This £6k Maserati Quattroporte Is The Terrible Decision We Want To Make

This week, a rather significant Maserati Quattroporte was delivered to a customer. Not only was it the last of the current Quattroportes, but it was also the final car Maserati will ever build with a V8 engine. The Italian marque hasn’t been without an eight-pot of some sort in its lineup since 1959, so it’s a big moment for the company, and one that’s got us feeling a little nostalgic.

See, the outgoing Quattroporte had a lovely V8, a 3.8-litre twin-turbo unit closely related to the 3.9-litre mill from various recent Ferraris. The two companies’ working relationship goes back further, though, to when their V8 engines were still roaring, naturally aspirated items.

And the absolute peak of that relationship, in our book, was the Maserati version of the old Tipo F136 V8. Unlike the flat-plane unit found in the Ferrari F430, 458 and California, Maser’s had a cross-plane crankshaft, making for one of the most soul-stirring, rousing, evocative noises notes to ever come from a car this side of an early 2000s F1 race.

First a 4.3-litre and later a 4.7, this motor found its way into the Maserati GranTurismo and the Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione, but the application we’re most interested in is the fifth-generation Quattroporte. That’s partly because there’s something undeniably cool, and quite menacing, about the car whose name literally means ‘four doors’; and partly because for a two-tonne saloon, they were spectacular to drive: the engine was mounted behind the front axle, and the gearbox was out back in a transaxle layout. Mainly, though, it’s because they’re now phenomenally cheap.

Now, look. We’re not stupid. Well, not in this regard anyway. We know about the reputation these cars have. We know how they like to eat their way through suspension components like a crazed Labrador, and that the subframes can go crusty. We know the cam variators can go. We’ve heard tales of how the clutch on the early automated manual gearbox needs replacing on a weekly basis.

And yet, we’ve still headed for the classifieds, hitting the button to sort by price – cheapest first, of course. That’s led us to what we think is Britain’s cheapest Quattroporte right now: a 2005, 4.3-litre car with 395bhp that’s covered just under 81,000 miles.

Yes, it hasn’t been on the road for around five years, and no, it doesn’t have an MOT – something the seller only puts down to a blown headlight bulb. We’re also told that there are “some warnings” on the dash, which the seller perhaps optimistically suggests will go away with a bit of use. Oh, and as an early car, it has that gearbox.

On the other hand, we’re assured that it starts every time with no issue, and from the pics at least, it looks like it’s in reasonable nick. It’s certainly not been left to rot, at any rate. And would you just look at it? That lustrous blue paint and interior full of sumptuous beige leather and wood veneer is enough to convince us. If that’s not the case for you, punch ‘Maserati Quattroporte V noise’ into YouTube and get back to us.

And the asking price for all this? £6,350. Less than half the price of Britain’s cheapest new car, a boggo Dacia Sandero. This Quattroporte might be a recipe for disaster, but for a reasonably small outlay, what a fantastically stylish, epic-sounding disaster it’ll be.