It’s time again to have an archaic Commodore PET computer pick a random page from the 2005 book, The World’s Worst Cars, written by Craig Cheetham, and then defend and redeem the car shown on that page, because I maintain that Mr.Cheetham has created a book not of The World’s Worst Cars, as the title claims, but rather of some of the World’s More Interesting Cars. Most of the cars in this book – perhaps all – do not deserve to be trapped in between the covers of this deceitful tome. And I’m going to redeem them, one by one. So let’s go.
Let’s start like we always do, by keying in this simple BASIC program to pick a random number between 1 and 317, the number of pages in the book. And yes, while I did copy and paste this intro, I may as well note that I’m actually out tomorrow, so there won’t be a Friday edition of World’s Worst Cars Book Redemption, which I hope is okay with everyone.
But we still have today’s! So let’s see what page Mr.Pet wants us to look at!
Page 287. Let’s see what treasures lay on page 287!
The Maserati Biturbo!
Oh, by the way, you may notice I’m not showing the entire two-page spread, like before. That’s because our publisher Matt brought up a very salient point about how, were I to keep this up for some significant portion of this book, I would be effectively re-publishing the book right here on our site, which is, um, wrong. So, in the interests of not getting the ire (and lawyers) of Mr.Cheetham and this publisher all worked up, we’ll just include a little portion of the page from here on out. I should go back and crop down those other pages now that I think about it, too.
But! Back to the Biturbo! When I first saw this choice, I was a bit more sympathetic than normal; these things do have a reputation for being huge ass-pains and always breaking. But, remember, this is a book of worst cars in the world. The Biturbo was also the first production car with twin turbos, and, more importantly, it was Maserati’s first real attempt to make something even close to a mass-market car, and while it wasn’t entirely successful, it defined a path that so many exotic carmakers rely on today to stay in business: have something that’s more accessible (think all those Porsche and Lambo and, yes, Maserati SUVs) so money can be made, and supercars can be built.
Alejandro DeTomaso bought Maserati in 1976, and was determined to make something regular-rich people could afford instead of crazy-rich people, and he succeeded, if you look at the numbers. Think about this: when DeTomaso bought Maserati in 1975, that year the company had built 201 cars. You know how many Biturbos were sold? 40,000. I think he accomplished what he set out to do.
Plus, even if Craig Cheetham thinks the design looks boring – and it is a fairly understated design for Maserati – it’s undeniably handsome, I think. Compared to other executive car/sports coupés like the Mercedes-Benz 190E or a BMW E30, it’s downright striking-looking.
And that engine! Twin turbos in 1981! These were 90° V6s ranging from two to 2.8-liters in size, and making between 185 and 225 horsepower, depending on year and if it was carbureted or fuel-injected, and so on. These were quick cars, going from 0-60 in 6.7 seconds! Hell, a Maserati Merak from around the same time took 7.8 seconds to do that, and everyone thinks that’s a genuine exotic sportscar. The Biturbo was faster, more practical, and cheaper!
Plus, look at these interiors:
The Biturbo had genuinely amazing interiors, opulent seas of leather and wood and craftsmanship, down to one of the most ostentatiously and gloriously scrotal shift boots known to human culture. Those seats, too! They’re incredible!
Did they break down? Was the reliability garbage? Yes, of course it was! But was it worse than any other Italian sports car with a badge with a horse or bull or snakes eating people or whatever? No. There were just more Biturbos around for people to encounter. But they really weren’t any worse than any other member of their particular finicky breed.
I don’t think a car that looks and sounds and feels like this really deserves to be in a “worst cars” book:
Sure, it’s probably a money pit, but it does deliver on the character and drama and thrill and soul aspects of a car, which are incredibly important; these aren’t hot water heaters, after all, they’re irrational, emotional machines.
I mean, look at this engine:
Even before I imagine what a bill may be like to get it to stop doing whatever it shouldn’t be doing or start doing the things it should, I get a little weak in the knees. It’s a beautiful machine.
Modern Maserati wouldn’t exist without the Biturbo, no matter what horror stories you think you heard from your dad’s friend’s dentist’s ex-squash partner’s older brother. These put Maserati on a path to actually staying around (you know, roughly) and are compelling cars, period.
So, I say, grab that book and yank out page 287. The Biturbo is going bye.
The Biturbo is a smaller Quattroporte, what’s not to like?
Family member bought one of these new – it more than deserves its spot in the book.
“Why’d you get the 4-door?” “So there’s a convenient place to store the parts that fall off.”
“Is it reliable?” “Let me tell you how it overheated on the first drive home from the dealership and had to be towed back for a week-long repair.” I think the figure was 4 months inoperable in fewer than 2 years of ownership.
“Did you sell it?” “No. I brought it back to the dealer, left it with the keys, and said ‘It’s your problem now.’ Dealer said ‘What am I supposed to do with it?’ I said ‘Fill it with bricks and drive it off a pier?'”
I drove it for a day and while it sounded good it wasn’t enjoyable. Every input was very heavy – steering, brakes, clutch, shifter. (I was driving a Prelude at the time for comparison.) The leather upholstery was nice and it was a nice color. It also was peppy but it wasn’t enjoyable knowing it could self-immolate at any moment.
I’ve always thought one of these with an engine swap could be interesting even though it would mean probably losing what gave it its name. For some reason, my mind immediately goes to an SR20DET for what engine I’d want to swap into one, the problem is that a decent SR these days goes for nearly as much as a nice running Biturbo.
I think a Nissan turbo V6 of the same era would have done nicely.
Me, One of the 24v Alfa-Romeo V6s.
SRs are too hard to come by, and you’re probably not looking for crazy power in this.
Popular Miata swap now is the GM Ecotec engine, but I don’t know how well it would fit. It’s not like you can reduce the value of these things so you may as well just take a sawzall to anything causing interference.
For a worst cars of all time list, I think you have to focus on the reliability. Design is subjective, and really, the Biturbo looks good for its era and purpose. I want to grill it on the comparison to other Italian exotics of the day. You can find plenty of people bashing on the Biturbo because they’ve heard it’s unreliable garbage, but objectively, if it’s worse than ’80s Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Alfas, I think we have to accept the Achilles’ Heel for this model is terribly weak. I’ll call this myth “plausible”, but it’d take a deeper dive before I pull the Biturbo out of the book.
Only remember seeing one in person when I was a kid, and it announced its arrival with a glorious, glorious growl.
Might have been broken half the time but the other half it did sound like nothing else around.
I worked for a Mercedes restoration shop while I was in college, and in the back of the shop was a Biturbo that someone was putting a Buick Grand National turbo V6 into…
The swap was not complete when I graduated and left for a new city, but I always hoped they finished it, and day dreamed that it became a magnificent beast of a car.
This is certainly the least egregious entry, mostly due to the legendary lack of reliability. But I always liked the way the Biturbo looked, and the interior was certainly unlike anything you were getting in a 3er.
He’s getting a pass for this one but just barely. “It looked stupid” Craig? If you’re going to write an entire book dumping on cars, at least bring a certain level of entertainment to your writing. I nominate Adrian.
I have a very clean one. A 1985 2.5 liter “E” model, which means intercooled, special wheels, sunshades/headrests, stick shift, and a few other bits. Badged No. 9 out of 200. I’m thinking of selling it lol
Maserati vehicles are like supermodels…gorgeous to look at, eye candy, but will always put you in the poorhouse in the long run…
I’ve always loved the look of that car.
I’d also like to thank the Italians for the ‘least-imaginative-yet-fancy-sounding-when-said-in Italian’ car names.
Doesn’t quite work for English…Check out my Ford Twin Turbo parked next to my Dodge Four Door…
Turbo has always been a quality word. Just ask Porsche.
Ah yes, I absolutely cannot wait to procure a Taycan Turbo.
I will say this – Ford having branded theirs Ecoboost always seemed kinda silly to me; going with twin turbo would have been cooler, way cooler if there’d been a standard trunk lid emblem.
I guess it figured it would appeal to two different groups of drivers, but in retrospect, was that ever going to work? And esp now where they have much more eco-forward powertrains about which to boast.
It’s also extremely misleading. I got into the habit of telling customers ‘it’s either one or the other, but never both.’
Thankfully, I think they’re starting to get away from the badging.
They used it as an umbrella brand name, which included engines with a single turbo.
I did not know that! Do you know which ones/models by chance?
the 2.0L Ecoboost is a single turbo engine for example.
There’s a 3 cylinder at 1.0 and 1.5L and 4 cylinders from 1.5-2.3L covering most of their cars from Fiesta to Bronco. It was basically just a way of branding turbocharged high compression engines and, at least for my Focus ST, it lived up to the promise as I think averaging around 30 mpg was pretty good with similar power to an early ’90s 5.0. It lived up to being a Ford by starting to burn coolant massively at 180k miles, which is far longer than most people under the CA suit about those engine blocks.
I dunno. You’ve made some fair points, but I think I’m gonna let this page stay in.
+1 and agreed.
A good friend owned one of these.
For about 2 months.
Never drove it more than a couple of miles, as it was beset with a ton of issues.
Eventually it just became a comfortable place to smoke weed in…YMMV
As of 5 years ago, when I still had a commute, someone was daily driving a Biturbo in the opposite direction from me, so I’d see it every morning on the way in. A 35 year old Italian car that can still manage daily use can’t be all bad (or the owner was an absolutely heroic wrench).
Yeah, a few years ago a Biturbo, which came up for sale from an estate sale in my hometown, had racked up something like 150k or even more miles; apparently the owner drove it daily and actually had little trouble with it because he was so rigorous and meticulous with its maintenance. So, yeah, a combination of it not being all bad and being a heroic wrench 🙂
A lot of italian cars’ poor reliability reputation is linked to very little use (short and infrequent trips) and poor maintenance. These cars were ment to be driven, hard. And none of the maintenance is optional or to be done by JiffyLube.
A couple of decades ago I’ve had an ’89 Biturbo 425 (4 door, 2.5L engine), bought it with about 50k miles (75k kilometres) from an old italian guy (in Germany) who’s knee wouldn’t let him work 3 pedals anymore. Replaced the sparkplugs & plug wires right after I bought it and changed the oil. I put about 9-10k miles on it in about 2 years without a single issue. Got a great offer and sold it, then regretted it the very next day.
Hence the name Italian Tune-up 🙂
Dad had a co-worker with a Spyder. Was in the shop mostly for electrical gremlins that prevented the car running. You can see in the canyon driving clips of the video that the gauges are all wonky.
Remember they kept these things in production after ’91, and man I would import a Maserati Shamal if I had the cash…
A Maserati Shamal! – Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time.
That would be a fantastic car to import!
Turbo lag may be a complaint, but I remember being taken for a ride by a record producer in his new Biturbo and, holy hell, when he floored it I was slammed back into the seat. I had never experienced anything like it.
A guy in the music biz had a Maserati? Did it go 185?
i think for the time all turbos had major lag. I remember Saabs in the late 90’s dealing with a 1second lag.
The cars may be known as Maserati, but their owners are collectively the Miserati.
These are just an engine swap away from greatness.
Also, calling the styling stupid and boring really highlights Craig’s stupidity, and I’m going to go out on a short, sturdy branch and assume he is boring too.
He’s insulted the styling of nearly every car in the book. It’s funny watching him struggle to find more words to call cars ugly, having to resort to superlatives for normal-looking, unremarkable cars.
Having only ever seen photos, I’ve always wanted to see one of these in the flesh just to see if the proportions are as odd in real life as they are in the pictures.
Good thinking about Mr. Cheetham’s legal reach. I think he might be related to one of the lawyers at the firm of ‘Dewey, Cheetham and Howe’.
That line still cracks me up; funny how something that’s like 3/4 of a century old at this point is still relevant.
And how! Except that particular turn of phrase has fallen out of fashion.
I think I’m gonna give Craig a pass on this one.
“Scrotal”? It takes balls to invent a word like that.
100% adding that to my repertoire.
What’s not to like?
A 3 Series-sized car with all the style of your Dad’s big old Quattroporte III, with an interior that includes an entire suite of Joe Colombo leather furniture.
Who cares if it goes wrong once in a while – That’s why you bought the Fiat Panda.
Elephantitis of the shift boot.
I remember as a kid not knowing what to make of these – at the time, Maseratis were known as exotics by virtue of its ’70s stuff. This wasn’t that for sure, though it was discernably different from the BMW 3 series yuppie-mobiles that were running around.
Also, is that the spare tire mounted in the SUV/truck position? Just dynamite.
Even better, yes it’s in truck position, but comes in a little carrier with an in-trunk handle. Motorweek failed to note though, if it came with gloves or anything else to protect every fine imported garment Biturbo drivers inevitably wore.
https://youtu.be/Ko96GLSTJ44?t=255
Thank you for this – not just to see the spare in action, but wow I’ve been apparently pronouncing it wrong all this time. I always thought it was Bih-turbo, not Bye-turbo. D’oh.
According to Car and Driver, there is a category that the Maserati Biturbo is best in. It’s the best car to lose in a divorce.
Why? Because it will inflict maximum pain on the ex-spouse who ends up with it while making the ex-spouse who lost it look like an absolute baller for having had it.