It is always exciting to take a car for a test drive and it is even more when that car is a 1994 Ferrari F355 GTB. However, it can stop being exciting when the car decides to self-immolate in a way.
Tarek Salah went to Marseille, France from Los Angeles to buy the pristine F355 in a nice shade of silver. He captured his entire journey in a YouTube video. The video also included the footage of the car being driven by the seller and the excruciating process of the beautiful Ferrari burning down. Thankfully, he hadn’t bought the car yet and was only on a test drive.
This might be the worst test drive in the history of bad test drives. The car traveled a good distance before it caught fire on the side of the motorway. The F355 is notorious for suddenly burning down, with many high-profile incidents involving them and Youtubers. It’s a well-documented issue even for Ferrari, which has issued four recalls for fuel system issues on every F355. It is speculated that the reason might be the routing of the fuel hoses that causes them to dry prematurely and leak onto the exhaust system. There have also been reports of power steering fluid leaking and causing a fire.
Salah states that every fuel line recall was done on the car, and it still burned down. The ignition source is clearly in the engine bay, but there is no news on how the fire started. It was a great example of an F355 with what looks like a manual gearbox and rare carbon bucket seats.
This teaches us to always check the fuel system on old cars, especially Ferraris. This was probably avoidable with some extra maintenance, though the car did look incredibly clean. Maybe it was just how it was supposed to go.