Background
To people of a certain vintage (your author being one of them), the Ferrari 308/328 is not so much a car as a poster.
The walls of countless teenage bedrooms have carried its image, quite possibly sandwiched between posters of a Lamborghini Countach, Che Guevara and that lady tennis player who’s accidentally mislaid her undergarments and is having a cheeky scratch.
Launched in 1975, the Ferrari 308 was born in a post-oil crisis world still reeling from having to pay market prices for its petrol for the first time. This, along with the fact that it was replacing the legendary Ferrari Dino, meant that it was always going to have something of a tough time.
That it is extraordinarily pretty of course helped. Designed by the Pininfarina studio, the 308 had a tubular chassis, over which the body panels were draped.
Made of glass-reinforced plastic until 1977, it gained steel panels thereafter, a move that added 331lbs to the kerbweight, but removed any kit-car connotations…
It was mechanically very similar to the Dino, which was no bad thing because it meant a mid-mounted V8 engine attached to a five-speed, dog-leg gearbox.
The 308 retired in 1985, to be replaced by the Ferrari 328.
While mechanically very similar to the 308 and still largely hand-built, several changes were made to the body, chassis and engine of the 328, chief among them being a larger 3.2-litre V8 engine delivering much wanted increases in power and torque.
The engine retained the Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection system of the 308, but added the Marelli MED 806 A electronic ignition system.
Maximum power is 274hp at 7,000rpm, while peak torque is 224lb ft at 5,500rpm. In a car weighing in at just 1,325kg, that’s enough grunt for 0-60mph in 5.5 seconds and a top speed of more or less 160mph.
That’s a decent turn of speed even today.
By Ferrari standards, the 328 is considered to be one of the most reliable and usable offerings from Maranello. Not least because most maintenance and servicing jobs could be carried out without dropping the engine from the car.
In many ways, the 328 was one of the last analogue supercars. There’s no assisted steering, the dogleg gearbox provides a proper workout (especially when the engine is cold) and, prior to 1988, there was no ABS to be had.
The 328, then, offers a pure, visceral driving experience rendered all the more tangible and real by the absence of any electronic filters between the car, the road and the driver.
Ferrari produced 7,412 328s in total, of which 6,068 were the GTS (Gran Turismo Spider) variant.








