I received this email from a friend visiting Sydney: "Dave: Can you post over on the Ferrari boards to see if anyone had a black 360 in a shop near Woolloomooloo/Darlinghurst in Sydney, Australia in the last week? I was walking down the street in the evening and see this black 360 pull up to an intersection and proceed to do a bunch of Nascar-style burning donuts in the middle of the intersection. The car then drove a half block down the street and into a foreign car repair facility. I'm thinking that it was the techs or the son of the owner of the place taking the car out for a short joy ride. They didn't look like the owners of the car, and the place where they took it looked like it was a place such a car would be taken for service rather than parked there by the owner." Anyone own up to this car?
LOL! They were testing the NASCAR Burnout settings of the new clutch, tires, gearbox and differential they had just installed................ or NOT!!!!!!! Pretty good catch!
Well, Scuderia Veloce has their showroom on William Street, and IIRC the shop entrance is around the corner (Bourke Street?). This would be Woolloomooloo for all intents and purposes. Also I recall a Maser shop in that area, and their used to be (maybe still) a high end hire car shop on William Street as well. We rented the yellow 355 spider in 2000 from them. Wouldn't like to think the boys at SVM are lighting up the tyres on a customer car but.... Cheers Kevin
The only other shop (besides SVM) in Bourke St is a tyre shop called Spinnig Wheels. The Maser shop is two streets parallel to bourke (towards the city)
has the exotic car hire place gone then Ants ? Use to be on the corner of Crown and William st I think
well...mystery solved, apparently....here's the goss....... "It was Phil Griffin's Black 360 Challenge Stradale. Apparantly it was Phil was doing the donuts... "
No thats still there. but that is more on the main street, so I can't see that place being the source of this. Anyway, as Aircon, says, puzzle solved
I was driving behind this car today about lunchtime over the city west link heading towards the anzac bridge Image Unavailable, Please Login
What I forgot to mention in the previous post that the car in the picture is the same black challege stradale.It had sponsor stickers all over it and Griffins name on the windscreen.It was just coincidental that I was reading this thread yesterday and saw the car in question today!
Nice candid pic. Nothing like catching them in the wild! Does anyone know how many 360s there are in Sydney?
This is also a funny topic as I was looking at the used car section of www.drive.com andwondered why there was so many 360s for sale.13 in NSW,9 in VIC,2 in QLD and 1 in SA.Wonder why alot of owners are selling?Didn't like the car,bored or repossesion!If you were wanting to buy one it would be a buyers market I suspect.
Hi guys, That would be Phil's 360 Stradale which competed in the East Coast Targa a couple of weeks ago. We competed in a 2004 WRX STi and I have plenty of pics and stories from that event - anyone interested? If so I'll put up new pages on my car site - www.findmap.com.au/alexm/cars I had several friends in 360's in that event and one of them copped 50+ litres of bad PULP which took all day to clean fuel lines, filters and injectors on the roadside and he *just* made it to final event on day 4 which was Mt Panorama.. Luckily 4 support techs from SVM were there on hand to do the work roadside. Another incident was a Maranello bottoming out, losing sump plug and dropping tons of oil on the road which the following M3 hit, spun, rolled and wrote off - luckily all ok. Not so lucky was driver in GT3 with fatality on a bumpy narrow bridge combining with dropaway and bend all being factors with high speed. We did a really neat GPS based system tracking our times etc and we drove to in the event to excellent effect to drive to a plan. It enabled us to drive hard, button off on potentially dangerous sections, and sink the boot in and knowing to 2 decimals places how far we were + or - from target stage time meaning we could take it easy when judged necessary and hit our stride in all other sections and *still* come in on the ideal time. "speed with safety" I call it.. Alex.
Hey Alex, thanks for that info. When I saw the GT3 crash on the news, my jaw dropped. I saw the co-driver made it out, I hope hes getting better. RIP to the driver. I would love to enter a tarmac rally one day, do you do any other racing with your STi, eg GTP? have you been in the Targa? I'm surprised people risk such exotics like maranellos on tarmac rallys where the margin for error is quite small.
Hi Max, I drove in first NSW Dutton Rally in a friend's GT-R (this year's East Coast Targa was also a friend's car) - nice of both to invite me to share the driving - but apart from that been in no other comp but have done a ton of drive days and skid pan practice etc. I aim to do Targa Tassie sometime - was invited to be nav this year - and am working on "lower levels" at the moment to get a solid foundation together as it is *very* dangerous to do open comp speed with trees, rocks and imperfect roads so I want to get doing (slightly) slower events sorted first. (I guess you *could* enter Targa Tassie and deliberately choose a slower, older class.. but do you really want to do that or go in something modern? ;-) You are right when you say "little margin for error", esp for expensive exotics, so East Coast Targa is divided into several classes such as "Comp" and "Touring" (think very fast country run) and Touring is further divided into "Spirited" and "Leisurely" each with lowered target times - so you don't have to push past a comfort level which *you* select. This gives the perfect setup for taking that something special on beautiful undulating country roads and pedal it just like Enzo (and Ferry) intended. The cops manning the road closures we spoke to were friendly and the event was well organised and we will be back again next year. Alex.
Hey Alex, you should get the facts before posting something so accusative. You are correct that a Maranello 575 did lose oil from a broken oil pressure sensor. That was Lindsay Hughes' Ferrari. However, despite what was being said around the tail end of the field, I spoke to Phil Latham, the driver of the M3, who came equal 3rd with me last year on Monday last week about his roll over. I asked Phil what he thought happened and he told me that he believed that it was a mechanical failure in his car. He replaced a sump guard recently and he believed that this wasn't attached properly. After the accident he went back over the area where he skidded and he found the sump guard lying on the road. So, his theory is that he skidded on the guard which caused him to go into the bank and rolled. That was his recollection. He certainly didn't say 'I skidded on the oil on the road'". It's really unprofessional for you to accuse Lindsay of dropping oil which caused the M3's accident. Imagine if you were driving the 575 and you read this on a public forum. Just be a bit thoughtful before posting.
I'm sorry you thought it was "accusative".. nothing of the sort I can assure you! Lindsay's a nice guy and I think you might be taking it a bit from the wrong angle and I'm sorry if you thought that was the case. We were in the next few cars following, we were warned of the presence of oil on the stage as we rolled up to the start line and were keeping an eye out for it. As we came across the engine underbelly/sump guard on the side of the road we saw a lot of oil on the road spread in big splash initially and trailing for perhaps 100m and within 100m or so after the very bent M3 with the guys holding up the "OK" sign as we slowed to see if they needed assistance. Seemed to us at the time to be a very logical deduction and this was borne out by talks with other competitors after the stage and that evening. As we were at all different accommodation in the evening and with 240 drivers and co-drivers I did not come across the people in question - so apologies to them if need be. Coincidentally my co-driver has a farm in the area and he drives this road to and from Sydney all the time and BOTH his daughters have had accidents on that very section, including a roll-over and the council have been approached by many to have the bends in question better signposted with warnings. So I think between the oil, possible breakages and inherent problem area there's enough confusion as to what had happened. I was merely relaying it from our perspective including feedback and info from others - thanks for sharing of the additional detail as I'd like to get it right. With the PULP mess in town I went to the repair shop where a visiting mate's tank was getting drained and the M3 was in the back - what a mess and I'm glad they're ok no matter what the cause. Cheers ;-) Alex.
Hi Alex, I was just setting the record straight as I agree that it was a reasonable hypothesis to have given the oil and debris on the road. It still might have been the cause of the accident, but Phil certainly didn't attribute his lost of traction to oil. It was probably coincidence rather than causation. Please put your pictures up, my photos are here: http://www.thelows.org/cars/ECTarga2004/ and http://www.thelows.org/cars/ect/ Cheers
