Since I know there's a lot of Maserati Biturbo fans in here...

Somebody's selling a Maserati Biturbo Grupp A homologation special.

Now capable of faster breakdowns, longer downtimes, and awesomer catastrophic failures than stock!

(Only half joking, notice that the ad doesn't specifically say whether it runs...)

GameboyRMH said:

(Only half joking, notice that the ad doesn't specifically say whether it runs...)

That part didn't escape me either. I don't really get the appeal of a Biturbo myself; they weren't particularly fast for the time, and the styling looks like what happened if you tried to translate "Malaise Era" into Italian. Though this is probably one of the better looking examples I've seen.

I always thought one of those with a VQ in it would be a riot

mad_machine said:

I always thought one of those with a VQ in it would be a riot

This. Totally gutted, with a cage, with race seats replacing the pillow interior, and with a VQ or some other modern drivetrain. 

Because they still look epically 80s cool....

I was reading about a team that ran these back in the day.  The engines liked to lunch bottom ends, especially the bearings.

They showed up at one race with a single car and 8 brand new engines.  By the end of the weekend, they had gone through 6 of them.

Apparently fairly quick, but fragile.

http://forum.retro-rides.org/thread/173204/1985-maserati-biturbo-1uzfe-transplant?page=26

^ I bet you also toss burning flares into fireworks factories for fun. That has awesome written all over it.

caged and ready for touge 

description:

Maserati Biturbo SI Grupp A with chassinumber ZAM 331 B 000HB 117204,homologation A-5238.This team was owned by Thomas lindström former champion with Volvo in Grupp A ,this car was only used -88 and -89.There is full documention and all invoices when the car was built.Lot of sparesparts engine, gearboxes, 4 complete corners,rearaxles,turbos,bodywork,ECU,Watercoolers,driveshaftes,intercoolers,dampers,This car is fantastic opportunity to enjoy Historic Gr A.  POA.

for just a moment I thought it said POS 

this also may be the single greatest thing ever posted upon these boards. It definitely deserves a You Need THIS: post

Soo, how much are they asking? $2018?

mad_machine said:

I always thought one of those with a VQ in it would be a riot

If I did an off the wall swap, it would be a Neon SRT4 drivetrain, just so I could put "Chrysler TC by Maserati" badges on it.

I don't usually burst out laughing before breakfast, but I just did.  MSMatt is my new hero.

MadScientistMatt said:

mad_machine said:

I always thought one of those with a VQ in it would be a riot

If I did an off the wall swap, it would be a Neon SRT4 drivetrain, just so I could put "Chrysler TC by Maserati" badges on it.

If you did one front and rear, it would still be 'biturbo'

One of my dumb ideas I'll never actually do in real life is I want to body swap a biturbo onto a Taurus or accord or some other dead nuts reliable car and have it look fully stock. The whole reason I want to do this is so I can play stupid when cars guys start asking about it out in the wild. "Oh gosh, do these have a reputation for being unreliable? I never heard that. Mine's been good, I have about 190k miles on it. I've had it about ten years. I just change the oil every 8 or 10k miles, that's about it."

You know we joke about BiTurbo's, but if you stripped and caged one and prepped it for track use it would probably get rid of all the stuff that makes them so unreliable.  Add MegaSquirt or similar and you've probably got a pretty solid platform.  

I still keep an eye out for convertible BiTurboes... I kind of regret not trying harder to buy the barn-find one that came up at auction here 5 years or so ago, but I dropped out of the bidding when it broke $2k.

It may just be me but in those colors it looks more like an 80s holden or Ford falcon then a Maserati 

In reply to Adrian_Thompson :

I have a friend who did just that.  Runs track days with it. 

Biggest changes were in the suspension to get it to handle.

In reply to iceracer :

How reliable has the running gear been?

In reply to Adrian_Thompson :

The diffeential failed.  He installed a cooler on the new one.

Haven't heardhim say of anything else.

Brakes are not oiginal.

MotorsportsGordon said:

It may just be me but in those colors it looks more like an 80s holden or Ford falcon then a Maserati 

Probably because Brock/HDT ran the marlbro livery for years across both torana's and Commodores

gearheadmb said:

One of my dumb ideas I'll never actually do in real life is I want to body swap a biturbo onto a Taurus or accord or some other dead nuts reliable car and have it look fully stock. The whole reason I want to do this is so I can play stupid when cars guys start asking about it out in the wild. "Oh gosh, do these have a reputation for being unreliable? I never heard that. Mine's been good, I have about 190k miles on it. I've had it about ten years. I just change the oil every 8 or 10k miles, that's about it."

This is similar to my own dream of daily-ing a Delorean and pretending at every fill-up to have never heard of Back To The Future.

^ I feel like that went on here in Columbus later on in the '80s when Big Lots bought DeLorean and moved the facility here. A ton of people around town had them and surely they hadn't all seen the movie.