Merak Targa

Stock Merak and Bora Walter. I think your impressions are influenced by your your own car which has been tweaked for handling?

The Bora has really wrong sway bars and thus leans like hell. Softer springs and shocks as well. But it rides pretty nice except on choppy pot holed roads.

Any modern street car whips their asses in the handling department. Speed too ...
Even my 84 Biturbo (with a sspension kit) was much faster than the Bora except at top end.

Oh, they're old cars but very nice and are to be enjoyed as though it was 1975 again ...

 

Very precise evaluation Walter. I believe a 3.5L version of the Merak SS would have been the 'ultimate' car for that time. It needed just a little more power

 

I'm sure it's possible to remove the original engine and fit a Biturbo engine with 325hp. That would be a fun machine.

 

The Maserati Technical Rep at Baltimore in the mid 1980s told me that he had seen exactly that done. But btirbo engines weren't 325HP at that time. Not stock ones anyway.

 

thank you for the insight. ive driven a a couple of meraks but never a bora. there was a merak vintage race car that didnt fare to well in uk club series a couple of years ago. i dont know the details of the but it look fairly stock.

 

yes not in the wall it self... a better word would be the bulkhead. this "wall" location i reckon would add considerable strength buy shortening all the longitude members in the cabin structure. much like the S2000 and late model vettes the large center tunnel supplements the side sills as the main structures. if you look underneath the merak you can see multiple heavy gauge stamped plates that bolts under the substantial tunnel to box in the structure. if you make this tunnel shorter with the same cross section it naturally becomes stronger which is the case with the bora.

the location of the bulkhead is much closer to the door jams than the merak in which half of the firewall kinks back and ties in over the rear wheel wells to make space for the 2+2 seating. looking at the construction from the bora's bulkhead, two very large members of the ties directly into top rear shock towers. the merak shock towers are oddly floating in mid space... these loads take a extremely convoluted route back into the main structure.

all this added strength of the bora may be mute point since many of you who have driven both claim the merak handling is livelier? i suppose the lighter weight trumps the increase chassis rigidity in this case. the bora and merak twins have extremely long wheelbases in its day which is a big contributor to weight. period 911s had sub 90 inch WB's hence their remarkable lack of weight.

regards

hf

 

Wonder where they put the turbos.... they must have had very different plumbing to fit it in the Meark

 

An actual Biturbo motor Walter not the Merak turbo project.

I never saw any pictures of the one supposedly done by the guy in Baltimore.
I think his name was Charles Esch? I delat mostly with the west coast guy Greg Long.

He could of been just full of s**t?

 

I never knew there was a second turbo Merak. Was it actually two turbos or just one like the one at Panini?

 

I would say that is a fair statement about all Maserati owners.

 

Wow! What a beautiful car. Can anybody say 308 GTS?? Does anyone else see the similarity? The Maserati is fairly new to me, but there is definitly a family resemblence.

 

I agree that it is a good looking car, but "family resemblence"?! No... Apart from being Italian, Ferrari and Maserati were definitely not family back then, and one is a Pininfarina design whereas the other was penned by Giugiaro...

 

I see what you are saying. Looking at other Merak pictures I see the difference. I think it was the angle at which the Merak was photographed that made me see the similarity. Sorry if I ruffled any feathers.

 

There was one for sale in Louisville KY in 1981. they wanted 29,000. It was the early version. I tried to trade my new one ton dually diesel even but they would have no part of the deal. They were smarter than i. damn diesel truck did not make a month out of four years without a visit to the dealer

 

Out of curiosity, was that a "factory" Turbo or was it a normal Merak that was modified by the owner as an aftermarket upgrade?

 

Absolutely not and don't get me wrong; I think the 308 is a very good looking car . BTW: the Merak came out in 1972, a good three years before the 308 GTB (and five years before the GTS). Perhaps Fioravanti at Pininfarina had a good look at Giugiaro's masterpiece when working on the 308...?

 

not a clue

 

I think you might be right.

 

Bought this car from Joe in 2014

it has resided with Dr Tony Noble in Southern CA since we sold it in late 2014 to him.

a few photos from 2006 Joe sent me before we bought it Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login