Farah Calls the Evoluto F355 Restomod a Costly Triumph

Matt Farah put the 355 by Evoluto next to a mint 1999 Ferrari F355 Berlinetta last week and came back with a split verdict. The British restomod is the better drive. The bill is $770,525 plus your donor car, and Farah said that fails any test in which money still matters.

He still called the Coventry car a joy. The first of 55 commissions is due to customers in the fourth quarter, and he wrote that the opening run was already nearly sold out.

Farah Lined Up a Mint 1999 Berlinetta

Farah, host of The Smoking Tire, has liked the F355 since 2006, when he got pulled over two miles into his first drive. He still thinks it is one of the greatest cars ever built, which is why he refused to trust memory and brought a low-mile, fully original 1999 Berlinetta along, stock except for modern tires and a loud Capristo exhaust.

Racing driver and engineer Paul Frere wrote that the five-valve 3.5-liter V8, which made 375 hp and 107 hp per liter, was “probably the best sports-car engine ever made.” The original car hit 60 mph quicker than a 405-hp Corvette ZR-1 and pulled just under 1.00 g on a skidpad. Farah found it forgiving decades later: a light clutch, a soft brake pedal, a ride he would daily, and steering that still has that overboosted 1990s calm.

He also found its limits. The factory rack asks 3.25 turns lock to lock, the airbag wheel is ugly, and he would not lean on the brakes and tires the way he would in a new sports car. In his seat it is a seven-tenths weekend machine you wind out, row through the open gate, and take on a road trip.

The Evoluto, he wrote, is a different animal on the same roads. R53 dampers keep the ride sporty without harshness. The brakes feel like a mid-pack Performance Car of the Year contender. The quicker steering could have made the car twitchy, and instead it stays composed. There is no stability control, and the V8 still makes only a modest slug of torque, so he could open the throttle early without waiting for a snap of oversteer.

Is it “worth it”? Not if money means anything, no. The nicest F355 in the world will be less than half as much, and most good examples come in at under a third.

Matt Farah, Smoking Tire host

He still used the words “joyous, transformative experience.” That is the whole problem the 55 buyers are paying to have.

Under the Skin, Almost Nothing Is Stock

Evoluto calls the job a ground-up re-engineering of a 1990s icon and sells it under the line Peak Analogue. You supply a hardtop Berlinetta, never a Spider. The shop strips it to a bare shell, bonds on 10 carbon pieces, and claims a 23 percent gain in torsional stiffness plus 13 percent more body efficiency. The entire body, except the rear buttresses, becomes carbon. Claimed dry weight is 1,250 kg, 100 kg below the donor.

Ian Callum’s studio, CALLUM, redrew the skin. The arches move out with the new track, the door scoops grow, LED lamps replace the pop-ups, and the rear vents nod at the 288 GTO. Farah liked how little of that you notice until the car is next to a stock 355. Then the stance is obvious.

STOCK F355 VS THE 355 BY EVOLUTO

The rebuilt 3.5 uses more than 200 new or redesigned parts, ported heads, hotter cams, a MoTeC M150 controller, a single-mass flywheel, and a stainless or titanium exhaust. Evoluto quotes 420 PS at 8,000 rpm and 370 Nm (273 lb-ft). Farah’s figure for the same tune is 414 hp. The optional 3.7-liter, with high-lift cams and stronger internals, is rated at 480 PS at 9,000 rpm and 400 Nm (295 lb-ft).

An electric air-conditioning pump and an electrohydraulic steering pump take load off the crank. New uprights, arms, and anti-roll hardware sit outside the original mounting points. Nineteen-inch wheels, magnesium if you want them, hide large Brembos and those 235-front, 305-rear Michelins, 10 mm and 40 mm wider than stock.

What the 355 by Evoluto Costs

Rob Borrett, Evoluto’s communications manager, put the U.S. commission price at $770,525, plus the donor, plus whatever you tick on the options sheet. Farah used the same number. Build time is about nine months, longer than Ferrari spent assembling the original car.

THE MONEY ON THE TABLE

• Commission price: $770,525 before the donor F355 and before options.
• Build time: about nine months from strip to handover.
• Run size: 55 cars, Berlinetta coupe only.
• Warranty: two years or 20,000 miles on each finished car.

Classic.com’s average for a manual Berlinetta sits at $178,509, which is 23 percent of Evoluto’s commission price and well under the “third” Farah used as his gut check. Even a $350,000 high-end manual coupe, the top of that market’s recent band, is still short of half of $770,525.

Borrett told a tester the donor can be a crashed car, “not burnt or bent.” That is a used Berlinetta you must already own or buy, then watch it disappear into a jig in Coventry. The finished object is, in Farah’s phrase, a re-idealized version of the Ferrari of someone’s teenage dreams. It is also a six-figure bet that analog feel now has to be commissioned, not found on a classified page.

Fifty-Five Coupes Come Out of the Donor Pool

Ferrari built around 11,000 F355s of all types between 1994 and 1999, including 4,871 Berlinettas. Evoluto will take 55 of those coupes, manuals only, and will not turn the rest of the world’s 355s into a parts catalogue. Farah said that small number is why he trusts the business at all. There are enough people with close to a million dollars, in his wording, and not enough of them to drain the stock of ordinary F355s that purists still want left alone.

Wayne Burgess, Evoluto’s design director, has said clients do not so much order a car as sit through a configuration session until the result feels as personal as a signature. That is the sales pitch for a 55-unit cap: OEM process, full traceability, and a cabin that can be specified down to milled speaker grilles.

WHAT WE KNOW

• Body style: hardtop Berlinetta only, six-speed gated manual, no factory screens in the dash.
• Testing: DRVN logged 5,000 miles of on-track testing and 10,000 miles of engine work, including high-speed runs in Catesby Tunnel, before an April durability sign-off of 20,000 miles.
• Calendar: first customer car went into strip-down in March, with first handover set for the fourth quarter of this year.
• Demand: Farah wrote in late August that the initial run was nearly sold out.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Open-top talk: Farah heard chatter of a GTS-style car later, with no programme attached.
• Slots left: Evoluto has not published a fresh allocation figure since that late-August note.

The F355 market was already firm before these 55 shells came out of it. Hagerty put the model on its 2025 Bull Market list, and a Serie Fiorano Spider sold for $588,000 on August 14. Manual cars still carry the premium. Pulling 55 clean Berlinettas for carbon surgery does not empty the pond. It does take 55 of the exact cars the restomod exists to celebrate.

Ferrari’s Name Barely Survives the Rebuild

Look for cavallini and you will mostly miss them. Farah noticed a dearth of prancing horses and found the badge in only two places, the gated shift plate and the grille in the new nose. The car is sold as 355 by Evoluto, a name that keeps Maranello’s lawyers in the next room.

That caution is the point of the product, not a footnote. Ferrari spent the years after the F355 adding paddle-shift, then dual-clutch gearboxes, then hybrid hardware. The 355 by Evoluto is what you buy when you want the old mechanical argument back and Ferrari is no longer in that argument. The company that designed the original shape is treated as a legal risk, while a British shop sells you the feeling under a registered slogan.

Some people who love the Pininfarina body still reject the restyle. A common complaint after the first drives was that Callum’s cabin and the LED face move the car off the 1994 shape without improving it. Farah is in that camp on several details even as he praises the chassis. The split is not “purists versus lunatics.” It is people who think the F355 was already finished, looking at a $770,525 proof that it was not finished enough for 55 buyers.

Who Builds the 355 by Evoluto

The badge on the press release is Evoluto Automobili. The work sits inside DRVN Automotive Group in Coventry, which spent 20 years building concept cars and small-run parts for other makers and now also runs Boreham Motorworks for Ford restomods. Chairman Darren McDermott funded the effort after growing tired of hypercar waiting lists and made Ian Muir chief executive. DRVN bought the Penso engineering consultancy to do the job and is the official U.K. distributor for Koenigsegg.

THE HANDS ON THE CAR

• DRVN Advanced Engineering: chassis, validation, and the factory process behind the 55-car cap.
• CALLUM: Ian Callum, designer of Aston Martin’s DB7, DB9, and original Vanquish and of the Jaguar F-Type, leads the exterior and interior form.
• Wayne Burgess: Evoluto’s design director, who productionised the cabin after the launch prototype, with analogue clocks and no dash screens.
• R53 Suspension: bespoke three-way ST46 dampers with remote reservoirs, now the damper supplier across DRVN’s road cars.
• Brembo: six-piston fronts on 355 x 32 mm discs and four-piston rears on 345 x 28 mm discs, with a CCM-R carbon-ceramic option.

About 90 percent of the wiring harness is new. Auxiliary loads run off the battery so the V8 is not dragging an old pump. Wheel bearings are sealed cartridges you can change without replacing the whole upright, a fix for original parts that had gone out of production. Each finished car carries a two-year, 20,000-mile warranty, which is the commercial face of that parts work.

Farah Still Wants Different Wheels

Dynamically he agreed with almost every chassis choice. The leftover arguments are about taste, packaging, and the gate itself, which now feels like the slow piece in a car that has outrun its 1990s shift pattern.

THE BITS HE WOULD CHANGE

• Wheels: coffin-spoke designs that, to him, belong on a Lamborghini, not a curvy Ferrari; he wanted a modern Cromodora F40 style instead.
• Steering wheel: more aftermarket show car than anything Luca di Montezemolo would have signed off in period.
• Body sides: 308-style fender vents he does not think work, and door handles he says Evoluto forgot while reshaping the doors.
• Seats: they sit higher than stock, the high backs an inch from the roof; optional full-carbon buckets “sound terrible” to him.
• Lamps: he has yet to see a restomod make modern LEDs look right on an old face, and this one did not break the streak.

His perfect 355 would look stock inside and out, then quietly take Evoluto’s chassis, steering, brakes, and a loud exhaust with a valve for road trips. That car is not on the order form. The car on the order form is a carbon commission with Callum’s surfaces and a cabin that has no original interior panels left.

Consider the 355 by Evoluto both a mission accomplished and a warning to automakers: If your current product doesn’t tickle the senses in an analog, engaging way in 2026, someone somewhere will reengineer your old product for you.

Matt Farah, Smoking Tire host

Final durability sign-off is already behind the programme. The first customer cars are due in the fourth quarter. The original F355, Capristo exhaust and all, is still for sale at a third of the money, which is exactly why 55 people are paying the other two thirds.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Many 355 by Evoluto Cars Will Be Built?

Evoluto limited the programme to 55 commissioned coupes, each based on a customer-supplied F355 Berlinetta with a gated six-speed. The cap is there to keep manufacturer-level traceability and a full configuration process, not to feed a general F355 parts shop. No open-top version has been confirmed.

How Much Does a 355 by Evoluto Cost?

The U.S. starting figure used in Farah’s test is $770,525, plus the donor car and plus options, with a build that takes about nine months. Evoluto will accept a damaged donor if it is not burnt or bent, so the extra cheque for the F355 itself depends on what you already own.

What Engines Can You Order in the 355 by Evoluto?

The standard rebuilt 3.5-liter V8 is rated at 420 PS (414 hp) and 370 Nm, still redlined at 8,500 rpm, with more than 200 new or redesigned parts and MoTeC M150 control. The 3.7-liter option is rated at 480 PS (473 hp) and 400 Nm with a 9,000-rpm ceiling, high-lift cams, and internals specified for long runs at high engine speed.

Do You Need to Supply a Ferrari F355 Donor Car?

Yes. Evoluto does not start from a new tub. The customer provides a hardtop Berlinetta, which is stripped, measured in dedicated fixtures, and rebuilt around carbon reinforcement and a new tubular rear structure. Spiders are outside the 55-car coupe programme.

Who Designed and Engineered the 355 by Evoluto?

DRVN Advanced Engineering in Coventry does the structure, testing, and assembly. CALLUM, led by Ian Callum, is responsible for the carbon body and the production cabin, with Wayne Burgess running the interior through to signed-off parts. R53 supplies the three-way dampers and Brembo supplies the brake hardware, including an optional CCM-R carbon-ceramic set.

What Warranty Does Evoluto Offer on the 355?

Each car is covered for two years or 20,000 miles, a promise Evoluto tied to its year of track and dynamometer work. Service items that had gone out of production on the original F355, including wheel-bearing units, were redesigned with sealed cartridges so a later owner is not hunting obsolete Ferrari pieces.