1994 Ferrari 348 Spider Encapsulates Tradition and Progress

From the December 1993 issue of Car and Driver.

On first touch, this looked like one of those fantasies that might have been better left unfulfilled. You know how some experiences just don’t play as well in real time as they did in your imagination? Like winning the lottery or taking Michelle Pfeiffer to dinner, driving as legendary a car as a Daytona Spyder would almost have to be a letdown, considering the wildly inflated expectations going in.

We had rounded up a 1973 365GTS/4 to serve as a historic touchstone in exam­ining Ferrari’s new 348 Spider, and for the first mile we weren’t sure it would live up to its reputation. The steering managed to be both loose and heavy, the car nosed into bends lazily on its tall, bagel-shaped tires, the shifter gating was vague, and the six Weber carburetors had the V-12 stumbling and staggering below 3000 rpm.

“Well, it’s a period piece,” we thought charitably.

But gradually something happened as we herded the bellowing beast over Ange­les Crest Highway high above L.A. The thing came alive. And we took root in it. Car and driver came to an understanding, like a hand and a new fielder’s glove.

Barely thinking about it, we took to working just the bottom half of the sharply angled steering wheel, passing the rim from hand to hand. We learned to hold the throttle just so for starting and to coax the revs past three grand before rolling open all those Weber butterflies. We eventually had a mental map of the wide-gated shift pattern. And our corner-entry rhythm attuned itself to the Daytona’s deliberate, dead-predictable manners.

Like every Ferrari we’ve driven, the Daytona came into its own as it went faster. As speed and cornering intensity increased, the car worked better and felt sweeter—the steering more alive, the chassis more nimble, the revs picking up cleanly. You could interpret this to mean a Ferrari is tuned for rapid running. But maybe the car just needs to know you’re serious before it decides to cooperate.

What does this have to do with the 1994 348 Spider? Everything. Because Ferrari tradition both graces and burdens every product of the little Maranello factory. While a 1990 Ferrari must respect mod­ern standards of comfort, build quality, and driving ease and meet mandates for crashworthiness and emissions, it also must remain true to a flavor and a feel estab­lished in simpler days. Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, new chairman and chief executive officer of Ferrari SpA, put the dilemma succinctly: “I want Ferraris to be cars of the future, but with a long tradition.”

Results have been mixed. The prevailing criticism—voiced as recently as our March 1993 test of a 348tb coupe—tend to be that the per­formance does not live up to the promise of the stratospheric price and that such bothersome eccentricities as stiff shift-lever movement through the traditional chromed gate are simply not worth the trouble.

Through a combination, perhaps, of mechanical upgrades and closer-tolerance assembly, our fly-yellow 348 Spider was a much nicer, less idiosyncratic machine than the black 348tb we drove in March. Lighter to the touch yet more stable at sweaty-palm speeds, the Spider asked us to put up with much less. So we could better enjoy what it had to offer.

Which includes, now, open-air motor­ing. The new convertible top is cleverly engineered, it looks good up or down, and it operates with a simple one-latch-and­-one-lever process that can be managed from the driver’s seat if you contort a bit. Wind buffeting in the open cockpit is quite tolerable. With the top up, wind noise does not seriously compete with that symphonic engine note until past 100 mph.

At any speed approaching the car’s maximum of 154, wind roar does become deafening. For that reason, as well as struc­tural-rigidity concerns, we prefer solid-­roof bodies for really fast cars. (We’re hoping the Viper GTS sees production.) Yet for a choptop revision to an existing coupe design, the new 348 Spider is uncommonly successful. There is just the merest whiff of body flex over really bad bumps in fast turns, and this impressive rigidity comes with no weight penalty we can detect. Our Spider weighed 3290 pounds, compared with the 348tb’s 3292.

Various spec changes, introduced on 1993’s 348 Serie Speciale right after our test of the 348tb, are carried over to the Spi­der. Less restrictive muffling raises engine output from 300 hp at 7000 rpm to 310 at 7200, and slightly shorter overall gearing gives the engine a little more leverage (the transfer-gear ratio between the longitudi­nal engine and the transverse gearbox is lowered from 1.09:1 to 1.22:1). The fat Pirelli P Zero tires are set nearly two inches farther apart in back, and this track increase, plus some fiddling of suspension settings, may explain our Spider’s improved stability.

The car’s performance is plenty strong: 5.3 seconds to 60 mph, 13.8 to 100, 14.0 seconds at 101 mph in the quarter-mile. But you will be disappointed if you need it to outrun certain cars that cost vastly less than its $131,090—a Corvette ZR1 or a Viper, for instance. And there are some quirks. The shifter is stiff, and in our car the lever scraped on the gate, making one-­two and three-four shifts go chi-kee-chank. But a familiar hand can live with it, and the action improves as miles accumulate. The motorized passive belts are also a nuisance, but an airbag would probably ruin the trademark three-spoke steering wheel with prancing-horse horn button. (Bags are promised for the American-market 456GT next year, and we’re curious to see how they’ll be done.)

Beyond that, the 348 Spider needs no special allowances. The seats are firmly supportive and comfy enough, interior trimwork is clean and straight, and clam­bering in and out of the low, wide cockpit is not unduly challenging. There is even remarkably good outward visibility for a mid-engine design (though the inside mir­ror can block the driver’s view in a fast right-hander). By all these mundane mea­sures of refinement, the 348 scores well and represents vast improvement on its 308/328 forebears.

More to the point, the car is loads of fun to drive. Stiff, low, and lively, the Spi­der feels crisp and sharply maneuverable on back roads yet quite compliant on the freeway and around town. Steering is mar­velously tight and positive. Routine course corrections are more a matter of pressure at the leather-covered rim than actual wheel movement. In the mountains, the car pivots around its centralized, mid-engine mass and snaps in and out of turns adroitly. Gentle, protective understeer is the prevailing cornering attitude, and though you can feel terminal oversteer out there waiting, you really need to be on a racetrack to explore that transition. The limit is high enough and the dividing line thin enough to make tail-swinging antics fool­hardy on public roads. Wherever you drive it, you have a friend in the 348’s spectacular brakes. They’re strong, firm at the pedal, and easily modulated.

That 3405cc V-8 shrieking away behind your shoulder delivers smoothly building power and clean response, with­out a spit or stutter. And it happily uses all of the available 7500 rpm. At an indi­cated—if optimistic—60 mph, you can pick your revs and racket, depending on the output you want: 2900 rpm in fifth, 3800 in fourth, 5050 in third, or 7400 in second. Engine noise is a key part of the Ferrari presence, and even though the 348 lacks the harrowing banshee wail of the Daytona’s pipes, its busy, mechanized intensity makes the point.

The eye-frying droptop 348 attracts attention like a high-rise fire. And that’s just one trait it shares with the twenty-year­-old Daytona. As different as the Spider and Spyder are—cylinder count, engine loca­tion, exhaust howl, weight and balance, tire and suspension technology, comput­erization, ergonomics, and so on—there is a thread of heredity running through them. The Pininfarina curves. The high-strung engine sounds. The steering that livens with speed. The gate-guided shifters that reward a practiced touch.

In the end, both of “our Ferraris”—the new Spider and the veteran Spyder­—enchanted us. Driving them did not fail to live up to the billing, despite our tall expec­tations. Would a lottery jackpot and sup­per with Ms. Pfeiffer do as well? Maybe. But “my check” and “my treat” still won’t resonate the way “my Ferrari” does.

Daytona Spyder the Archetypal Ferrari Street Racer

The new 348 Spider represents the first two-seat Ferrari convertible since the 365GTS/4 Daytona Spyder of the early Seventies (the Mondial Cabriolet is a two­-plus-two). We wanted a Daytona along for perspective when we drove the new car, and Cris Vandagriff at Ferrari of Beverly Hills graciously arranged this beautiful, original, 25,000-mile 1973 customer car for us. The last of the front-engined Ferrari sports cars, the big, noisy, V-12-pow­ered Daytona holds a special place in the Ferrari pantheon. Nowhere is the Ferrari heritage—a torch the new car must carry—so vividly embodied.

The Daytona’s journey to the U.S. was a difficult one. The federal government ruled that it wasn’t clean enough at the tailpipes. Its covered headlamps also ran afoul of U.S. laws and almost forced the Italian carbuilder to install shockingly ugly quad headlamps on the Daytona’s sleek snout.

But by 1971, Ferrari had cooked up a U.S.-specification Daytona that was soothing to the eyes (its headlamps were covered) and acceptable to government pipe-sniffers (a sacrifice of about 10 hp). The detuning hardly muzzled the 4.4-liter V-12. Car and Driver tested a well-restored Daytona couple in April 1984 and found it could sprint through the quarter-mile in 13.4 seconds at 108 mph. The GTB/4 originally stickered at $19,500 with the Spyder selling at a $6000 premium.

The Daytona competed in touring-car races with fair success, but one of its more famous exploits came at the hands of C/D‘s ever-game Brock Yates. In 1971, teamed with Dan Gurney, Brock whipped a Daytona coupe across these United States—from Manhattan’s Red Ball garage to the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach, California—in 35 hours and 54 minutes to win the second Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash. Over 2876 miles, they averaged 80 miles per hour, got 12.2 miles per gallon, and showed vastly greater style per mile than any other competitor.

Is It ‘Spyder’ or ‘Spider’?

We wondered why Ferrari changed the spelling of “Spyder” to “Spider” for the new 348 roadster, but even people connected with the Italian automaker couldn’t provide an answer.

In the process, someone here asked, “Why would anyone call a car a spider anyway?” Good question.

In the 1700s, the phrase “spider phaeton” described a lightweight, horsedrawn passenger carriage with a folding fabric top to keep out the elements. The wheels were spindly, and in some other upscale, enclosed models the rear wheels arched almost to the carriage’s roofline. this presumably reminded passersby of spiders, whose legs often rise high above the insect’s body.

So what’s that got to do with a two-seat roadster? Who knows?

Expanding the use of the term “spider” to cars is said to have begun in the Thirties in Italy, where rough two-seat competition racers were called spiders. So the word must be English, since the Italian word for spider isn’t spider—it’s ragno. Italian automakers Cisitalia and Siata used the term to describe some of their cars, and in 1953 Siata switched to the “Spyder” spelling for unannounced reasons. This is confusing because the Italian language traditionally does not use the letter “y.” Maybe it just looks less repellent with a “y.”

Meanwhile, Porsche in 1954 was about to export a zoomy race car which was stuck with this mouthful designation: “Type 550/1500RS.” American importer Max Hoffman politely suggested instead the simple name of “Spyder.”

And that’s where the word comes from. We think. Maybe.