John Phillips on the Best Odds: Maserati 228/430

From the May/June 2025 issue of Car and Driver.In the late ’80s, David E. Davis Jr. and I drove a Range Rover through the Anza-Borrego Desert, hoping Anza might be the name of a Spanish beauty. As we crested a dune capable of swallowing Larry Bird, the A/C disgorged its refrigerant into the arid air. “I wouldn’t drive this thing out here without a chase car,” I commented. But Davis adored all things British, including the tweed hunting cape and Turnbull & Asser shirts he’d packed for the trip. Replied he, “Oh, shut up. If the Rover dies, we just call Bill Baker.” Baker being Rover’s beloved PR purveyor of tectonic spin.My point? Auto journalists don’t have to fix, patch, or tow test cars that are notoriously in want of fixing, patching, and towing. Fact is, I have sometimes underreported reliability dramas. Having dispensed with that confession, here’s another: I’ve reaped untold pleasure from 1989 and ’90 Maserati 228s and 430s. They were the coupes and sedans known as Biturbos. Both overflowed with personality, temperament, and inadvertent exclusivity, even as they issued onto our byways molten bearings the size of jujubes. Styling was, uh, uncluttered, like a third-place finisher in a Honda Accord design contest. The 430 wanted to compete with the Mercedes-Benz 300E. It did not. The 228 wanted to compete with the BMW 635CSi. It did not. Nonetheless, I once drove a Biturbo coupe 220 miles simply to share dinner with my parents. Back then, maybe nine people in America realized affordable Maseratis existed. Power derived from an engaging 225-hp twin-turbocharged 2.8-liter V-6, the first doppio turbo in my experience. I cherished its whiskey-throated yowl as the engine revved to 3500 rpm, where you’d locate the first ounce of oomph. In first gear—to the left of the pattern, out of the H—you could bark the rear Michelins hard enough to scare cats. Sixty mph was claimed to arrive in around six seconds, the full monty back then.Handling? Think Ford Mustang, with power oversteer that begged attention in the rain, intimidated on gravel, and induced rigor mortis in snow. No anti-lock brakes, of course.At the time, Maserati’s interiors recollected the Gritti Palace’s: Dazzling burled wood on the dash, gearshift, hand brake, and steering wheel. Hand-sewn leather, chamois, and synthetic suede on the A-pillars, map pockets, dashtop, sun visors, headliner, and center console. Door panels awash in gelatinous rolls and pleats of cowskin, stitched loosely in heaping handfuls. The 430 briefly became my haven after stressful editorial meetings, in part for the fragrance. Wrote one of us, “I wish I had underwear that felt this good.” Quirky? Turns out “quirky” is Italian for “calm down and drink some Lambrusco.” The Biturbo’s steering was about as linear as its trademark squashed-oval analog clock. In cold weather, the idle danced from 800 to 1900 rpm. The power steering wheezed when 30 degrees off-center, perhaps in sympathy with the shifter rattling like a diamondback. Even the push-button horn evoked a bovine snort preceded by bonus wheezing. One vital chapter in the owner’s manual was “Storage for Periods of Inactivity over Six Months.”Help me—I’ve fallen for another Italian, and I can’t get up. While prone, I noticed that the coupe was over five inches wider than the sedan, for more pleasing proportions. Who else does that?Compared with the Chrysler TC by Maserati—the most abjectly wretched mechanical contrivance in human history—the Biturbos’ build quality felt almost ascendant. Well, as long as you enjoyed zoolike underhood noises. Did I just hear the whistle of a dik-dik?At his home in Modena’s Hotel Canal grande, the chief rascal himself, Alejandro de Tomaso, told me: “You Americans say, ‘The electric windows must go up 12 million times.’ Maybe our window goes up only 500 times. But the irritation of fixing it is overcome by the sensuous nature of the car.”Maserati eventually began paying $500 for any Biturbo that stranded its driver 150 miles from home. You’d still be stranded in West Lumpdick, Iowa, of course. But at least you could afford a Grand Slam at Denny’s.That’s how I dealt with it.Even More OddsJohn Phillips first began writing about cars in 1974, at Car Weekly in Toronto. He later worked for Ford Racing, then served for seven years as the Executive Editor of Car and Driver. In the interim, he has written for Harper’s, Sports Illustrated, The Toronto Globe and Mail, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Conde Nast Traveler. He enjoyed a one-on-one interview with Joe Biden and is the author of the true-crime saga God Wants You to Roll and the memoir Four Miles West of Nowhere. In 2007 he won the Ken Purdy Award for journalism. He lives with his wife, Julie, in the Bitterroot Valley.
Source: caranddriver.com