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Ferrari built the F355 Challenge to be raced hard, and most of them were. The 1997 car heading to Broad Arrow Auctions' Paris sale is an unusual survivor: chassis 107994 was a championship-winner in Venezuela, raced in the United States, then rebuilt from a bare shell and made road-legal in the U.K. Broad Arrow estimates it at €275,000 to €325,000. Image courtesy of Broad Arrow Auctions.
A Venezuelan Ferrari With a Title to Its Name
The car was delivered in December 1996 for the inaugural F355 Challenge Venezuela series. According to Broad Arrow's catalog, the official program for the November 1997 season finale at San Carlos lists it as number 19, shared by Ernesto Viso, a karting federation president and the father of future IndyCar driver E.J. Viso, and José Miguel Coletta. Correspondence on file from the car's period mechanic identifies it as the one in which Coletta won the 1998 national championship, still in the red, green and VIVEX livery it wears today.
From there the Ferrari is understood to have moved north, contesting the 1999 Ferrari Challenge North America with support from Ferrari of Houston before being sold to a Californian owner in March 2000. It later passed to a collector in Vienna and arrived in England by 2017.
Rebuilt, Then Rebuilt Again
This is where the car separates itself from the typical retired racer. A restoration overseen by GTO Engineering's racing arm and completed in 2020 took it down to a bare shell, with the engine stripped to block and heads and the gearbox fitted with new synchromesh. A new roll cage, carbon-fiber instrument panel, seats, harnesses and fire suppression went in, along with lightweight fiberglass body panels and polycarbonate side glass. It was registered for U.K. road use in October 2019.
The current owner bought it in 2022 and, per the catalog, has put more than £80,000 into it since. DK Engineering contributed more than £23,000 of that, including an FIA-compliant electrical fire-suppression system and a solid-state battery isolator. WalkerSport later added a Fabspeed exhaust and, after a misfire was traced to internal wear, carried out a second full engine rebuild in 2024 with new Nikasil liners, pistons and rings. GTO Engineering serviced the car in July 2026, and the MOT runs through June 2027.
It still carries the hallmark Challenge hardware: an OMP race seat, 18-inch magnesium Speedline wheels, a carbon-fiber rear wing and Brembo brakes from the F40 LM. An extensive file of period photographs, race programs and invoices comes with it.
Where the Market Stands
The F355 Challenge came out of a racing series Ferrari launched in 1993 as the 348 Challenge Trophy, an idea borrowed from Porsche's one-make championships. That lineage matters when you look at pricing, because the road cars around it have had very different trajectories.
Hagerty's valuation tool for the 1997 F355 Berlinetta listed a #3 (Good) value of $138,000 when we checked, with 13 public auction sales over the previous three years ranging from roughly $65,000 to $237,500. That is a wide spread, and it echoes what Hagerty has previously described as a volatile market for the model, which bottomed out in 2013 before recovering. The same tool puts a 1991 Ferrari 348 tb at about $75,100 in Good condition, a figure that was trending up when we looked.
A Challenge car is not something those guides are built to price. This one is a race-bred, fully documented example with real results, road registration and a six-figure spend behind it, so Broad Arrow's estimate is a bet that provenance and usability will outrun the road-car numbers. Whether bidders agree will be clear when the hammer falls in Paris.
More F355 Reading
If this one has you hooked, we have been following the model closely. Take a look at another race-ready F355 Challenge, a top-spec 355 GTS from the Broad Arrow Group, a six-speed 355 Berlinetta, or the F355 once owned by Shaq. For more from the decade, see our '90s dream car picks.
