The Original Maserati Ghibli Proves Maserati Was Once Great

a few months ago I made a review of a Maserati Ghibli and I pointed out that it wasn't a very good car I later had roughly the same opinion of a Maserati Quattroporte and I wasn't particularly kind to the Levante either but Maserati hasn't always built crap and this 1971 maserati ghibli is proof I've borrowed this Ghibli from tomini classics here in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates which has an amazing inventory of cars from modern exotics to million-dollar classics now I chose to film with the Ghibli because I wanted to go back to an era when Maserati was special when they were building beautiful cars with amazing performance and the Ghibli is that the Ghibli was sold from 1967 to 1973 but this is the one you want the Ghibli SS which came out in 1969 while the standard Ghibli had 300 horsepower the SS had a larger engine 4.9 liter v8 with 330 horsepower and when Joe Walsh sang that famous line my Maserati does 185 he was probably talking about this car or its successor the cams in both were being made around that time fun fact though neither of those cars actually did 185 the top speed of this car was 174 and the cams and was about the same in fact it wasn't until 2004 that Maserati actually made a car that does 185 anyway if your experience with Maserati comes mostly from the modern models you're probably wondering what the fuss is all about with the Maserati brand name because frankly Maserati isn't very good but today I'm gonna show you why it used to be good I'm gonna show you around this car I'm gonna show you all of its quirks and features then I'm gonna get it out on the road and drive the original Ghibli and then I'm gonna give it a dug score and for more of my thoughts on the Ghibli experience click the link below to go to autotrader.com slash oversteer where I've also compiled a list of some of the odd and unusual 1970s and 80s Maseratis you've probably never heard of now this car has a lot of interesting and unusual quirks as you might expect from a 60s 70s Italian car I'm gonna start with the door panel now the door handle is a little bit of a cork in itself sort of hidden you pull it up and the door opens that's not the coolest thing on the door panel that honor goes to the quarter window now the quarter window is the coolest thing in these older cars you could twist it open and then you had a little airflow through the cabin I wish someone would bring that back the cool part about this quarter window is how it opens you twist this little chrome dial in order to open it and close it instead of actually pushing on the window itself it's a nice little touch I think is there a handsome way to open and close that window also interesting on the door panel how about the little plug for where the manual window roller would have been if this car didn't have power windows instead of creating an entirely new door panel for the power window cars Maserati is just like now let's put a plug over it that'll do moving further inside we get onto one of the most bizarre Ghibli details and that would be the lights and switches to the left of the steering wheel all of which are unlabeled I'm serious so there's like four lights over here and a couple other lights and some switches and a little dial and we have no idea what they do because Maserati isn't telling us fortunately some prior owner of this car surely a German laid out every single button and switch in this car and what it does because he was so confused by it the result is that only because of that do we know what all those lights and switches do interestingly this diagram also labels the front fogs and in parentheses under - that's where the front fog lights are located or should I say hidden because Maserati didn't really make it clear that they're down there and once again they didn't label them moving further into the car for some more unusual course we must next focus on the steering column and the fact that it is adjustable unlike every Italian car from this era where I often have trouble fitting in at someone who's tall this steering column I can move just twist this little dial underneath the steering column and then you can adjust it except there's a problem this is all the adjustment that's it it only goes in and out about an inch and it doesn't go up and down you can see the little cutouts for the turn signals the other stocks on the steering column and that is exactly how far this thing adjusts but hey you know what at least they tried and speaking of at least they tried this car has a parking brake which is an important component of a stick shift car but they put it in the driver foot well they didn't hide it over on the side it's pretty far over there and it's rather large but again at least it has one now moving further into the car next we get to the switch for the hazard lights which is mounted in a very unusual place it's to the right of the steering wheel and this little afterthought compartment before you get to the actual center switches now there are two possibilities for why it's here one is that this car wasn't originally delivered with hazard lights and so these were at an aftermarket which would be crazy because that would mean this car wasn't originally delivered with hazard lights the other option is that this is actually where Maserati put it which would also be crazy because it looks ridiculous nonetheless you flip the switch and then this little red light blinks and it lets you know that your hazard lights are on the other interesting thing down here is the trip odometer reset which I find absolutely hilarious because if you turn it you can get the trip odometer to go back to zero as you'd expect but if you keep turning it you can get it to go to basically any repeating number that you want you want your car to say 1 1 1 1 or 2 2 2 2 that's fine you can do that if you have a Ghibli also over here is this little silver button next to the hazard lights it's unlabeled in fact it's not even on that written diagram that's so detailed I'm afraid to push it although when I do Porsche it when the car is running nothing happens maybe it's the automotive equivalent of a fidgets spinner you can just push it when you're driving down the road if you're bored next I'm moving into the middle of this car there are a couple of interesting things worth highlighting one is simply the overall shape and look of the middle of the interior of this car you have the gauges on top and below that you have all the buttons and then there are the climate vents and below that you have the original stereo take a look at this thing everybody has swapped out stereos and all these cars over time but this is the factory stereo this car came up when it was delivered in science in 1971 it even says Maserati on and that is a cool stereo although it's worth noting it probably can't sync up to your phone using bluetooth audio now a couple of other interesting things in the center this car one of them is the little switch with the gas pump on it what could that possibly be well that's the switch to switch between fuel tanks you see this car has two separate fuel tanks you can fill it up on the driver's side or on the passenger side and I'll show you that in a second but the meaning is that you can switch between the fuel tanks if the driver side is empty just press that little switch and suddenly you're using the full passenger side now how do you know when they're empty there are two individual fuel lights they're over there on the Left panel I showed them to you before they're the reserved for the driver side and the passenger side when the driver's side reserved light turns on just flip the switch to the passenger side another benefit and this is when you're driving to 71 giggly you don't have to worry about which side of the pump to pull up on because you can pull up on either side although it's also a drawback because I usually could never fully fill the car on one side you have to fill it and then drive around and fill it on the other side too which could get annoying nonetheless that's how it's done also interesting over on the very far right of all these things the switches and the gauges is a little unlabeled knob well that's the knob for the climate control you twist it to adjust the temperature of the air that comes out the climate control vents but you'd only know that if you read the diagram or just poked around it for a while now it's worth noting that that knob only controls the temperature of the air hot or cold to control the air flow to increase or decrease it or to control where the air comes out it's those little switches over on the left that I showed you before also unlabeled now those are a few things that maybe Maserati has gotten wrong in this car but there are some things they got right for example this car has a dimming interior mirror I've never been in any car from this era that has that but this one does it's a very early dimmer but it works also interesting is the fact that this car has power windows which was pretty common on luxury cars in the time period but it is kind of cool to see it the window switches are in the center rather than on the doors themselves other interesting Ghibli feature is this little vent there's one on the driver's side behind the driver and there's one on the passenger side and initially I thought they were air conditioning vents but it turns out when you look through them you can see the outside of the car so maybe this is some sort of fresh air vent I don't really know I'm mentioning this is something that Gilly has done right but really it's just more something that Ghibli has done another good touch in the Ghibli you can adjust the headrests which is tremendously rare in a car from this era especially an Italian car although the process is a little bit cumbersome it's not exactly like pushing a button in a mercedes-benz instead you twist this little thing just like on the steering column except in this case you twist it all the way off and then you can move the headrest up or down like you're adjusting the seat on a bicycle when you have it in the place that you want twist that little thing right back in and then the headrest higher or lower and depending on where you want it now it's worth noting one interesting thing about that headrest adjustment is that you can clearly see when you pull the headrest all the way out that there are three prongs of adjustment but when you put it back in its fully down in prong number two so while the headrest is adjustable technically it's only adjustable at two levels and it looks more adjustable than it actually is still that's a nice little practical touch in the car also a practical touch to this car is the vast amount of storage this vehicle has starting in the passenger side foot well there is a storage compartment on the right in front of the passenger door I've seen a lot of storage compartments are a lot of weird places but I've never seen one in front of the door itself now this car also has a glovebox and it's kind of cool as a weird way that it opens it often has kind of an interesting shape and when you open it you'll find that it is actually relatively practical also in the middle there's this tiny incredibly shallow center storage area but hey it's there but then we move on to the strangest storage compartment in this vehicle that would be behind the seats now this car is a two seater but it has a vast storage compartment back there with only one problem it's not accessible because this car isn't a hatchback instead it has a trunk more on that in just a second but in the back there are a couple of unusual things now when you first glance back there it looks like just one giant carpet and storage compartment until you actually start poking around that's when you're discovered that if you pull up the carpeting behind the driver and passenger seat you will find these two leather basically boxes stuck there in place of the seats the reason that there is that when they're in place they make the entire compartment back there flat but when you pull them out it reveals basically fake seats that are inaccessible except for storage it's very very weird and here's the crazy thing and only are those fake seats good for storage but you can lift them up and then there's even more storage this is really really strange it's definitely the strangest thing in the interior of this car maserati could have put seats back here or they could have just put some leather wrapped parcel shelf like basically every other car with this configuration Mercedes SL Ferrari 550 but instead they put in these fake seats and these little storage thing this whole one by the way another really weird and interesting thing about the fake rear seats back there maserati even went to the trouble of putting individual rear carpeting on the driver and passenger side behind the front seats it's almost like they were planning to put rear seats in this car really far along in the design process and then someone said no it's too small that would just be ridiculous and so they got rid of them instead they put those weird leather boxes back there they're like leather pillows really it's very strange now moving on to the outside of the Gibbon I want to start with the trunk now like I said before despite the appearance of this car in that giant storage area back there this is a car with a trunk not a hatchback now in order to open the trunk you pull a little latch in the driver's door jamb it's really hidden in there then you gotta pull it really hard and once you do the trunk on latches and then you can open it right up and it opens up just like a normal trunk and in fact it is a fairly normal trunk with only a couple of exceptions number one is this little prop you actually have to set the prop so that the trunk stays in place otherwise it'll just keep falling on you there's no hydraulic struts in this thing this is the way to keep it open the other interesting thing about the trunk is that even though it's a trunk and not a hatchback it opens to the storage area inside the car it's not separate from the storage area itself so even though you can't load giant items because you can't open the window you can still get into the storage area from the trunk area so that begs the question why didn't they just make the window open I strongly suspect it would have had to do with the physical size and weight of the piece that would have had to open for that to work the weight of the rear window in an enormous hatchback with this body section would have been huge so instead they said well a trunk is all you get and indeed this trunk is all you get there is no lock back here in the trunk meaning the only way to access the trunk is that little latch inside the car meaning if you're walking up to this car a lot of stuff in your arms you have to set it down walk around unlock the door pull the latch walk around back open the trunk and then you can put it in proving the Italian cars have been annoying us since the 1970s now aside from the fact that the trunk has that small opening the cars not a hatchback and the fact that it goes through to the interior there's nothing more particularly interesting about the trunk when you open up the floor of the trunk you'll find the usual a toolkit a battery and there's a spare tire back there and speaking of the spare tire let's talk about changing the tires in this car it's kind of interesting you see that little cap on the wheels well that requires a special large tool in order to get it off a lot of Italian cars from this era that was the only cap you would take the tool you would undo it and then you could pull the wheel off but this one in this car that's a decorative cap when you take the special tool to that little cap and you pull the cap off then you reveal the lug nuts and then you have to pull those off to making roadside tire changes a little bit more frustrating than usual next up I told you I'd show you the dual fuel tanks in this car and well here they are you can already see the gas cap on the passenger side and repeated and symmetrically over on the driver side here is the other one and again this car had two fuel tanks and you could switch between them when one ran out of fuel with that little switch I showed you inside the cabin it's very strange next up moving on to the front of the Ghibli now there's nothing especially interesting under the hood although the hood itself is front hinged though that was common for Italian cars back in this time period nonetheless I will still allow you to gaze at the beauty that was a 60 70s maserati italian v8 this engine is beautiful and to me maybe the most beautiful part are these little labels on the side these labels were put there for regulators to satisfy regulations back in the 60s and 70s but but aged so well also there are two other interesting things in the front of this car both of which would be obvious if you've seen any of my other videos these vintage Italian exotics from tomini one is the horn push it and well the other is also obvious that would be the headlights if I turn the switch the headlights were right up into position these are the early pop-ups this is one of the cars that started the trend we think of pop ups is an 80s trend but here it wasn't a car that came out in the late 60s turn the headlights off and the retreat right back into their home so that's a tour of the Ghibli but before I move on to driving this car I want to talk a little bit about its styling a lot of people consider this late 60s early 70s Ghibli to be one of the most beautiful cars ever made and it's easy to understand why it has a striking low-slung look that predates most of the exotic cars that have that design back when the Ghibli came out Ferrari was making the 275 gtb in the gigantic 365 GT 2+2 but after the Ghibli they moved on to the flat windswept to Daytona undoubtedly influenced by the Ghibli's look the Ghibli was designed by Marcello Gandini who also designed the Lamborghini Miura and the original Countach anyway time to drive alright let's do this so you ready brakes off brake light is off let's try this thing the first thing I noticed I've driven a lot of these Italian older Italian cars over the last couple of days out here the first thing I noticed is just how much more tremendously comfortable this one is just sitting here in the seat I mean I have room finally and some of the other cars was like whoa I have Headroom and this car you got Headroom I got legroom I got knee room I can turn the wheel without it affecting my knee I mean missus this is perfect man all these cars in there their engine sounds are unbelievable where the brakes are actually surprisingly good much better than any of the other Italian exotics I've I've driven this week quite impressive there's there's the brake pedal feel kind of sucks when you push it down about three inches before anything happens but once you actually get into it it really does it does work yeah I'm really surprised at the driving position of this car it feels this actually feels like a truly drivable car all the other ones was like I gotta bend my knees a little bit the seat was comfortable but my knees warrant or my head wasn't or whatever this one I finally feel like I could just sit here now at a stoplight as we're sitting in the stoplight the cars shaking like crazy and that's because we've decided to run the air conditioning and the compressor sticks on them it's really kind of shaking it around I'm told when the car warms up it gets a little bit smoother right now it's actually kind of funny it feels like we're sitting on a washing machine or something going over a bump here and I don't really have to slow down this this car didn't have one of those crazy low wedge shapes like Lamborghinis Ferraris of that era a passenger side mirror would be nice man the sound is so good oh wow that's got quite a note to it quite an engine uh I'm afraid man driving this thing through a tunnel it really feels like the 60s come to life I mean this is what sports cars sounded like back then and it feels amazing it sounds so cool it's actually feels pretty stable going probably faster than I should around this corner it's a little squirrely it's a little vague I mean that's a reality of most of the cars of this era it's not slow I would say it feels actually pretty quick but mostly it just sounds amazing now here we are sort of a higher gear at a higher speed low Rev it feels like a nice kind of touring car feel it's kind of sort of a weird character to it in the sense that it's a two-seater and it has that great sound but it's also a kind of a touring car it's listen like a true crazy fast sports car the mirror would be nicer if the mirror was larger that's oh wow that's a that's kind of a pathetic little mirror there of course it's very difficult to adjust you gotta roll down the window and reach outside there's no there's no power adjustment for this stuff the people at Amira tell me this car sort of has a muscle car feel to it big one engine big engine it's a large 4.9 liter v8 big v8 big sound to it and I can understand that it also has in the muscle cars also we're sort of more comfortable they were made for larger people and that this car is that No man that sound is so good and what's really good is when I push the question to go for the next gear you can hear it coming down it just sounds like those those movies that you know the sixties and seventies here those cars go around you it's amazing to feel like you're doing that you know modern cars sound amazing but but these cars sound amazing in a different way and it's very very cool and very special this may not be the fastest and it doesn't have the Ferrari badge of the Lamborghini badge but it's certainly the most drivable and so that's the 1971 maserati ghibli SS a maserati from back when Maseratis were cool special beautiful italian cars not lease deals that pop up on banner ads when you're booking caribbean cruises on line this was a real Maserati and yes they do exist and now it's time to give this one a dug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the Ghibli is a beautiful car hurt only by those odd fake wheel caps and the fact that it's certainly starting to show its age still this is one of the greats and it gets an 8 out of 10 next up is acceleration the Ghibli SS does 0 to 60 in 6.2 seconds earning it a 3 out of 10 next up is handling the Ghibli is very nice relatively secure but also somewhat vague like a lot of the exotic cars of this time period when judged by modern standards it gets a 5 out of 10 as for cool factor this is among the cooler vintage maserati models and certainly one of the best known when an it earns an 8 out of 10 same deal for an importance most older maserati models are not especially important but the Ghibli's gorgeous styling helped usher in a new era and it earns an 8 out of 10 bringing the total weekend score to 32 out of 50 next up are the daily categories starting with features the Ghibli has climate control in a radio but not much more by modern standards and it gets a 2 out of 10 then there's Comfort the Ghibli is fine with a surprisingly roomy cabin but it hardly coddles the way a modern luxury car would or even a new Honda Accord would and it gets a 5 out of 10 next up is quality where the Ghibli does OK the interior is nice but not gorgeous and I'd worry about maintaining and repairing the engine with any regular driving and it gets a 4 out of 10 practicality is decent there are only two seats but there's a huge cargo area unfortunately actually accessing that cargo area is a problem and it gets a 3 out of 10 finally there's value a nice Ghibli can sell these days for two hundred to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars which is a huge amount of money and while it's a beautiful car I honestly think it's collectability is being harmed by Maseratis current lineup as it's just not as desirable since Maserati is no longer a highly aspirational automaker like it was back when this car was new with that in mind it gets only a 5 out of 10 bringing the total daily scored in 19 out of 50 add it all up and the total dug score is 51 out of 100 which predictably places the Ghibli in the lower third of cars I review in spite of that it's still pretty special especially compared to the latest Maseratis

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 1,241,054

Rating: 4.8497758 out of 5

Keywords: maserati ghibli, ghibli, original maserati ghibli, maserati ghibli ss, maserati, 1970s maserati, 1960s maserati, maserati ghibli 1971, doug demuro, demuro

Id: rqTpMCq8uhk

Length: 21min 39sec (1299 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 18 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Italians in the 1960s-1980s on interior ergonomics:

"Not just good, it's good enough."

[u/joef360]

Did Doug forget to turn his blinker off the whole drive? haha.

[u/Obi-Wan_Kannabis]

"This is considered one of the greatest looking cars of all time" Gets an 8.

meanwhile the porsche carrera gt gets a 9.

Sure :P

[u/[deleted]]

MakeMaseratiGreatAgain

[u/R_risky]

I have a theory that Doug's second shirt is bigger because he's trying to hide a smaller third shirt underneath

[u/vouwrfract]

Say "Ghibli" successively several times very quickly and it sounds like you're drowning.

[u/the_unusual_suspect]

So I have a theory that the little port-hole behind the seats is for smokers. It's cold outside, so your windows are rolled up, but now you're hot boxing the shit out of your car. Well, open that little port-hole and you have a place for it to go without letting a bunch of cold air in.

[u/rsmtirish]

/u/Doug-Demuro how do you factor quirkiness into the Doug score? Like what category does it fit into?

Edit: Also, so were the italians in the 70's and 80's just incapable of making a normal fucking car?

[u/Zpstana]

Now all you need to do is review is the 90s model to complete the Ghibli Trilogy