There are countless new cars you should be excited about and, if you’re a young enthusiast, you should enjoy your future legends now. Your Corollas GR. Your Subarus WRX. Your Mustangs Dark Horse. These are all great and exciting vehicles. We may have reached peak car, as there’s never been a time when you can buy so many cars that are so fast, so easy to drive, and also so damn reliable.
You should also enjoy your legends now because at some point they’re going to take the cars you used as your phone backgrounds and make them ‘better’ and charge you $900k for the pleasure.
I’m in England and I’m staying quite close to a pub (which is a side effect of being anywhere in England) and that pub happens to be host to the company Evoluto. You’ve probably never heard of Evoluto, but you might know their sister company Boreham as the people who are going to remake the Ford RS200 and Mk1 Escort. Having had dinner with them and bugged them about ’80s and ’90s Fords I can say, with few doubts and a couple of pints, these are exactly the people you want bringing back the best era of British Fords.
The whole premise of the parent company, DRVN, is that new cars aren’t quite right or, rather, they aren’t quite wrong in the way that makes old cars so lovable. There’s so much power, there’s so much tire, and so much electronic help that they can’t quite be enjoyed in the same way.
“We had lower-powered cars that were more fun,” as Amjad Ali, Technical Director of Evoluto Automobili said before dinner.
Last night they showed off the 355 by Evoluto, taking great pains not to say the word “Ferrari” too many times because they clearly don’t want to get sued to pieces. What they did say were things like: “bringing the joy of dream of driving” and “not a game console” and “the pure thrill of driving.” I haven’t driven the Evoluto 355 yet so it’s hard to confirm any of that, but it’s probably good and maybe great as this is a car made by a bunch of engineers (Ali was on the team behind Gunther Werks for years) and designers who owned and loved Ferrari F355s.
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And why wouldn’t they? The Ferrari F355 is a car everyone loves, even those who have never driven it. The wedge shape of the F355 was inherited from the wonky 348, along with the V8, and both were improved on in just about every way.
So why improve it further? Owners of the cars will tell you that, for all the charms, there are quirks. A lot of quirks. Some of the quirks are the good part, many of them mean you have to pray every time you turn the key.
How Evoluto Improves The F355
Evoluto, like Singer, can’t make you a new car. But show up with a somewhat functioning F355 with a valid VIN plate and the company can reimagine and rework the car with what they call “OEM-level quality” and production.
Out in back is the most important bit, which is a flat-plane crank V8 with about 420 horsepower revving to 8500 RPM and probably sounding the business all the way up. Every piece of the motor has been tweaked, upgraded, and replaced, with a new engine management system and coil-on-plug ignition.
Surrounding that motor is a new body designed by CALLUM, which is legendary designer Ian Callum’s new business. From top to bottom, the whole thing has been reworked in carbon fiber with numerous panels introduced to stiffen the body by about 23% while also keeping weight down around 2,800 pounds.
“Creating a special and updated version of such an iconic car such as the 355 is challenging. It requires total understanding of the boundaries of change,” said Callum. “However, the team at CALLUM enjoyed bringing together new forms and details to produce a beautiful design, while fully respecting the original.”
In person, it’s immediately recognizable as a 355, just one that’s a little lower, a little wider, a little cleaner and more modern with touches like turn signals in the mirror and a 288 GTO throwback around the rear with the trio of vents. It works. I love non-red Ferraris so the blue is a nice idea, although this particular blue is a bit too metallic for my personal taste.
The whole point of the car is that it’s going to be built to your personal taste, so don’t let the color bother you. If you want a pink 355 by Evoluto they’ll make you a pink 355 by Evoluto. I want a green one because I’m a weirdo.
More important than what they added is what they didn’t: modern driver aids. This is a car designed to be an F355 that starts every time you want to hit the road, but once you get there it’s on your ass to stay off the grass. The company refers to this as “peak analog” or, well, “peak anologue” because they’re Brits.
Ali also said, specifically, that for all the modern stuff and big new Brembo brakes “some of the idiosyncracies” are still there.
If you’ve got an F355 or can access one, you can make an appointment with Evoluto to build one exactly to your spec. Hand them just shy of a million dollars and you can be one of the planned 55 people who will get one of these.