(First published 12/16/2015) Well Christie Brinkley never drove a 348 Spider, let alone any Ferrari that wasn’t red in either of her appearances in the National Lampoon’s Vacation series, it’s still hard not to think of her whenever I see a Ferrari drop-top of this era.
Brinkley famously appeared several times pulling up next to the Griswold’s Family Truckster in a Ferrari 308 GTSi in 1983’s “National Lampoon’s Vacation”. She would reprise her role in 1997’s “Vegas Vacation” (by no means a masterpiece film, but still one of my favorites for laughs), this time driving a Mondial t. Having first seen both these movies at a very young age, it was enough to cement Christie Brinkley with Ferrari convertibles in my mind.
Like Christie Brinkley, who looks incredible for someone even half her age, the beauty of this Ferrari 348 is almost timeless. If I knew nothing about cars, I wouldn’t believe it’s a 21 year old car and a 26 year old design. With a bullet-like silhouette, wide stance, aggressive bodywork, and that unmistakable Ferrari look, this car looks fast even standing still.
The 348’s age is easier to pinpoint by taking a look at its interior, where its cockpit’s square Italianate design and egg crate style vents clearly date it as a late-1980s/early-1990s vehicle. While hardly luxury car lavish, the 348’s interior was nonetheless comfortable by Ferrari standards, with heavy padding on its leather sports seats, creature comforts such as power windows and air conditioning, and minimally exposed hardware.
Powered by a longitudinally mounted 3.4L V8 making 320 horsepower and 238 pound-feet of torque, this mid-engine rear-wheel drive beauty was capable of sprinting from zero to sixty in under 5.4 seconds. The 348 also utilized a four-wheel independent suspension and four-wheel disc antilock brakes for superior handling. In true sporting fashion, a 5-speed manual was the only transmission available in the 348.
With base prices ranging from about $122,000-$131,000 depending on model, the 348 was technically Ferrari’s entry-level model in 1994. To most of us though, an entry-level Ferrari is just fine. Depending on mileage and condition, it’s possible to get a 348 Spider for under $40,000 today; A tough blow to original owners, but to those who’d never have been able to afford this car new, a welcomed discount. Take the money and run I guess, and quite appropriately, this 348 looks poised to make a quick getaway parked by the back door.
Honey; a blonde in a convertible? Seriously??
Great commercial. Not to mention that it also stars Ethan Embry who played Rusty in Vegas Vacation.
Very nice, Brendan. Any modern Ferrari could only dream of looking this beautiful (my opinion). And yes – Christie Brinkley is also still fine.
Absolutely beautiful, just have your $4-5000 per year ready for proper maintenance. And don’t buy one without every bit of paper from past maintenance available.
I’d love to own one, but while I could probably put together the money for purchase, the operating costs would be well beyond my abilities. That interior is gorgeous, there’s something about that period of time in European automobiles that there was a sanity of interior design. Stark but functional. You didn’t have to read the manual to set the radio (assuming you’d even need to play it with that symphony out back).
And three pedals. Three real functional pedals. Aka, midlife crisis poseurs and expensive mistresses need not apply.
Ferraris are somehow much more interesting when not painted red!
“Ferraris are somehow much more interesting when not painted red!”
Amen!
+1 but beware black cars. The slightest dent or scrape is magnified 10 times. Best find a mate who has a fully sorted one and borrow it rather than own it.
Maybe time has been kind to the 348. I remember thinking that the 348 was rather less attractive than the 308/328, what with the puffy lines, the side strakes, and the covered taillights. Perhaps a little too much Testarossa DNA in the mix, hmm? This particular car is not unattractive but it’s not a classic Ferrari shape in my opinion.
These don’t get much respect, it could be dated “baby Testarossa” look, though they do look better than the bigger TR, which looks really wide, and even more “coke dealer-ey”.
There is one thing that bothers me on these, the windows don’t roll all the way down, look in the pictures, the top of the window sticks out above the beltline by a little bit, that’s annoying, and frankly, cheap and sloppy for something in this price range.
These replaced the much loved 308/328’s, which are some of my favorites, they have a mix of new interior switches and controls compared to the previous cars, the interior actually looks like an cohesive and modern interior, not just a collection of switches and levers like the 308(which I still love…because of Magnum P.I….of course).
I’d like these more if the windows went down all the way…….
I had not noticed the windows before and agree that it’s something that shouldn’t have been overlooked at the price. It would certainly discourage resting one’s elbow on the windowsill. Maybe it’s a “safety feature” to encourage keeping both hands on the steering wheel.
Could it be dictated by design? The height of the doors is low and getting past the ribbed air intakes, it looks like the doors curve inwards near the bottom.
I guess they could have used the AMC Pacer method of adding a big plastic lip to the top edge of the inner door panel to raise it above the exposed door glass. Or maybe not.
I must have some kind of genetic defect, because cars like this (and pretty much all “supercars” from the 1980s to the present) really don’t do much of anything for me, and never have. Perhaps what I need is some close personal experience with one. Anyone have one that they want to loan me for an extended test drive, say 3 months? Anyone? No?
Gorgeous, except I find the shape of the retracted top rather frumpy. And as Carmine pointed out, the windows sticking up is a dealbreaker in a convertable of this price.
Still, like Joseph, I think I like it better than any of the modern Ferraris.
To me the 348 was a flop until it was morphed into the 355, it went from the dullest looking Ferrari ever made to one of the most attractive. The Mini TR treatment just does nothing for me, it looks like a Fiero Testarossa but even less convincing.
The Testarossa, say what you will, was an original, and every detail matched the next perfectly. The Testarossa has that wide tapered faring splaying out from the doors back, the stakes are appropriately recessed into that area, that shape is way more key to the Testarossa’s design than the air intakes are (which were only even added because regulations didn’t allow holes as big as there would have been without), but the 348 has none of that, it’s as slab sided as a Ford Taurus, and the stakes are only even in the door.
Call the Testarossa a coke dealer car all you want but the 348 is what the coke dealer would buy his wannabe nephew who just consumes the product.
Matt, I bet you’re a brunette type of guy like Xenia Onatopp from Goldeneye. She knew how to drive that 355, unlike Christie who was just cruising in the 348. I like both cars but always had a little thing for the maligned 348.
Those oh-so-80s slats are what date the 348.
The 355 got rid of the slats and gave us those classic circular taillights. That’s why the 355 looks fresher and more “timeless.”
Count me in as another who doesn’t like the looks of the 348. It just doesn’t work, like Matt said, it seems more like a kit car than a true Ferrari. I understand the rather out there Testarossa is not to everyone’s taste, but I still hold true that the design of that car worked and it worked well. It was a rather recognizable car, and one you could definitely say was bold, coke dealer’s car jokes aside. The 348 just isn’t as bold, and the result is that the styling not only looks truncated and compromised, but it ends up forgettable in the grand scheme of things.
Really, I thought the 90s were a bad time for Ferrari’s styling department. From this, to the WTF styling decisions of the F512M, the odd looking 456, and the frankly hideous F50. This was the decade I thought set the tone for Ferrari’s later works, as their other cars to come after just weren’t as classic as their earlier efforts. (Compare the Enzo to the F40 or the 599 GTO to the 288 GTO and you’ll see what I mean.)
Though I will echo the thoughts of others and say that Ferraris are always a bit more interesting when they aren’t all in red.
I don’t particularly care for little cars like this, but I will say the Berlinetta Boxer was a pretty Ferrari. I am much more drawn to big luxury cars, American and European. For that matter, something tells me I’m the only guy in North America who wants to find an early production Peugeot 505 wagon with normally aspirated 4 cylinder and 5 speed…
It is refreshing to see the car in something other than bright red..what a cliché.
Looks good in black; some of the details that stand out in red are more muted in black and the purity of the shape shows through. The 348 has never been one of my favorite Ferraris (though I like it far better than the Mondial) but this particular one is looking just fine right now.
My favorite junior Ferrari was the Dino coupe, nothing else comes close. I am warming up to its successor. Was the 355 the first jr Ferrari with paddle shifter? I want my supercar to have a manual transmission with an exposed slotted shifter gate. Nothing else will do.
Between Magnum P.I. and Ms. Brinkley, Ferrari had a pretty good 80s, pop culture-wise.
Surely this car deserves more attention than one (recent) comment. So her goes.
I really like it. Nothing else to me will ever be the “Magnum” Ferrari, but it has nice lines and a clean design. It isn’t many people’s idea of what a proper Ferrari should look like, but it works for me. Newer ones look like a woman with excessive makeup and way too many tattoos and piercings just screaming “Look at how sexy I am!” where this one is just a pretty woman in a little black dress.
“Surely this car deserves more attention than one (recent) comment.” Agreed.
Here goes. In response to your “Nothing else to me will ever be the “Magnum” Ferrari”… I have to agree with that too, as the red 488 Spider used on the new Magnum series, while an awesome car, is just not the same as that old 308GTS Quattrovalvole.
Now that said, in reference to the “pretty woman in a little black dress”, the new Higgins is attractive as is her 2009 Ferrari California (pictured below). I must say I do like a Ferrarri in black, as opposed to the ubiquitous Ferrari Red.
Regarding the subject car, there’s a guy in my neighborhood that has one of these in Ferrari Red, but I gotta say I like it better in black. His car looks like a baby Testarossa with those side strakes or whatever you call ’em. His is an ’89, and he doesn’t drive it very often, but I imagine with the nice weather on tap soon, we’ll be hearing that Italian V8 fire up real soon.
Oops… forgot the picture of Juliette Higgins’ Ferrari….