I’ve found about a dozen Maseratis while documenting automotive history as seen in car graveyards, and all of them have been Biturbos or Chrysler TCs by Maserati.
Maserati’s experiment with cars for the somewhat-well-off masses didn’t go so well, but it makes for an interesting story. Let’s take a look at a first-model-year-for-the-USA Biturbo, found in remarkably good shape (near six Chevy Vegas) in a Denver self-service junkyard.
The heart of the early Biturbo was a V6 with three valves per cylinder and twin turbochargers feeding a blow-through Weber carburetor inside a pressurized box. Carbureted turbocharged engines never did work very well compared to those with electronic fuel injection, particularly when they had to meet ever-stricter emissions requirements, and the Biturbo instantly became notorious as a maintenance nightmare.
The one in this car is a 2.5-liter rated at 185 hp and 208 lb-ft.
The Biturbo was about the same size as the BMW 3-Series and Peugeot 505 of the same era, with a price tag closer to that of a BMW 5-Series and a lot more power (when it ran). Its interior was spectacularly decadent even by the standards of the middle 1980s, as you can see in this photo.
Could you imagine a BMW with stitched leather defroster vents?
1984 Maserati Biturbo Coupe in Colorado Junkyard
