Why do the Ghiblis worth 4 times less than Daytona, Iso Grifo, and Bizzarini ?

It is hard to tell definitively from the photos but it appears that they either removed or painted the Stainless steel roof.

 

Maybe they made a carbon fiber roof, for reduced weight?

I like the color, but I've never seen it on a Maserati before, maybe not a Maserati color?

 

Here is the local Bora which claims to only have 3700km:
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I agree with you, Maserati Blue. One can do that list even longer. For that price I would expect a car without a bucket full of issues.

As Italiancars points out, it even has its roof painted, which suggests that the original stainless steel roof was dented or damaged in some way.

 

That ignition module is in an odd and IMHO dumb location.
Glad mine is located elsewhere.

The valve covers and heads have been repainted and wrong. It's so easy to pick though. Is that an original color? I always remember the Maserati red being an awful more orange red than that. That one looks nice. Methinks at least a zero is missing in that mileage figure. The car has been worked over IMHO.

 

Nothing like a electrical arch across to the old fuel filter

 

Not sure why the bumper has been left off but that could be fixed easily enough.

I've seen license plate lamps like that?

I suspect that exhaust is none too pleasant to listen too bit I suppose it was cheap.
Yes they should fix that too.

Seat belts?

Mirrors weren't installed by the factory and these look just fine to me so ...

What's the interior stuff? I see a screw on the side of the center console. Can't tell of the dash top is now leather or just old mouse fur that's now hairless? But otherwise I'm not seeing a ton of issues so maybe I'm blind today?

Is this the car someone said had a painted SS roof? I don't see that.

If you want a museum piece then not the right one.

Anyone who actually runs one exactly as delivered by the factory is nuts anyway. They required some sorting to put it mildly. Just for concours shows well OK.

What does that price translate to?

 

I'm going to change my mind about the roof. As the A pillars ARE painted yeah the room probably is too.

Also, the horizontal rubber strip is missing they went Merak style.
If the front mesh material wasn't so GD high gloss black it doesn't look all that bad without the front bumper. But you can add those. Adding the side rubber moldings is bug job now because they've filled in the tuck in pockets of the body work.

It's starting to add up to a bridge too far for a top price ...

 

What does that price translate to?[/QUOTE]

107 000 euro

 

I get the feeling that the "crowd" around here isn't the right buyer for a "customz" classic Maserati

 

Triangle Motor Cars in Finland have had a 1977 red Bora for sale for well over a year. The car is a very low milage car. I inquired about the car and it is a 4.7 litre car. I thought that all Bora's after 1975 had the 4.9 engine.

 

Sorry the link for the Triangle car ishttp://www.trianglemotor.com/uk/ukmase.htm

 

The Bora really is a superb looking beast, I for one really think it is undervalued.
McGrath in the UK are advertising 2 here

Mcgrathmaserati.co.uk

One blue euro spec £77.5k
One super ex US in Verde Pino.

Dear Santa......

Cheers all.

Mark.

 

I think you could always order the 4.7 engine.
Boras that late would have had the under hatch area painted black so either it was repainted in red or the customer ordered it that way.
I prefer the body color version as from the cars I've observed they also finished that part of the body work better when it was painted that way. It's pretty ugly flat black body work under the hatch of my car. Maybe the flat black is better with glare though?

 

Sorry - it was a British buyer and the price guide, flaky as those things are, seems to indicate it wasn't too far out of line. But hey, why argue? You find me an unmolested 5300GT Strada and I'll swap you straight up for a nice orangey-red Bora!

Speaking of..

My car is labeled a '77, too, but it still has the body colored interior panels and I don't think it's ever been repainted. Then again, it also has parts of the subframe bolted on that are welded on most cars, so who knows when it was really built. The owner's manual shows the ignition box mounted on the subframe next to the fuel pump; I can't believe it would survive the heat and it probably didn't, prompting the move to the driver's side panel. I wonder if the car pictured was modified for the that reason.

 

The ignition box on the earlier cats WAS mounted low on the subframe. The later ones had the Bosch 928 style box mounted on the other side of the car totally isolated from the engine compartment. Good move. Moving it up high in a dead end high temp location such as this example would be idiotic IMHO.

 

If that was true then I would say that most Europeans are missing out on a good thing. A good Belgium friend has a nice Grifo and this is what he had to say about it:

"The 327 is a very sweet engine, people sometimes talk bad of it or say it is just American iron but it revs higher than a Maserati V8! Torque AND power. Apart from the weight this engine is better than the Lambo V12 or Maserati V8! I have 4x Weber 45s on mine and big valves and special pistons and MSD and...and .. - I guess I have over 450 HP. It really is a bomb, an explosion of raw power, no period lambo or Ferrari can keep up with it! "

This is a guy that owns and has owned a ton of cars, including the Ghibli spyder to the right of the Grifo (which I sold him). Last time I checked Belgium is in Europe We compared Grifo prices in Europe and the USA and they seem to be about the same.

I would not mind having his silver beauty parked in my garage.

Ivan
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Well, each to his own I guess. To me that car has no value, because I don't really care about engine power (a Nissan with 1200bhp will put that engine to shame, if thats what we are comparing).

What is more important to me is:

- pedigree (which that car hasn't got)
- history (not much of that either)
- Italian originality (hmm... hybrid originality doesn't count).
- looks (the Maserati Merak looks 1000x times more amazing than that thing)

 

I just have to disagree with you on the looks of the Grifo. It's an absolutely stunning car - designed, by the way, by the very same Giorgetto Giugiaro as the Merak we both like so much....

 

Unless you were at the factory watching them being built it's hard to know any of this for certain. It's just what I've observed of the ones over here and that's not all of them. Most people prefer the body color so once they're restored my guess is they all go that way? I think all the later style Bosch boxes that worked with the impulse generator distributor ended up on the drivers side out of the engine compartment but that's just a guess.

Mine is the last car and so I have some stuff that isn't on any of the others. I have the QPIII style ignition wire boots and I got the car with 3K miles on it so I seriously doubt anyone swapped those out before me.

Whatever they had on the shelf ...

When I did the engine compartment restoration back in 1988 I could see evidence that looked to me like it stared life as a European spec car in the rear and was modified to accept the different style sub frame and bumpers. But maybe that's just how they made all the US spec 75-77 cars?

Now about the fuel pump and the old ignition box location ... I ended up making and installing heat shields for a lot of the components as a result of the drive from Oklahoma City to SF when I picked up the car. The engine heat damaged quite a few things on that trip. So I have a shield for the fuel pump area now as well as a heat shield for the LHM tank & regulator. The E brake cable had to be remanufactured as well because Maserati lined the housing s with nylon and that melted! The gas tank got a better SS shield too after watching the gas churn inside the tank on a warm Denver day that spring.

Most of this was due to that crazy thermal reactor & air pump emissions system which I needed intact to register the car in California.

 

+1

American V8s always get the bums rush from some snobby Europeans.
After Ford kicked Ferrari's arse from here to Hades and back with one you might have thought some folks would wise up? Not all V8s are the same though. But if you want to put together a nice performing, good running car with a lot of power you can't do it any easier of cheaper than with an American V8 and all the performance options out there.
The aftermarket development for these engines is astounding! They're not crude at all. The Maserati V8 is nice sounding and performs well but is absolutely no better than a decent American V8. The early Lamborghini V12 has a fantastic sound of it's own and not a lot of torque. The Maserati is a lot easier to drive because of that.

Now if you want to compare road chassis, different story.

 

My opinion is that, some cars are riding the same bubble, that modern art items are on.

In other words, someone makes a silly "thing" on a canvas by mixing some colors, then sells it for $1 million, the buyer is now holding a "hot potato" as we call it, he shifts the thing for $5 million, so the next guy is now holding the "hot potato"...

It is very frequent for the original artist to actually help "push" these art things, because if one day people wake up and realize that some mixture of paint on a canvas isn't really a Michelangelo kind of work, then the entire thing would crumble down, and lots of middle-men will loose a lot of money....


What is important to me, is that Maserati was never part of such a bubble. The important cars like the 3500, the Ghibli, or even the 5000GT, are steadily going up in value for all the right reasons. High-quality restorations are really getting the cars the attention they deserve.

Even the limited and exclusive ones like the A6, 200S, 300, etc race cars all got the "balls" to back their high price. They have the pedigree, the history and the looks!

Iso Bizzo... what? no thanks, I'll let some other guy ride the bubble

 

Oh Boy. You weren't around for the exotic car bubble of the late 1980s.
All cars ride the bubble. Maserati's have no special standing save the race and early special cars. The Ghibli and even the 3500 are late to the party. Buyers/collectors pick what they like. Will it last for a particular model? Who knows. There are American muscle cars that blow Maserati valuation out the door. Not something I particularly want especially at the current prices. Most of those aren't well made or sophisticated. Just terrific engines in some of them. The market chooses.

 

Maserati Blue: Everybody here is welcome to their own opinon and views about the various Italian GT cars of the 1960s, but before you condemn the Grifo, you should spend some time behind the wheel. There was a reason that Germany was the largest market for Iso. The cars are good quality, have the most advanced chassis and suspension of all the 1960s GT cars, and were fast and reliable. They excelled on the autobauns. Initally, there were problems with the connecting rods in the Chevys failing under the sustained high speeds, so Iso built their own rods and eight quart finned aluminum oil pans and then installed them in each engine they received from Chevrolet, and no more problems. One of the major reasons that good Grifos are hard to find today is that they were great cars and people DROVE them and used them up. Also, like all the Italians, they rusted. I own at least one of each of the Italian GT cars from that era, and the Grifo is at the top of the heap.

 

I was riding another kind of bubble at that time, the biturbo bubble