How does an exotic car like this get into this state? This Maserati is even missing it’s trademark flying buttresses, making the rear of the car look a little like a flatbed truck! Located in Trenton, New Jersey, the auction here on eBay has bidding up to $4,000 but there’s no telling what the reserve is. The Merak is the baby brother of the Bora, Maserati’s mid-engined “supercar” of the 1970’s. At that point in time, Citroen owned Maserati and they were looking for a place to put more hydropneumatics and engines; thus the V8 Bora begat the V6 Merak, which not only was more affordable but stayed on the market long after the Bora was discontinued. We know very little about this particular car from the auction as the seller merely states the obvious that it needs a full restoration. They do claim to have most of the original parts. Personally, I would require further quantification of the word “most” before I were willing to bid. I do want to note the condition of the seats, which have been removed and stored; they look absolutely perfect. It will be interesting to see where this auction goes!
This has got so many “no’s” written all over this. Nope, nope, nope.
The seats look like they have been recovered with wrinkles where the covers didn’t quite fit. Are these cars very valuable, now?
~ WHAT have they done to the flying buttresses???
Calling a Merak a “money pit” would be an understatement. These cars are financial black holes. Even the the smallest simple part costs hundreds of dollars. Oh, and if you do happen to get it back together and running properly, start saving up, you’ll be doing it all over again in less than 5k miles. Hoorah.
These were never a decent car, poor build quality, design, performance was nil. I was buying parts for my Mistral when these were being built, the Maserati parts manager hated them…….and his French bosses.
Dave, Citroën should have let Maserati stay bankrupt, and used all the new production machinery in their own plants.
There’s probably no make of car that hasn’t been neglected or trashed by a few of their owners, including the classics and the Italian exotics like this Merak. I’m not surprised when I see trashed Meraks or even Ferrari 308 GT4s. You used to see neglected / trashed GT4s on Ebay, but almost never now since any ’50s or ’60s Ferrari in good condition now sells for multiples of what it would have sold for not that many years ago.
The more recent Maseratis haven’t caught that wave and might never. The connection with Citroen and their modest power and performance hasn’t helped. I never thought the Meraks looked good anyway. I think flying butresses are an add-on that were meant to make up for the odd body design without them. And they never got picked up by other designers. A decent ’60s Maserati 3500GT will now cost probably 100 times what this ’80 Merak sell for…if it sells.
“A decent ’60s Maserati 3500GT will now cost probably 100 times what this ’80 Merak sell for…”
Then you start the maintenance, repair and restoration costs. Open hood, dump in another wheelbarrow load of $100 bills.
I didn’t even have to go to ebay to see that this thing was from NJ. Yous guys need to stop messin with trying to modify cars.
I have a spare pair of buttresses if needed
If you want a sports car, a better idea would be to buy a patch of land, mine the metal ores, smelt them, process them into steel and aluminum, then drill for oil to make the petrochemicals that go into the plastic parts. Take engineering and drafting classes so you can design things like the engine and suspension. Learn to paint automotive finishes. Learn to sew leather. When you’re done, you’ll probably have spent less time and money than you would on this specimen, and you might have a more reliable car.
~ well……. yea, I can be all that – If I start 10 years ago.
The one line description says it all, in the UK we’d call it a cut and shut. because this one looks like heavy accident damage, but hey, you can make one car out of two……
They’ve got time to put 15 photos in, but no time to write about it, heck, even if i’d owned if for 5 minutes i could put a paragraph together. It surprises me that someone with a half decent Ebay rep would post such a poor advert. I’d avoid it on that principle alone.
The Merak used the DOHC V6 that was designed for the Citroën SM in a 3L form. Another “open hood, dump in another wheelbarrow load of $100 bills” job.
It was a shame the SM didn’t get the SOHC V6 of Peugeot-Renault-Volvo. But the SM was a late ’60s design introduced four years before the “shotgun” marriage of Peugeot to Citroën and five years before the end of the DS, upon which the SM was heavily based.