By Antti Kautonen
It would be completely wrong to post used cars from Italy and not include a Biturbo. Or at least I think so, and for that reason you get to admire this 1985 Maserati 425 Biturbo.
It’s a very well-kept, low-mileage example of the four-door Biturbo body and is even reasonably priced. Take a look.
Photographing the Maserati hasn’t been the seller’s strong point, as a lot of the photos seem to feature gravel more than the car.
But here you see the flanks are straight and shiny.
The engine bay is reassuringly shiny and the hoses do not look badly weathered for a 1985 car.
But then again, have you ever seen a high-mileage Biturbo? It feels like the sixth digit on the odo is redundant on these.
The interior on this 48k km car is spotless and unripped, and despite the elderly cloth choice looks like a genuinely nice place to be.
You get leather on the dashboard, a bulky stereo, air-con and the famous clock.
The seller is asking only 5,800 eur for this “molto bello” 425. It’s slow E30 money these days for anything this clean, and If I had to rely on a Biturbo it would be this example.
Jeff Glucker
This is lovely. I mean, it's a terrible car, as if the Maserati chaps had decided on a whim one day
"Hey, letsa stoppa building the beautiful sports cars, letsa build a Ford Cortina instead". But by golly it's lovely for all its awfulness.
Additional: Sanchez' 222 Biturbo in "License to kill" was one of the coolest Bond villains cars ever.
The design sells the car for me. It's like a prettier E30.
Eye of the beholder. You have a good eye.
You're in GB, right? Because I'm doing some spring cleaning and I have the last Saab brochures/booklets before they went belly up and a dealer-only Fiat 500 book that they gave me when they ran out of brochures. I don't want to throw them away.
Sounds like R.A-S.H in waiting! Chuck me an e-mail at chrishainingwrites (at) gmail dot com. Sounds excellent. Thanks!
Exactly what I think.
The old 2.0l is a good comparison for the 325i, and anything 425 and up is quick enough to compete with M3s.
As you can probably guess, I really rather like biturbos, and I can also offer some counter-evidence to one of your points. Our little 228 is still running strong at 116k miles. As far as I know it's on the original turbos as well. The body's not nearly as nice as this one though, and it's under restoration at the moment: http://www.flickr.com/photos/81749070@N07/8381190…
I really want a boxy early car, with the torsen-style LSD and 2.8l engine from a 430 or 222 swapped in, but I'm very happy with the 228. <img src="http://i.imgur.com/2hmkuFt.jpg" width="600">
This was my dream car in 1990 as a 16 year old. This, and the IROC Camaro.
How did that lazy-boy interior find it's way into this otherwise nice looking European car, one wonders?
That's about $7500 US? Here, when they come up, are about 1/3 of that. I've seen a couple over the last couple years in the $2500 range. Not project cars, comple, running & driving cars. I saw one in Cinci last year and was momentarily tempted as a unique daily driver. Then I came to my senses. A Maserati daily driver? Ha!
Looks like a small block Ford might fit. I wonder if anyone makes engine mounts and adapters?
A lovely, fragile car. This looks about as good as you could hope to find. Even without full leather seats,which most likely would have been fully split by now. Not sure I could love it enough to put up with the cascade of disasters just over the horizon.
Seems like a shame to have cloth seats over the glorious leather, atlhough I might be attached to them because I had a virtually identical couch of indeterminate origin (similar colour and puffiness). But a quirky Italian E30 is sort of appealing either way.
Recaro could fix that blight on good taste, but for about 1200 Eu.
Well yeah, but Recaros don't look like my old couch. I could probably find an upholsterer to do it for more money that the car deserves, but not something irrational.
Nothing a well programmed ISIS system and an SBF couldn't fix when the biturbo inevitably fails. Then you take apart the engine, clean it up and have a wonderful conversation piece holding up the glass coffee table.
I think that's the original, carbureted Biturbo engine configuration. Under the dome with the trident on it resides a Weber 2-barrell in a completely pressurized environment. In the US, 425 mean 4 doors, 2.5 liters. I suspect that wasn't the case in Italy, and the numbers here stopped making sense soon thereafter. The 430 was a 2.8 liter, as was the 228. Does anyone know why? What did 222 signify?
This is one of the few models of vehicles where you might be inclined to inflate the mileage by tampering with the odometer as opposed to reduce them. Any evidence that it has in fact been used to move people down the road over time can only work in your favor. This is still less than 30K miles over 28 years. By comparison, my 84 Mercedes has 313, 000 miles, driven only a few days a week.