DriveTimes five
Seriously cool Maseratis
While there have been some real howlers – and that whole messy period in the 1980s and most of the 90s – over the years Maserati has made some seriously cool cars. A lot have been racers, but they could easily fill a list on their own, so today we’re looking at the five coolest Maserati road cars.
3500 GT
While the Maserati Brothers were undeniably good at making racing cars, they failed to make much of an impact in the road-car market. That is until the utterly gorgeous 3500 GT came along in 1957. The two-door was named after its 3.5-litre inline sixcylinder engine that produced 162kW when fitted with a Weber carburettor, or 173kW when fitted with Lucas mechanical fuel injection (shudder). More than 2000 3500 GTs were built between 1957-64, before it was replaced by the equally pretty Sebring.
Ghibli
While the current incarnation of the Ghibli is a four-door sedan, the original was a sleekly pretty coupe and convertible that was built between 1967 and 1973. Packing a 228kW 4.7-litre V8 hooked up to a five-speed manual transmission (a three-speed auto was optional), the Ghibli could hit 60mph (96kmh) in 6.8 seconds and a top speed of 250kmh. In 1969 a Ghibli SS was released, boasting an enlarged 4.9-litre version of the V8 that upped the top speed to 280kmh, making it the fastest road-going Maserati produced at the time.
Bora
One of the replacements for the Ghibli, the Bora (the other was the Khamsin grand tourer) was a proper mid-engined supercar. Developed under Citroen ownership, the Bora landed smack in the middle of the birth of the mid-engined supercar and packed either a 4.7 or 4.9-litre version of Maserati’s 90-degree V8. The V6-engined ‘supercar-lite’ Merak was also based on the Bora and carried on for a few years after the Bora died off in 1978, making it the first and last mid-engined Maserati until 2004, when the company released the next model on this list.
MC12
The mighty Maserati MC12 was developed to allow for the company’s return to racing after a gap of 37 years and was spun off the ferocious Enzo Ferrari. It used the Ferrari’s 6.0-litre V12 (good for 460kW and 652Nm in the MC12), transmission, chassis and windscreen, but had a new body that was wider, longer and slightly taller than the Enzo. While the MC12 was intended for racing, homologation rules meant Maserati built 50 roadgoing versions, plus a further 12 track day examples for private use. The MC12 quickly gained a reputation for being extremely fast (faster than the Enzo), but almost impossible to park, due to its size (it was wider than a Hummer H2) and complete lack of a rear window.
3200 GT
Announcing Maserati’s return to stunning curves, the 3200 GT’s appearance in 1998 was a revelation. Named in tribute to the 3500 GT, its looks made the rival Jaguar XK8 and Aston Martin DB7 (both extremely pretty cars by any standards) look a bit frumpy in comparison. As if Maserati had finally gotten around to saying: ‘‘Here you go boys, this is how you do it.’’ Along with the sensational looks, the 3200 GT packed a shrieking 272kW 3.2-litre twin-turbo V8 that sounded amazing and those ultra-cool ‘boomerang’ tail-lights.