991, he admitted that the cars the company made following Enzo Ferrari’s death weren’t good enough. The 348 was steadily improved but it was the F355 that gave notice that Ferrari was back. Extensive wind tunnel testing meant more aero efficiency, and the V8 was enlarged and given a five valve head for additional power and drivability. A heat exchanger warmed the gearbox oil more efficiently.

Montezemolo figured it was surely better if Ferrari owners actually drove their cars, and the F355 was generally more user friendly than its unloved predecessor.

Pininfarina’s redesign was also masterful, softening the 1980s excesses and reintroducing curves. It’s a crowd pleaser all right, more than ever. Factor in the surging demand for analogue vibes and suddenly the F355 is a hot ticket. This one also has the open gate manual gearbox, although the F355 was the first Ferrari production car to feature the flappy paddleshift. (Floppy, too, which is why the manual commands a considerable premium.)

It’s truly one of the best drives I’ve ever had in the car

I doubt that my car is making the claimed 375bhp, but as an early example it has the superior Bosch Motronic 2.7 ECU. The car world is full of great sounding machinery, but few things rival the ripening ‘bwwarrrpp’ noise an F355 emits as it scopes out the territory between four and 8,000rpm in third or fourth gear. If you get it singing it remains eye wideningly fast, too.

Northern Ireland has the roads to exploit its performance. Not just that, it’s also lightly populated compared to the mainland. Sheep outnumber people up here, I suspect. For our 100 miles, the plan is to pick up the road near Portrush – home to the famous golf course – and follow it as it hugs the coast past the Giant’s Causeway.

Then on down towards Ballycastle, Cushendall and Carnlough, where the newly refurbished Harbourview whiskey hotel will be base camp. Bushmills, of course, is another global attraction, a famous distillery that draws Japanese and American visitors by the busload. Our hotel has a 46-year-old Bushmills for sale that costs £10k per bottle, or £800 a shot. Liquid gold. My drinking days are over, but a man can still dream.

In the bad old days, at the height of the Troubles, the Antrim coast somehow still offered some respite. Even when the weather’s elemental, your mind turns to higher, more poetic things up here, and not just where you can buy a North Face puffer in a hurry. Before the coast, though, I’ve got to collect photographer Mark from the airport. He wants to see Belfast. That means an early morning blast from Carnlough to Broughshane, skirting the magnificent Glens of Antrim.

Here’s the other thing about this part of the world – head a few miles inland from the wild Atlantic way and you’re into incredible countryside before you know it. This particular stretch is Circuit of Ireland rally stuff, with great sight lines and undulating sections, but also lots of smoothly surfaced tarmac. I pass maybe four cars in 13 miles, safely setting up overtakes from some way back, and revelling in the Ferrari’s innate balance and mid-engined poise. It’s truly one of the best drives I’ve ever had in the car. And also proof again that any more than, say, 400bhp could be considered wasteful, provided you’re not wrestling two tonnes plus down the road.

Northern Ireland’s partisan politics means you still only have to scratch the surface to uncover institutionalised a**holery. But Belfast, once surrounded by a ring of steel and full of no-go areas, now teems with curious tourists and has a vibrant, almost bohemian atmosphere. There’s lots of history. We meet a woman called Debbie who’s completing a fabulous mural on one of the peace walls. The police refer to these as “interface” areas, and I remember covering a riot at one in 2010. But that’s another story.

In total, 21 miles of 20ft high steel sheet separate entrenched Nationalist and Loyalist communities in areas whose names – the Falls and Shankill – were once globally notorious. There’s housebuilding going on directly across the way. “The builders let me use their scaffolding so I can reach the bits at the top of the mural,” Debbie tells me. “They’ve been amazing.” There were plans to dismantle the walls in 2023, but those plans have come and gone. Peace here is intact but sadly still fragile. Physical and emotional barriers remain.

It steers and brakes with a fidelity that calls into question three decades of progress

Less than an hour later, we’re back in the Glens. There’s not a soul to be seen, and the scene is serene in every direction. The Ferrari’s engine idles a little grumpily before I shut it off. We’re near the Orra Bridge crossing, high enough to watch the clouds roll in and darken ominously. If there’s a touch of Middle Earth about it, that figures – Northern Ireland’s rebirth has been partially built on its suitability as a filming location. Game of Thrones was largely shot here, the famous Dark Hedges half an hour away a major draw for the show’s bonkers fans. The Titanic Quarter in Belfast, previously better known for some old ship or other, now houses some of Europe’s largest film studios. The rain holds off, the clouds magically disperse.

The coastline up here is hard to beat. In fact, it reminds me of some sections of the PCH on the Californian coast, but still sufficiently under the radar to provide visceral driving entertainment. We pass the entrance to the Giant’s Causeway but leave the tourists to it. It’s a little busier along here, but nothing the F355 can’t handle. It’s easy to see out of and blissfully easy to place on the road. It steers and brakes with a fidelity that calls into question three decades of progress, ebbing and flowing in perfect sync with the road itself. All your key touch points overflow with information. It also doesn’t miss a beat.

At the reveal of the new Amalfi recently, one of the company’s bosses wearily answered a question about manual boxes by saying that you could always buy a classic Ferrari if you wanted one of those. Well, I did, and though it won’t do much for your Fiorano lap time, the interplay between a naturally aspirated V8 and an old school box is a thing of wonder up here. Hell, you don’t even have to drive the F355 quickly to have fun in it.

Ferrari F355 Berlinetta

Price new/now: £83,031/£110,000
Powertrain: 3496cc nat asp V8, 375bhp, 268lb ft 
Transmission: 6spd manual, RWD 
Performance: 0–62mph in 4.7secs, 183mph 
Economy: 16mpg, 395g/km CO2
Weight: 1,350kg (dry)