Convertibles - Does the negative attention ever make you wish for a coupe?

Which club did you end up going to?

 

If you are put off by being the center of attention and talking to strangers, then a 355 Spider is the wrong car for you. Honestly it is like driving a parade float. I’ve posted here several times about my experience (including a year of nearly daily driving it) but here are some points in no particular order:

• Universally, people love the 355. Thumbs up, waving at nearly every light.
• Nearly every fill up was a conversation. People would jog over to see it.
  
• You already hit it, but in Las Vegas people asked what it cost, how fast it went, and how fast I’d driven it; these were daily questions. Usually from their window at lights. But also when I parked.
• Women talked to me more in that car than any other. But also old men, young guys and especially young black guys. Black women shouted flirty stuff, and once dropping my cousin at his hotel some Brazilian girls jumped right into the car and asked for pictures.
  
• The roof mechanism is a major PITA. Mine had the motor removed because it’s not worth 15% if the car’a value when you can prop it up manually. But you have to move both seats first all the way forward, which means stop, get out, move the seats, get back in, pop it into place and snap one side, go around the car and do the other. I drove mine like a barchetta and just never put the roof up unless I got caught in the very rare rain. Maybe 10 times in 4 years.
• that said it was fun as a parade float in a small town:
• Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Spider Spider Spider. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

Right there with you @RonHoward. But it’s us not them. It’s the gremlins in my head telling me everyone is staring at my pretentious self at stop lights and at night with headlights shining on me. They don’t care and they’re not thinking what I think they are. But even if they were, get over it! I couldn’t so I went with the coupe and won’t go back. Cracking the windows gave me the breeze and the sound. Got tired of worrying about the roof mechanism in my Cali as well.


Sent from my iPad using FerrariChat.com mobile app

 

I haven't gotten to drive mine much yet, but I plan to tell people I'm a kept woman when they ask what I do for work.

 

Apparently kept in fine style at that!

 

Sells his 360 to buy a 355 for the "driving experience" but hates the "attention". LOL. Sure. Buy a Porsche or a Cayman GT4 if you like the mid engine. Technically superior driving experience in every way without the "attention". Though I suspect that it's not the same when you're not in a Ferrari. Wants it to be a Ferrari.. but doesn't want it to be a Ferrari.

I never have people asking questions like that.. because I don't care if they do. Smiling when you drive it and focusing on other things in life than if someone will ask an annoying question has worked for me.. or the OP can go back to the Vette. Maybe a C8.. nobody will care that you're in it.

 

Funny. I have done the same in reverse. I had the top down in the Cali, stopped at red light, and someone asked me how much it cost. I told them, I don't know, my wife bought it for me! They said "You're wife is awesome!" I agreed.

T

 

You really shouldn't care about any of the above. Don't take people's interest in your car so seriously. Just lighten up a little and enjoy the drive if as you say you "like to drive." It might be that you're not interested in engaging with people on any level. Think about it and just enjoy your car.

 

I look at it from the other side. When I see a “rare” car, I tend to be like a kid at a car show. I compliment the car, ask if I can take a pic and try and engage some conversation. When I see a 458 or R8 I never say “ya I’ve got one of those too”. It feels like a ***** move. I just assume people are proud of their machine and like to engage. I’m an excited enthusiast even if one is sitting in my garage. Life’s too short not to meet new people.

 

I wouldn't have bought a Ferrari if I couldn't have had a coupe, so each to their own. In 7 years I've been asked what did it cost twice, both times by 8 year olds. I answer I can't remember but I can remember telling them the truth. I started saving when I was your age. I will say I was surprised how much attention the car gets. It's obviously part of the deal and you need to live with it, or move on.

 

you are obviously a good bit younger than me. I’ve forgotten what my car cost.

 

I learned a nice response to the how much does it cost question. I simply tell them it cost me over 20 years of studying and hard work.

 

You see dozens of exotics a day in central London where I live. Still, venture out a little into the more, uh, socialist areas, and you can be subsumed by cyclists. I cycle myself and it’s a good activity. But on a sunny day with roof down, some cyclists tend to throw random insults at you when you are alongside them in a nice 430 Spider. I have been spat at once, but only after the guy on the bike got bored of insulting me and took offence to my observation that if he worked hard he could have one too (that was deliberately provocative of me and I probably regret it).

then there was the time in Regents Park when a cyclist called out alongside me (I was giving him plenty of space, always do), it was a work colleague. Someone who knew I had a Ferrari, good friend. I stopped briefly and we chatted, probably for five seconds, another cyclist came along on the other side, with his two kids. He assumed that I was having an argument with the other cyclist and so in his most outraged voice shouted in my ear,”leave him alone, polluter!”, and cycled off with his two kids behind.

that kind of thing feels much more close up with the roof down. But if you feel you are in a dodgy area, all you have to do is shut the roof, and you are no more flashy or exposed than any other Ferrari.

The only time I have felt genuinely threatened by being in a convertible in over 30 years of driving in various countries is once when I pulled out in front of someone in a genuinely bad area of London in the 1990s. She, a learner driver, panicked and didn’t brake, hit my front wheel (again, my fault, though the view from the side road was obstructed by a van). He, her very fleshy and irate father, jumped out of the passenger seat, ran at my car and with me bemused and pinned in by my seat belt, let fly a roundhouse punch to my head, through the non existent roof. If he had connected, it would have hurt, but I ducked and I still remember the sproing of the headrest as his fist bounced off it.

anyway, long answer: buy a convertible Ferrari. Close the roof when you need, whether bad weather or people.