Schuetz

Heir Apparent: The Ferrari 360 Modena

At the turn of the century, the quiet little town of Modena was going about its business in the southern Po Valley in Italy. It was like any other town, with busy shops and hard working parents, and the streets were filled with children, who once in a while marveled at the machines that would occasionally rumble by on stiff rubber wheels. Three of those boys would go on to create legendary automotive companies that would bear their names Maserati, Lamborghini and a young man named Enzo Ferrari. Today Modena is home of factories for automotive legends like Bugatti, De Tomaso, Lamborghini and, of course, Ferrari, thus earning it the reputation as the capital of engines.

Now, nearly one hundred years later, the little town has another distinction by virtue of its name the 360 Modena, the first production car from Ferrari to be made entirely of aluminum. The line of small, two-seat sports cars went into production in 1999, and is modeled after its predecessor, the legendary F355, and serves as a replacement for the classic small-body Testerossa models, long the flagship of the brand. The 360 Modena is longer, taller, and with a wider wheel base than its ancestors, yet is slimmer in width, lending it less radical yet more muscular and aerodynamic lines.

Like any new Ferrari based on earlier designs, the Modena 360 is chock full of performance enhancements and technical innovations that result in zero-to-100 miles per hour accelleration in 10.2 seconds, markedly slower than the 6.6 seconds of its muscular cousin, the Enzo Ferrari supercar, but still quick enough to snap a neck that isnt paying attention.

The convertible version of the Modena is the 360 Spider, perhaps better known from its frequency in movies, but other than poundage is the exact same car. A stripped-down and performance-juiced version of the Modena exists in the form of the Challenge Stradale, sans leather and ornamentation.

As with all Ferraris, the 360 Modena delivers speed, distinctive styling and the prestige of that little yellow emblem, all in a two-seater that proudly promises to propel the Ferrari legacy into the distant future.

Jonathon Blocker is a Ferrari aficionado who is intimate with the history and variety of Ferraris and has developed an expertise on the collectible Ferrari.