Wild Maserati Biturbo With the Beating Heart of a Lexus V8

By Tony Markovich - May 26, 2016

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The Maserati Biturbo has a strange place in history. It’s the first production road car with standard twin-turbos. The 2.0-liter V6 used a Weber carburetor, had three valves per cylinder, and didn’t even have an intercooler. Package that with low weight, sharp styling, and a luxurious interior, and you had an attractive, fast, and practical Italian four-seater coupe. But there’s another major key to automotive ownership that can ruin everything: reliability.

It’s no secret that Italian cars in general, and Maseratis in particular, have a rocky history, but the early Biturbos were an entirely different animal with the unrefined twin-turbo setup. Electrical problems were frequent, they overheated, the carb constantly needed adjustment, the turbos blew, and some of them even caught on fire. Time listed the car among the all-time worsts. But not all people gave up hope on the car.

Reportedly only about 5,000 Biturbos were sold/released in the U.S., but Maserati later fixed many of the problems from the TT in the cars overseas. That didn’t exactly help the American buyers, so one of them took matters into his own hands. After finding a 1985 Biturbo that had been sitting around rusting out for 15 years, he rebuilt the car with a Japanese twist. Within this Biturbo lies a 1UZ-FE V8, an engine that originally debuted in the Lexus LS 400. Peace out reliability problems! Well, as long as this dude knew what he was doing.

Because it was sitting for so long, this car was nearly a complete rebuild, thanks to water damage and rust. It has coilovers from a Pontiac Solstice, parts of the exhaust are from a Corvette, interior pieces from a MkIV Jetta, a completely different dash, new wheels, fresh paint, a new spoiler, and an Aisin automatic transmission (at least). It’s a Frankenbuild, for sure, but it has Maserati’s good looks and the reliability and power of a Toyota V8. Could be worse, right?