So just to finish off the thread with some comparisons and this is the really tricky one. I said earlier that the Ferrari is more about the
ethereal experience of owning a car, and that's really difficult to put into words.
But lets start behind the wheel and in the first place the obvious difference is the driving position, an early Porsche feels high around
you, door tops level with your shoulder, a high dash in front of you and plenty of room above your head, in the Ferrari you sit low and
car seems even lower, really underneath you asopposed to around you. We all know about the legendary build quality of Porsche, the
solid clunk of the doors, everything works with incredible reliability, it’s all about the German engineering, here sitting in the Ferrari,
you feel more connected, the toggle and slider switches, gear knob and steering wheel somehow seem more tactile, as opposed to the
functionality of a Porsche.
The pedals on the rhd versions are similarly off-set but the wheel position is totally different, the 308’s being likened to a Routemaster
bus due to it’s shallow rake. Ferrari seats are not the best it has to be said and while the 308’s are far better than the 246 buckets they
are still thin and not overly supportive, Porsche sport seats win hands down here any day.
Fire up the respective engines and while the Porsche will start on the button, come rain snow or summer heat, the Ferrari needs a little
cajoling into life with a starting procedure that wouldn’t go amiss in a Eurofighter. So while you’re now disappearing off in the distance
I’m now waiting for the car to warm up and settle down, and here for the first time that analogy of the supermodel, she’s woken up but
a little grumpy at the moment, give her a minute or two before you think about any action.....
Clutch is a little on the heavy side until you get used to it but once your off the thing comes alive in your hands, and straight away it’s
the noise in your right ear that hits you, a glorious mix of induction and sucking webers from the intake in the drivers door coupled with
the exhaust note, it really is something special to the Vetro with it’s dry sump and carb’ed homologation engine. It takes forever to warm
up, you're avoiding slotting 2 gear until the gearbox oil warms up so that’s at least fifteen minutes then before you want to put your foot
down. But when you do it’s the 308’s ability to rev that really makes you take note. I’ve always found Porsche’s to make their power mid
way in the rev range and then run out of steam a little as they approach the red line, not here though, this thing just wants to rev all the
way every time, and combine that with a gear change to die for with it's chrome gate, and you begin to realise what this car is all about.
Steering feel is one thing that is close to the Porsche, like the early cars there’s a wonderful lightness to it, but then get the car in the
corners and again the differences show, you can carry more speed in so not so much of the Porsche slow in fast out, more a continuous
even cornering sensation. The brakes have a very similar feel to the Porsche.
It’s difficult though to actually choose a model of 70’s Porsche to compare this 308 too. Comparison road tests didn’t really happen
until the car had been around for a few years, so they were pitching heavier steel bodied fuel injected cars with less power against the
SC as being the current model at the time, and the Turbo which of course would eat it for breakfast off the line.
What would be really great would be to compare the 1975/6 lightweight fibreglass ‘Vetroresina’ to a 74 to 76 2.7 Carrera, the mfi car
against the quad webers, slightly lighter Porsche versus the 40hp more Ferrari, two cars from the same era that are probably worth
roughly the same now nearly 40 years on. I think it could make a great magazine piece, how about a red car with a lime green one.....
To try and sum it up it’s about function over form, if I was doing an European tour then it’s a 911 every time, you throw your luggage
in and off you go with out even thinking about it, check the tyres and oil maybe but that’s about it. If I was going in the Ferrari and you
in the Porsche, you’d be in Calais while I was still reversing out the garage! But at dawn on a Sunday morning as you coax her into life
for the blast down to Goodwood or around your favorite roads and then home, I know which I’d rather be in.
The Ferrari is the high maintenance girlfriend, there’s that supermodel again, the Porsche the steady reliable girl you marry. I would
never call a 911 pretty, but the 308 is drop dead gorgeous, you open those garage doors and your heart skips a beat just looking at
the lines and the shape of the flanks and that's the difference.
At the start of this post I had to Google ethereal just to check: "extremely delicate and light in a way that seems not to be of this world"
and "her ethereal beauty" synonyms: delicate, exquisite, dainty, elegant, graceful, beautiful, lovely; Yep, pretty much sums it up.
I’ll be back in a Porsche one day I know I will, but at the moment I’m having an affair and it’s wonderful. I'm just going down to the
garage now and as I open the door this is the view under the halogen light that will greet me, I wonder what kind of mood she’ll be
in today, that supermodel of mine.....
:
