slickcell
RMS Regular
- Messages
- 2,544
- Drives
- S5 3.0 V6
I bought my dream car….
After first sitting in a Ferrari 355 at around 5 years old, the dream was cemented and it never, ever changed.
When I was around 9 years old, the Ferrari 360 came out and a few years later, the Challenge Stradale. Since then, the Challenge Stradale occupied my bedroom wall and in later years, until this very day, my laptop screensaver as well. In fact, one of my dad’s good friends actually bought the first Challenge Stradale in Northern Ireland in 2003 and passed away the day after it arrived.
I promised myself this last 20+ years that I’d buy a Ferrari before I turned 33 and a couple of weeks ago, I realised that I’ve done too much messing around with kit cars, race cars and ‘half-decent’ daily’s….now it was time to put my money where my mouth was and buy my dream….
I looked at a few 360s, then a few 430s but this was the car that got me going. Obviously, a genuine Challenge Stradale is £160-200k, which I couldn’t afford but this particular car came up for less than half that and has had an astonishing amount of money spent on it in the last 4-5 years, converting it to Challenge Stradale specification.
The receipts folder for the Stradale conversion alone is eye-watering - he bought the car in 2017 and spent the value of the car again on its conversion. Obviously the bodywork is genuine Stradale, but all of the stradale-differentiating bits in the engine such as the AFMs, carbon airboxes, exhaust, ECU and TCU have been swapped for the Challenge Stradale items. Additionally, it is full Challenge Stradale underneath too, with all of the suspension items having been changed to genuine stradale….the arms, shock aborbers, the bushes and rose-joints etc too! Even the suspension ECU has been mapped with the stradale map as this apparently changes the handling drastically.
Challenge Stradale items aside, the car has extensive history, with all the service history markers done as per Ferrari’s recommendations and it had a full service this year too.
To me, the car is out of this world and even up until I got it home yesterday, it never sunk in that I owned it. Myself and @Marc flew over yesterday morning and made the trip from the midlands up to Cairnryan then home to my house, circa 350 miles. The day we got for it was just unreal, with dry weather for all but the last 20 or so miles coming towards Cairnryan. The car was just epic….didn’t set a foot wrong all day, not once. Well….I did, as i came off the boat and went to overtake a lorry and it got a little hairy but it was just a gentle reminder of what I was driving and to show it some manners lol
Anyway, I will let the pictures do the talking
The sound this car makes it just ridiculous. It has the remote-controlled valve in the exhaust and when opened, it is a complete symphony when on throttle and the auto-blipping/Rev-matching noises on downshift are other-worldly.
I’ve a few plans for the car - I was intending on changing the 18” Ferrari Challenge wheels that are on it for the 19” ones of the stradale but these are in fact (or so I’m led to believe), lighter than the stradale ones and having seen it in the flesh, I think it sits almost perfectly. I only want to space them out slightly but definitely won’t change them for now.
The seats are still the standard 360 seats - lovely of course but they don’t match the ‘CS’ theme of the car so I’ve ordered some custom-trimmed alcantara carbon fibre-backed Cobra Misano seats and I’m planning to have the dash retrimmed to match in alcantara as well. Other than that, I will just enjoy owning this thing.
Right, I’m away to look out the window….
After first sitting in a Ferrari 355 at around 5 years old, the dream was cemented and it never, ever changed.
When I was around 9 years old, the Ferrari 360 came out and a few years later, the Challenge Stradale. Since then, the Challenge Stradale occupied my bedroom wall and in later years, until this very day, my laptop screensaver as well. In fact, one of my dad’s good friends actually bought the first Challenge Stradale in Northern Ireland in 2003 and passed away the day after it arrived.
I promised myself this last 20+ years that I’d buy a Ferrari before I turned 33 and a couple of weeks ago, I realised that I’ve done too much messing around with kit cars, race cars and ‘half-decent’ daily’s….now it was time to put my money where my mouth was and buy my dream….
I looked at a few 360s, then a few 430s but this was the car that got me going. Obviously, a genuine Challenge Stradale is £160-200k, which I couldn’t afford but this particular car came up for less than half that and has had an astonishing amount of money spent on it in the last 4-5 years, converting it to Challenge Stradale specification.
The receipts folder for the Stradale conversion alone is eye-watering - he bought the car in 2017 and spent the value of the car again on its conversion. Obviously the bodywork is genuine Stradale, but all of the stradale-differentiating bits in the engine such as the AFMs, carbon airboxes, exhaust, ECU and TCU have been swapped for the Challenge Stradale items. Additionally, it is full Challenge Stradale underneath too, with all of the suspension items having been changed to genuine stradale….the arms, shock aborbers, the bushes and rose-joints etc too! Even the suspension ECU has been mapped with the stradale map as this apparently changes the handling drastically.
Challenge Stradale items aside, the car has extensive history, with all the service history markers done as per Ferrari’s recommendations and it had a full service this year too.
To me, the car is out of this world and even up until I got it home yesterday, it never sunk in that I owned it. Myself and @Marc flew over yesterday morning and made the trip from the midlands up to Cairnryan then home to my house, circa 350 miles. The day we got for it was just unreal, with dry weather for all but the last 20 or so miles coming towards Cairnryan. The car was just epic….didn’t set a foot wrong all day, not once. Well….I did, as i came off the boat and went to overtake a lorry and it got a little hairy but it was just a gentle reminder of what I was driving and to show it some manners lol
Anyway, I will let the pictures do the talking
The sound this car makes it just ridiculous. It has the remote-controlled valve in the exhaust and when opened, it is a complete symphony when on throttle and the auto-blipping/Rev-matching noises on downshift are other-worldly.
I’ve a few plans for the car - I was intending on changing the 18” Ferrari Challenge wheels that are on it for the 19” ones of the stradale but these are in fact (or so I’m led to believe), lighter than the stradale ones and having seen it in the flesh, I think it sits almost perfectly. I only want to space them out slightly but definitely won’t change them for now.
The seats are still the standard 360 seats - lovely of course but they don’t match the ‘CS’ theme of the car so I’ve ordered some custom-trimmed alcantara carbon fibre-backed Cobra Misano seats and I’m planning to have the dash retrimmed to match in alcantara as well. Other than that, I will just enjoy owning this thing.
Right, I’m away to look out the window….
for another week 
