"...The cars paint was made little rough on purpose, so it looks more like the real Maserati race car..."
Oh come on ... that steering wheel ... it's to die for! Someone with too much money, not enough brains, far too little knowledge and ZERO judgement took on a project. At least there's zero chance that anyone will mistake this for the real thing.
Relax, no one is fooled by a thing like this. It's just in very bad taste. When bad taste becomes illegal OMFG we're all in a lot of trouble. Half the people at car shows would get locked up! LOL You know who you are!
A lesson on logo protection https://carbuzz.com/features/7-times-ferrari-filed-lawsuits-against-its-own-fans
4 years ago, Maserati had a prominent stand on the Padua Classic Car Show, the biggest in Bella Italia. I told Fabio that there was a 300S race car standing less than 30 meter away. He was much surprised when I showed him the final verdict of a US Court that declared this paricular car as a (technical correct and fitted with an original engine!) replica. The court case had been issued by the former owner, one of the most most important collectors of race cars in the USA. The "creator" of this replica had to take it back, compensation and re-funding the then-time-owner. Little later, the car was sold to Spain where it is till today. From here, the car found its way to be displayed in Padua. But......in Padua nothing happens then!
Gull Wing Motor Cars comes through again. https://www.gullwingmotorcars.com/1967-maserati-ghibli-c-4497.htm The body is in very nice condition by the photos. But the automatic transmission is oh so wrong for these cars. And that looks like $30K of engine work alone. At U$D 129,000 @wbaeumer what do you think of the price? Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
This easily will far exceed $100K in restoration costs, and several years of work, even if the buyer is personally involved in doing some of the work. When done it will still be an early Ghibli with an automatic transmission,. There are much better alternatives, such as the restored 1970 coupe on my website. Ivan
Ma no Signore eet ees a periscope;-) That car has been stored damp, I can smell it from here. Still Gullwing have a talent for finding long forgotten cars, when I visited their warehouses with Carmine (MK1044) in September 2018 there was an amazing amount of cars which clearly had had stories and lives you'd want to know, very intriguing.
Too expensive because of the automatic transmission and the very bad cindition of the engine. To get the engine right and running (without any major internal damages!) it costs you about 40-50k $
With the auto trans and the overall condition, I fear somebody will have the thing made into a "resto-mod" and fitted with a small block Chevy engine.
This one is a two-for (1 spider + 1 coupe)! https://www.ebay.com/itm/403548474770 Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login They are becoming rarer is what I keep thinking...
Very bad form to disparage other's choices of cars. The reasons for the Biturbo's failure in the USA are well known and more so here than in Europe and elsewhere. Faulty emissions systems on an incompletely designed car was the culprit. In the USA this truly was an enormously embarrassing time for Maserati. But this wasn't limited to the Biturbo. The GT cars of the mid 70's to the mid 80's suffered from the same grievous flaw. Lot's of QPIIIs caught fire too. I used see them on the top floor of British Motors Cars in SF. The service manager used to relay the details. Carburetors with manual chokes & catalytic converters & air injection = lot's of heat and fires. Maserati was woefully behind in technology at that point. To be fair, emissions systems requirement pioneered by the automobile hating state of California were challenging times for all manufacturers. But once they got the FI working very well on the 89 MY they could eliminate the air injection. Those are the cars that did well elsewhere in the world but unfortunately for Maserati here in the USA they had worn out their welcome. It is ironic that it was the Biturbo line of cars that finally got Maserati's emissions engineering right and ended up saving the Maserati name elsewhere until it could get the improvements Fiat/Ferrari could deliver with the 4200 coupe in 2002. That car along with the QPV unfortunately was afflicted by the decision to put Ferrari's F1 transmission on the car. So then we had yet another era of Maseratis which owners shed quickly and whose resale values dropped like a rock. It's probably why to this day Maserati resale values here in the USA are so poor. I bought my 84 in 1985 and I've managed to keep it in great shape ever since. That was easy to accomplish in the early years because as built it won't work right but with changes it's a lovely and very comfortable car. They were the best seats I've ever had in a car.
To each his own, But to my thinking, the best thing that came out of the DeTomaso era for Maserati, is that the marque stayed alive to see better days.
A lot of people make that claim OTOH it's not like Maserati's success and fortunes took off like a rocket after he sold it to Fiat and then Ferrari managed them for a while either. Alfa either for that matter. The Kyalami and QPIII emerged under DeTomaso. It was a very difficult time and he was under government orders to produce a higher volume and less expensive line of automobiles which he did.
The latest model Ghibli's fate here in the USA is beginning to resemble that of the oldest Biturbos over here. I have a neighbor who has a quite ratty sounding and looking Ghibli (3) that he parades up & down our complexe's private road. The noises just make me cringe and make me wish for roving death squads of tow trucks to take these cars to the junkers and get them off the roads. These era Ghiblis tend to have a very nice exhaust note but you can't even hear it over all the other mechanical failure cacophony. I guess we had to expect this once the cars devalued beyond a certain level. To be fair you see this on other types of vehicle s with all makes including high end Mercedes and BMWs but it's just shocking to me.
I'm not a fan of those either. If Maserati recycles a famous name like Ghibli, they need to build a car that lives up to the legend.
