Maserati built the Quattroporte to carry four people for long periods of time at high speeds in comfort. This 1981 Quattroporte III is the third iteration of the hand-built Italian grand tourer. V8s came standard, as did very luxurious interiors. Somewhere along the line, this car forgot how special it was and ended up parked next to a RV out in the elements. It is now listed for sale on Portland Maine’s craigslist for $850. Thanks goes to Peter for sending this in.
Hard to tell in the terrible photos, but these cars were stately. They competed with the best high performance sedans in their day and it is a shame to see this one rotting away. The seller does not provide much information, but does mention that it has a “great” interior and underside. They also mention some rust on the exterior though. Just over 2k of these were made so this one deserves to be rescued, even if it just for parts. What do you think? Is this Maser worth saving? Take a look this 4port page before deciding.
Unfortunately and very sadly so, there is NO appreciation for this car in the US.
I have one and was struggling to get $2500 for it and mine looks ten times nicer than this one.
The fixation on 2 door/ ‘Sports cars’ make this undesired as a car, but valuable for parts….
Go figure
mine is still available.
$4, 000 obo
rustfreecacars@gmail.com
Send us some photos Horse Radish.
That car would be worth loads if you imported it to the UK, that Maserati would be appreciated a lot more there
this is one heck of a nice car,and it need’s to be redone and is worth the redo as they are a nice driving car, and deserve better treatment.
to restore it, or clean it up and just drive it with freshening up.
I remember these and side with HorseR, the price of this car is equal to the “colored seat belts” option on exotics today, ridiculous. I do hope somebody restores this class-ic ride.
My mechanic had one that he got from a customer as payment. He tried to restore it but gave up quickly claiming it was a rolling nightmare to work on. Maseratis of this era were wholly unreliable and very difficult and expensive to repair. Remember the disast
rous Biturbo coupe??
I JUST listed one of these on Ebay JUST NOW! I found it and bought it just to resale it, to actually save it. There are two other III’s on there also, nice low milage runners. Too bad they don’t bring much money. 4.9 DOHC V-8, 4 Webers!!!!!!
I remember a Road & Track article about bargain V12’s, Jags etc. The problem with these like the V12’s is sure you can get them cheap, but when it’s time to actually work on them the parts are impossibly priced, then the labor is worse, because everything is buried & overly complicated to work on. An example to some of the difficulty’s is 2 distributors, 2 turbos, etc. so when anything has to be worked on it takes a days labor to get near the part that needs to be replaced then the labor to replace the part then the days labor to put everything back, so in the end what might be a &1,000 water pump for example, & I remember the old days when a water pump was say $400, so on these when you put it all back together that water pump is closer to $3000 or more. In the end there is no such thing as a cheap exotic, even if they gave it to you.
~ ‘there is no such thing as a cheap exotic’
as those that don’t believe will surely learn.
The trick to owning these cars is to know the source of where they got the parts from. For our old Mistral, Massey-Ferguson was a place for OEM parts.
Their is always a trick, I drive an E Benz, if you go to Benz for a part it’s usually 4 time’s what I can buy the same part on line or through a local buddy who sells euro parts , some after market some oem. Than if you brought the car into the dealer to have a repair you can expect a 0 or two added to anything that a local euro guy private shop or me doing the same repair.
These are interesting looking cars…………..family?…..exotic?……..
like a cross between the Griswald’s and the Jetson’s
Is that rust through I see under the driver’s door? And what about the other side?
Well, does anybody have a GOOD parts source for these older Maseratis ?
I’d like to know ?, thanks
Alex
6point3@gmail.com
Yeah buy this car & use it for parts, but their probably isn’t much to use.
Rip out the old V-8 and drop a Chevy small block and a Turbo 350 in it and call it a day.
Despite the fact of being underwater the instant I bought one of these, I still want one. A late III series may be the best of the early Maser 4 drs as some of the bugs have been worked out. The interior is really something to see, it is just gorgeous. The body work alone on this is well into 5 figures. Forget the Maser engine and maybe the tranny unless it’s a stick ZF, pull them both. I’d still want a V8, but it would be the ZR5 DOHC Corvette V8 and gearbox from the 90’s. The brakes and rear suspension are another nightmare. Does the running gear remind anyone else of a Jaguar XJ6? To rebuild the rear brakes, you’d have to drop the whole rear end. I still want it, but I’m slowly regaining my sanity.
This seller does not seem to be very interested in selling even with all this free advertising. We called several times leaving messages and he hasn’t bothered to return calls.