Performance Art

By PAUL DEAN

July 20, 1990 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Ferrari builds motor cars in much the same way Claude Monet painted landscapes--not to please the populace, but more to satisfy self, a technique and a coterie.

Mellowed by mystique and myth, living very high off racing legends, its reputation secured by a product-appreciation rate indeed close to that of Impressionist art, Ferrari sees no need to advertise its cars.

Nor does this Italian company have a public relations representative in the United States.

The year 1990 is halfway into history. Yet Ferrari is just now getting around to introducing its 348 series sports car that actually was built last year but will still cost $103,400. Without a radio. Without a spare.

All of which supports a sales-and-marketing rationale which seems to be this: Simply getting a Ferrari is the best deal a buyer can make.

Despite such indifference, Ferrari sells everything it makes and may very well have been back-ordered since 1949.

* A barely used Ferrari Testarossa currently costs $100,000 more than a new Testarossa. Because all new Testarossas have been sold out for the next few years.

* A really used Ferrari--a 250 GTO race car built in 1962--recently was bought by a Japanese collector for $14.6 million. GM should find such profit in selling 28-year-old cars.

* Now the 1989-cum-1990 Ferrari 348ts is dribbling into Southern California showrooms. If you want one from Hollywood Sport Cars, don’t expect to be impressing tourists on Melrose any time soon. “We got a couple of (deliveries) for June, but we don’t know about July yet, and August is a long way off,” said general manager Cris Vandagriff. “We’re sold out three years in advance.”

Said a sales representative for Newport Imports of Newport Beach: Order your Ferrari 348 now. Pick it up some time after Memorial Day. That’s Memorial Day 1996.

An obvious question: Is there anything in this world worth a six-year wait?

The definite answers: Mr. or Ms. Right. Blue-eyed twins. Peace in Northern Ireland. A quit-claim deed to Santa Barbara.

Also a Ferrari 348ts.

And not because it is an outrageously expensive car, a known quickener of pulses and envy. Nor because Magnum PI made it a virility heightener. But simply because a Ferrari is the best at what it was designed to do.

Forget cost and image. Consider only purpose, craftsmanship and inexorable evolution.

By such measurement, the Rolls-Royce is the superlative of rich, regal transportation. At the other end of that scale, the humble, snuffling, pirouetting Hyster forklift becomes the ultimate example of vehicular utility.

Ferrari, like no other motor car, assumes its place among the pure by being constructed around the lusty essence of a thinly disguised sports-racing car.

Or as Enzo Ferrari explained before his death in 1988: “ La Ferrari was born with racing and with racing it progressed and developed. Can the automobile deny its origins? I don’t think so.”

And the urgent pedigree of the new 348--from the first ripping snort of its 290-horsepower engine to the initial tug of broad tires biting like pit bulls--remains an instantaneous suggestion to motor somewhere in a secure but horrendous hurry. Preferably beneath a helmet.

Ferrari’s 348ts and 348tb (for transversale spyder , or targa, and transversale berlinetta , or coupe) replace the enormously successful 308/328 series.

They were handsome, powerful, fast and desirable. Yet not an impossible act to follow. Ferrari simply has crafted a successor that is better looking, stronger, faster and thoroughly irresistible.

Styling, naturally, is by Pininfarina and sculptured heavily from aluminum and composites. It is a grand softening of the 308/328’s swoopier lines and sharper edges, retaining enough of the old to satisfy those thinking of moving up, but adding touches of today for anyone intent on purchasing a milestone of the ‘90s.

The Testarossa’s air intakes that feed left- and right-side radiators have been transferred to the 348. But they are smaller, aren’t so obtrusive and are much less suggestive of cheese graters.

Like the ears and orthodontics of Britain’s royal family, the sloped nose, chin dam and hunkered-down derivatives of all modern Ferraris are with the 348.

Yet there are distinctions. The 348 runs on 17-inch wheels (compared to 16-inchers on the 328) that fill the wells better than Schwarzenegger fills a work shirt.

The car is taller, wider and with a longer wheelbase than the 328. Overhangs are shorter, which further increases that crouch with the whole appearing blunter, more purposeful.

Incredibly, amid all these aesthetics, there are uglies.

The side air scoops are formed from composite panels screwed into the doors. The screw heads are Phillips, black, quite exposed and stick out like four zits on a bare shoulder.

The grille is also a yawning illusion, a dummy. It catches nothing but bugs and slow sparrows because the car’s radiators are in its flanks where they breathe through the door intakes.

But that’s the classical look. Tradition dies kicking and struggling. Until the world gives up starched underwear and buttonholes in lapels, Ferrari likely won’t give up grilles that go nowhere.

Looks, however, are the least of the 348.

Bore and stroke of Ferrari’s 32-valve, V-8 engine have been increased with displacement improving from 3.1 to 3.4 liters. Changes in lubrication, electronic engine management and the design and layout of intake manifolds combine to increase power from 260 horsepower to 290.

The 348 remains a mid-engined car. But the engine is now set north to south and longitudinally, instead of east to west and transversely, and that allows more room for improved things.

A new gearbox and transmission (actually a carry-over from a Ferrari Formula 1 racing car) is now mounted behind the engine instead of beneath it. So the entire power and timpani section has been lowered to reduce the car’s center of gravity by about 2 inches. Ergo, flatter handling and better steering response.

Race cars do not come with cruise control, automatic transmission and power steering. These are conveniences for car travel shared with sightseeing and chatty relatives--but outright impediments to any bonding of man, machine, speed and road.

So the 348’s fixings and interior are quintessential Ferrari; unfrilled, all purpose, and with basic geometry everywhere. Hence, a plain, rectangular hood for instruments made stark by florescent orange numbers and needles on black dials. Also no radio. But the car is wired for one, should you ever prefer Ottmar Liebert’s nouveau flamenco over the burbling snarl of Ferrari’s four tailpipes.

The gear lever is a tall, chromed stick with a bar billiards ball on top. It sprouts from a stainless steel gate that’s a cattle guard masquerading as a shifting template.

The horn. On a stalk? Hidden beneath a cornet symbol on the spokes? Nah. It’s that old-fashioned button stuck right in the middle of a medieval Momo steering wheel.

Punch the brake and the accelerator is right there where it has been since the dawn of crash gear boxes--flush and only an inch to one side of the brake pedal. Perfect for rolling the foot and sweet heel-and-toe shifting for moments when the road is empty, the corner is a clean sweep and the ghost of driving legend Alberto Ascari whispers to some of us.

A Ferrari makes demands. It can even be an intimidating drive. The brakes are firm and not for the feather footed or high of heel. Gears are given up smoothly only when the moment, the engine, the clutch and shift are in concert.

But finding that moment, being the conductor of a coordinated downshift, earning some respect from a benchmark machine that rises above the best of our abilities . . . ah, there’s the defiance but also the satisfaction of Ferrari.

So we took the 348ts to Angeles Crest where even doing things legally and easy in a standard sedan means a succession of body rolls and agonizing shrieks from tires trying to swallow their rims.

The Ferrari found this mountain road its primer. Whatever the suggested speed at any corner, the 348 could triple it and remain flat. We crowded no vehicle to the crest. But they moved aside and waved us through anyway--full hand waves, we might add.

The 348’s brakes do not snag fiercely, like anchors, and power doesn’t kick in like an afterburner. So whenever misjudgment lightens one end or corner of the car, gentle brushing of brakes or throttle downloads the Ferrari until it squats deep on all fours.

The car is loyal, predictable, balanced and an absolute rocket on Velcro. Yet it can also be driven slowly and daily. It will not lug at low speeds in high gear or chug in freeway crawls. And the suspension will jiggle no love handles.

Still, the 348 much prefers to play hard, to be wound up tight through the gears to where it sings alto and looks around for some Mercedes or 300ZX to entice. Or to slide alongside a young gentleman on a yellow-and-chrome Harley-Davidson who grins because he also knows the marrow of things mechanical.

But enough of such rhapsodizing.

The Ferrari 348 has trunk space so minimal, so misshapen it can only be used fully by factory-supplied fitted luggage. Minor repair bills are usually four-figure affairs. Antilock brakes are standard but an air bag isn’t even an option. The Ferrari’s Roman nose is about 5 inches off the ground, so even gentle driveways create much grazing of the car’s chin and greater gritting of the owner’s teeth.

It is expensive, impractical as a commuter car, arrogant down to its $1,300 gas-guzzler tax and most certainly is a 170-m.p.h. anachronism in a 65-m.p.h. society. So arrogant, in fact, the company is delivering new 348s with 1989 construction dates to avoid compliance with U.S. passive restraint requirements for 1990 models.

But Ferrari will make 4,000 cars this year and has presold each one. The 4,500 Ferraris that will be built next year already have customers. Vandagriff says even he really doesn’t fully understand the addiction. But he has seen the worst of the lust at work.

He remembers a Northern California customer, a woman, who in the ‘50s ordered a Ferrari 375 Mille Miglia. She wanted a scarlet Ferrari with cappuccino-tan interior and, obviously, left-hand drive.

Enzo Ferrari--a born chauvinist who believed a woman’s place was making pasta and driving Fiats but never a Ferrari--handled the order personally. He shipped the woman a right-hand-drive car. It was yellow with green seats and brown carpets.

Remembers Vandagriff: “The car arrived, the woman took one look at it, said, ‘Thank you very much,’ and accepted it on the spot.”

1989 FERRARI 348ts

COST: Base: $102,350

As tested $103,400 (includes leather interior, automatic climate control, anti-lock brakes, electric windows, mirrors and door locks.)

ENGINE:

V-8, 32 valves, 3.4 liters developing 290 horsepower.

TYPE:

Two-seat, mid-engined, high-performance sports car with targa body.

PERFORMANCE:

0-60 (as tested) 5.5 seconds.

Top speed (manufacturer’s estimate) 171 m.p.h.

Fuel economy, EPA city-highway, 13-19 m.p.g. ($1,300 gas guzzler tax applies.)