Happy New Year everyone. We finally got around to taking some pics pretty hard to do in Mid Atlantic winter of my F430 which I'd had for a while in 2014. As time goes on I'll probably update this thread with extra pics.

I started my quest out looking for a 458 and then a Scud. In that search I also considered F430 manual 6MT with the elusive 3 pedal. I really love manual cars, having raced and instructed for about 13+ years since my early/mid 20's and having an engineering background to me that gated shifter has always been special about Ferrari, sort of encapsulating the feel and sound as you "clink" through the gears with the climbing revs! From waiting and looking and driving each of these I found the 458 to be more refined and slightly quieter and the Scud and F430 to be more raw, louder, and less refined which to me felt like more of what I was looking for in a Ferrari. Eventually I found an F430 3 pedal which was incredibly fun to drive and offered me the most for my driving experience and just really felt like I was in tune with the car.

When I found this Nero F430 with full leather and yellow stitching it just looked perfect. It was exactly how I would have optioned it, yellow tach, SF shields, leather headliner, hi-fi CD changer, including the manuals/books, red covers bag and contents, tool kit and air compressor etc.. The car looked to be in great shape I asked a friend to check it out for me as it was in SoCal. To my amazement it had CCB brakes with yellow calipers, Polished challenge 19"wheels, and the extremely hard to find carbon sports seats, AND it was a 3 pedal! I talked to my local shop (Competizione in Mid Atlantic) and a few other sources and it was unanimous that this was the car to get, most sources told me finding 1 or 2 of these options in any given car was great, 3 was highly unlikely, and all 4 was almost unheard of...and that such an example such as this hadn't come thru their shop in the 10+ years they've around. The shop owner referred to her as a "unicorn" which I kind of thought summed it up quite nicely.

So I ended up doing the deal with CNC Motors in Cali. Worked with Fraser Thom and Liz Baker and they were great to work with. Fraser is an enthusiast and very friendly and will go the extra mile to try to help, and he always replies back extremely fast! I would buy a car from him again any day but next time I'd probably like to fly out myself and see the car and meet them and do the deal in person. Also Competizione set the suspension and corner-balance and chassis up perfectly. The only thing I've done is upgrade to a valve-less exhaust system mated to a Capristo bracket from Glen over at Nouvalari USA, and the setup is lightweight and sounds perfect nice high pitch (more on that to come in another thread with some sound clips). I also had the entire front end clear film protected again and had the trunk, front splitter, and front bumper side vents done it matte to accent some of the details. Oh and I found a pretty cool script for my License plate on a yellow and black State tag which was a limited edition, which just so happened to match the car's colors! Couldn't believe the script was available, lucked out with that one!!

Here is the Flikr link:


https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisw...57649669288519


Enjoy!!!

 

Awsome picks

 

Congrats. Car looks amazing.

 

Congrats. A beautiful car.

 

Thanks for the kind words fellas :-)

 

Congrats on the new car! Looks like a real enthusiast spec'ed this out originally.

Hope I get to see this around town or at the track.

 

Very nice!

 

The car is fantastic. Congrats. Too bad modern ferraris (and Porsche) have no stick shift..,..driven 458. I'm curious re how the Ferrari manual driving would feel like ...

 

Having driven all those, having a GT2 in 6 speed manual and so forth. I can tell you that the Ferrari in a gated shifted manual is a special experience for sure. very connected driving experience and wonderful overall feedback and driving satisfaction.

 

Very nice! A true enthusiast I see

 

Congratulations. No doubt you made the right choice with the six speed.

 

Sunir,

Beautiful 3 pedal 430 Drive her in good health. Nothing quite like an F car. I think she will hold her value pretty well in the stick.

 

Thanks bud totally agree! with so few F430 the last of the rear mid engine 3 pedal cars made and they made fewer Berlinettas than spiders and even fewer black on black cars, I feel good about the value of the car down the road.

 

Just got new wheels pics coming soon. Went with a 19"/20" setup shod in Michelin PSS rubber 235 on 19x8.5" rims up front and 295 on 20x12" rims out back :-)