According to its seller, today’s Nice Price or No Dice Quattroporte features special paint and cost a cool $125,000 when new. It now asks a little more than a tenth of that, but that might not mean it’s a deal.
Now that summer is in full swing—last Friday being the sunny season solstice—the allure of top-down driving is on many a mind. To that end, we toasted the year’s longest day and closed out the week last Friday with a 2004 BMW 330Ci convertible. A new roof and the assurance of a previously pampered life made it a car to consider, despite having more miles than we might have liked. The $6,900 asking price made it a contender, and–undeterred by some naysayers who felt any German car of a certain age is best avoided–the little Bimmer pulled through in the end, taking home a 66% Nice Price win.
A descriptive name
When I was growing up, plain wrap food became all the rage. It wasn’t just a lower-cost store brand; its packaging was purposefully devoid of any ornamentation. The intention was to show off how frugal—or poor—purchasers were. The simple packaging extended to the product description: PEAS, CORN, ESCARGOT. This was taken to a humorous extreme in the movie “Repo Man” where characters ate out of cans branded as FOOD, and drank from those marked BEER.
Maserati presaged this sort of simple branding in 1964 with the introduction of its then-latest model, which was named for its four-door body style. The Quattroporte was the first four-door in the Maserati lineup and debuted a new quad-cam V8 engine as well. All subsequent editions would retain the four-door name, but not all would feature a V8.
This 2005 Maserati Quattroporte has both the required door count and a V8 engine. That’s a dry-sump, all-alloy 4.2-liter mill developed by Ferrari, producing 395 horsepower and 333 pound-feet of torque.
DuoSelect
While a sedan, the Quattroporte is a grand tourer, and it has the goods to fulfill that role. The stonking-hot engine sits just behind the front axle line, and sends its ponies to the rear wheels through a torque tube and rear-mounted gearbox for a near 50/50 weight distribution.
That gearbox, however, is one of the model’s weaknesses. Dubbed the DuoSelect, it’s an evolution of Ferrari’s six-speed Cambiocorsa manual-matic, and while it’s great on the highway, it’s a bear in stop-and-go driving or when undertaking low-speed maneuvers. Its unrefined nature—and appetite for clutch discs—gave the big Maserati a black eye to the point that, at the model’s refresh in 2008, the entire system was given the heave-ho in favor of a standard six-speed ZF transmission bolted directly to the back of the engine.
On the plus side for this car, the seller says its DuoSelect has 84% clutch life left, and the car has been fitted with an aftermarket “Drive By Wire” module, which, they claim, significantly reduces clutch wear. Per the seller, the clutch, actuator, and pump were also replaced within the last 5,900 miles.
Fancy pants
Other aftermarket add-ons and updates include a hardwired Passport radar detector (who knew those were still a thing?) and a Parrot hands-free Bluetooth connector. Everything else is factory, and there’s a butt-load of stuff the factory put in here. The car is painted in what the seller claims is a rare coat of Grigio Palladio, paired with silver 20-inch alloy wheels. The bodywork shows no evidence of any accidents or inattentive door dingers, nor are the wheels scraped in any way.
Befitting its grand touring aspirations, the interior looks like an amazing place to spend the hours a road trip requires. Resplendent in buttery Poltrona Frau leather and lots of shiny wood, it’s pretty swanky. It’s also well-equipped, with all the bells and whistles one could want, right down to seats that massage their occupants’ butts.
According to the ad, the car has 49,951 miles on the clock, a fresh smog certificate, and a recent service that changed out the engine oil, topped up all other fluids, and replaced the battery. All that, plus previous service, is said to have been performed by the dealer or a Bay Area Italian specialist.
Priced to move?
Promoting the car, the seller closes the ad with the following:
If you’re looking for a very well-kept Gen V Pininfarina-designed Maserati Quattroporte in a beautiful color combo with documented SF Bay Area ownership and open checkbook maintenance history from new, this is the one to own.
The asking price for those Quattroporte seekers is $14,900. Now, we can all agree that makes for a lot of car for the money, and it’s almost comical how much depreciation these cars—especially the less desirable DuoSelect models—suffer. Is it enticing enough, though?
What do you say? Is $14,900 a siren’s song for this clean and somewhat unique Maserati with the plain wrap name? Or does the model’s history demand that the seller name a lower price?
You decide!
Los Angeles, California, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
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