Rusty But Trusty

This car has clearly hit the bottom of its value curve, with even a condition 4 car coming in at $8200. With klassy wire wheels, wrinkled wood trim, and some rust, it’s seen better days. However, the seller’s statement of “in the barn for 13 years”, without shouting BARN FIND!!, squares with the results on the BAR smog check history page, which show the last attempt at passing smog in 2000. Would the original owner be shocked to see where his prize ended up, or say it’s what that piece of bleep deserves? You can find
this 1980 Maserati Quattroporte for sale in Watsonville, CA for a mere $2500!

Sheesh, for $2500 you could take a crack at getting it running, debug, and if the issues prove to major to overcome, part it and likely come out ahead. Perhaps the no-smog issue could be resolved by new cats, but at this point you’ll likely need new fluids, hoses, and some parts of the hydraulics or fuel system. Fortunately, the transmission was supplied by Chrysler or Borg-Warner, so those parts should be shared with other cars. As fro the rest of the car, cosmetically it looks pretty decent, with reasonably glossy paint, all trim straight and present, and a decent looking interior. The only weak spot the seller concedes is some rust at the base of the windshield.

Here it is from the other side, and you can see just how straight it is. How quickly could you find a set of stock wheels, or maybe something modern but tasteful? You can’t really tell how wide this car’s rear end is until you see one in person, and of course the square shape and dual exhausts don’t do anything to conceal it.

Hmm, we’ll just shoot a little ether in there and she’ll fire right up and burn that 13-year-old gas through those gummed-up downdraft Webers. This is one of the last cars to carry the old Maserati V8 that had its place in various racing cars and Maserati GTs of the past. It’s amazing that for near-pocket change, you can have the same engine also found in a 6-figure Ghibli. Sure, it might burn oil – in fact, it’s not burning anything right now – but this has a direct link back to some very historic cars.

Last, but certainly not least, the interior – if you’re really going to do anything with this car, you don’t want to buy a car with a trashed interior. And from what little that is visible, the interior might need a good scrub and vacuum, but it looks to be in generally good shape. The main condition issues are cracking in the wood veneer and a hint of a split in the driver’s seat. Definitely make sure to feed the leather before giving it any heavy use. So, to quote Dirty Harry, do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you?

Tags: Feature, italian, maserati, quattroporte, sedan

This entry was posted on January 28, 2014 at 5:00 am and is filed under Bad Ideas, Feature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.