[DON]

Why do some early red 348's have black trim around the bottom and some are totally red? What this a factory option or did some of the owners paint these lower panels to update the car to look more like a 355?

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[4kids3fish]

I think that the early TBs and TSs all came with the black sills, and no doubt some owners have since colour-coded them to match the rest of the body. I'm not so sure about the later GTBs and GTSs - maybe they came all one-colour.

An excellent reference on all this stuff is the good ol' "Original Ferrari V8 - A Restorer's Guide" by Keith Bluemel (ISBN 1-870979-78-8 ). It tells you exactly what the specs of each variant of the 308/328/348/355/etc ranges were, with photos. :up:

 

[Andrew]

Exactly right. The TB/TS had the black trim. After that the car went to all red. However, many owners of TB/TS would have that black trim painted red so when you are looking at cars if a TB/TS is all red then you know this is what happened.

 

[Dr. Bob]

Yes, tb/ts had black sills, and there was no option to paint them in the color of the car. Then when the spider came out, they changed the name to GTB/GTS and the black sills disappeared. You also have the 348 Serie Speciale which also had no black sills. Then you have the 348 GT Competizione which was only for the EURO market, but I don't know what color sills it had just now.

Welcome here, and enjoy your stay

 

[senna21]

Believe it or not the black sills were painted black over the main color. They'd paint the whole car then shoot the sills. If you were to sand away the black, you'd find the main car color under it. So, technically if you remove the black you're not really changing the color combo. You're just liberating the collor under it.