Uh oh, top 10 worst Italian cars!

[iceburns288]

Well also that you can't exactly correlate the demand in your friends company to the overall reliability. Maybe more 355's were sold in his region. Maybe 355s appealed more to people who were more likely to get into accidents.

My point is that Daniel knows more about the reliability situations than all of us combined. It's his job to be 'in the know' with this kind of stuff.

 

[TheCracker]

Derek Bell (multiple LeMans winner and sportscar god) tested a Countach recently and said that although it was flawed ergonomically, it's apparantly a sweet handling car on and off the track. If its good enough for him, its good enough for me. James May is a buffoon. Supercars aren't ment to be practical or easy to drive.

The Lancia Thema 8.32, as you may have noticed wasn't badged as a Ferrari. its widly assumed that its engine is the same as the one that went into the 328GTB/S, but it wasn't. It was a similar capacity and format, but was designed and built by Ducati. The Integrale engined 2ltr Turbo was the better version and a hell of a lot cheaper.

 

[xcsti]

My point is that Daniel knows more about the reliability situations than all of us combined. It's his job to be 'in the know' with this kind of stuff.

Good point

 

[Blackbird.]

They're also very wrong.

The spoiler on the Countach was optional.

As that maybe true still i'm sure 80% of the people that owned Countachs had spoilers on them. I'm sure they thought it gave them for speed and handling.

 

[TheCracker]

As that maybe true still i'm sure 80% of the people that owned Countachs had spoilers on them. I'm sure they thought it gave them for speed and handling.

It did create some downforce, but it mostly gave it high speed stability - although like mentioned it did create plenty of drag which dropped the top speed figure.

 

[McLaren]

It did create some downforce, but it mostly gave it high speed stability - although like mentioned it did create plenty of drag which dropped the top speed figure.

Correct.

Only the 25th Anniversary Edition Countachs with the LP5000S who had the spoiler on where faster than the 70s and early 80's Countachs without spoilers (or with) due to the bigger engines they recieved.

 

[niky]

For the difference between build-quality and reliability, I refer you to McLaren's 2005 Formula One season.

That's a good one... sig material.

 

[Pupik]

As James May said, you should never meet your idols, as they can only disappoint your expectations of them.

As much as the Countach hooked me into the car industry, it's always seemed to be about the least practical road car. Everything about it makes a Lotus Elise seem as practical as a Toyota Camry.

The seats didn't adjust in the first few iterations of it. The steering, clutch motion, and shifting are reported as hideous by every write-up I've ever read of the car. The windows roll down about 3 inches. And according to a former manager who once worked for an exotic dealer, regular maintenance at an authorized shop was enough to make you call your broker for a quick dumping of some stock options.

That said, I'm still buying a mid-1980's one in red if I ever win a quarter-billion dollars in the lottery; Diablo and Murcielago be damned!

 

[GilesGuthrie]

I'm disappointed that there's no mention of the Fiat Stilo, which is simply awful, or the previous generation Punto (as in the one prior to the new "Grande Punto"), which I found to be downright dangerous, not least because I had difficulty getting it to stop.

 

[Tornado]

It's missing a few more expensive Fiats, namely the Testarossa (512TR) and the Daytona 365GTB/4, both of which, according to most magazines, drove a bit like dumptrucks. And add a special mention for the 348, which was so shoddily built it made most kit cars look like a Rolls Royce.

At least they were more or less well put together, with some constraints towards making them halfway decent cars. I half expected the Ferrari 208 Turbo to be on there, as cars built to get around taxes rarely turn out very good in the end, but I guess since it was still a 308 GTB at heart, it couldn't be ruined. But on the subject of the 348, there is nothing inherently wrong with the car, but it's sort of like the '84 Corvette: It's engineered in a way that it is supposed to be the ultimate handling car, at the death of controllabilty (Car and Driver use to fear the snap-oversteer the 348 had) and stupidly stiff ride. And on top of that, it wasn't even that good of a handling car (too much chassis flex), which was why the NSX was such a revelation when it was new, and why most seem to hold the F355 to a higher standard than the 348.

 

[GilesGuthrie]

This is an interesting discussion. I've noticed that there's a trend with the smaller Ferraris:

When they come out, everyone says they're awesome and lovely and great and smashing. Then, as soon as the next one comes out, people start saying that the previous one (about which they were raving) was rubbish all along. And the thing is, we're not talking about a simple perception that the old car is inferior: these sentiments are commonplace because the new car will always make the old look tired and basic.

No, with Ferraris, the trend is to say that the previous model was always evil-handling. And usually the comment is that the thing snap-oversteers. Well, I'm sorry, but cars don't just grow snap oversteer! Shouldn't these "qualified" reviewers have spotted and reported this at the time?