Description:

“Fantastic car! So fun to drive. She slips gently and gives great sensations.”
Said by Fred Bouvy (multiple Belgian Champion and double winner of the 24h of Spa-Francorchamps).

I sell with regret my very rare road registered 1995 Ferrari F355 Challenge.

I bought her to participate to track days, 20 years after my last karting race. She is an extraordinary car to drive to the limit, with a natural glide and the pleasure of heel-and-toe braking, while always remaining reassuring and easy to control. It's also funny to see the owners of 458/488 Challenge coming around my car, a bit admiring, saying they saw me "dancing" on the track.

After I bought a second F355 Challenge, I have mainly used this car for club rallies and charity ballads with great pleasure. She is always one of the stars of the meeting because of her classic beauty (photographers love her) and her natural crazy noise with its gurgling and its revving up to 8500 rpm.

As I'm a bit of a maniac, every single run of this car is documented in a road-book. She costs me an average of 4.000€ per year all included for both track and ballads.

This specific F355 Challenge is one of the very few real road-legal F355 Challenge

Some of the 1995 F355 Challenge are amongst the latest racing Ferrari that have been regularly road registered.

The reason is that they came as F355 Berlinetta with all the legal papers and were converted into racing F355 Challenge by the local importer with a racing kit supplied by the factory. Only a few of them have been regularly road registered at that time making them road legal everywhere, which is not the case of most of the other “road legal” challenge cars.

It means that this road registered F355 Challenge is one of the last manual gearbox racing Ferrari with the famous aluminium grid and one of the latest real road-legal* racing Ferrari (except for some very expensive one-offs).

They are probably less than 10 to 15 F355 Challenge in a good condition and with their original paper worldwide. An extraordinary collector car to own. For real amateur only.

* Check your local regulation.

Difference between my road registerd F355 Challenge and my 1996 factory F355 Challenge

• Leather doors side panels
• Luggage compartment cover with fabric (can be removed easily)
• Headlamp and lift system (can be removed)
• Hydraulic handbrake
• Set up of the car (can be changes easily)

All other characteristics are strictly identical.

Road registered F355 Challenge VIN 101597

• 1995 model. 50.000 km. Red interior black. 8 cylinders 380 cv / 280 kw.
• Road registered in Belgium under European regulations.
• Bought new in 1995 by Austrian driver Karl Oppitzhauser. The car took part in the Ferrari Challenge in 1995 and 1996. She is then sold to Ingo Hopfgartner.
• Ingo Hopfgartner used her for a few years in hillclimbing races in Austria, then kept her in a garage.
• I bought the car from a Belgian specialist in 2012. She was supposed to be in a perfect condition, but I have spent 50.000€ to completely rebuild the engine and renew the rest of the car. This is an illustration of the importance of a good history when buying this type of model.
• I've used this F355 Challenge at Track Days about fifteen times and regularly on club rallies and rides without any problems. A logbook lists all the uses of the car since its purchase.
• It is sold with the original Berlinetta seats and the original racing buckets (renewed in Italy).
• General condition: body in good condition (repainted in 2017), interior in good condition for a racing car, perfectly maintained mechanics. Mileage certified by Car Pass.

The F355 Challenge

In 1995, Ferrari introduced the F355 Challenge for use specifically in the 'Ferrari Challenge', a one-make race series. For the F355 Challenge, Ferrari made available a kit of racing parts (costing some $30,000), which would be supplied to authorised dealers for fitting to customers' standard road-going F355s. As from 1996, Challenge cars were delivered fully finished from the factory as racing cars (no road uses authorised).

The Challenge model's additions/modifications included a lightweight exhaust system; competition steering wheel; rear wing; competition clutch; Brembo 14" brakes (F40 type); Speedline 18" magnesium-alloy wheels; Pirelli racing slicks; solid suspension bushes and competition springs; brake cooling ducts at front and rear; upgraded radiator cooling fans; manual fan control; a roll cage; and all the usual safety equipment. No engine tuning was allowed (the engines were sealed) apart from that achieved by using the kit exhaust.

Here are some souvenirs:

Presentation from RSR Spa (with my poo English ;-) see below.

Outside views:
https://youtu.be/1jfnlGSQajM?t=22 (the car with the registration plate)

First contact via mail: marcvancutsem@promouvoir.be

Video:

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