Are you itching to buy the recently-announced Maserati GranTurismo MC but put off that you can’t drive it on the public road? Don’t worry. There is a way.
The MC12 hugs the tarmac like a wicked ocean predator, a flat hulking mass which eats giant squids for breakfast and orcas for snacks. It reaches all the way up to my knees and I’d love to say that I immediately see something is amiss but I do not. A twelve hour drive across the Alps and a mad dash down a twisting road has left me exhausted and this is the first MC12 I have ever seen.
I was of course expecting endurance racer looks but that diffuser could serve as the blades to a combined harvester and the rear wing looks big enough to lift a C–130. Also, I have trouble fitting my pinky finger between the car and the road. This is a race car.
You’re thinking MC12 Corsa, correct? The Maserati twin to the Ferrari FXX which sold for a cool million bucks and—like the FXX—was not a car you could actually pick up and drive home but which you adopted like a zoo animal and drove at Maserati trackdays. Yeah, but the Corsa is not street legal, so why should it be equipped with license plates? Well, plate in the singular, no way would one fit on the grille without messing with the airflow, but still.
“Hello, so what’s the deal with this car? Corsa looks and a license plate?” I ask the owner apparent, who shall remain nameless, not because of discretion but through sheer forgetfulness on my part. Let’s call him Karl!
“Oh, it’s definitely a Corsa,” Karl says.
“Yeah, but you can’t drive a Corsa on the street,” I say.
“It can be arranged,” Karl responds.
Rules, shmules! I have one last question, to which he responds:
“I took it to 223 MPH last week at the Nardò Ring. But you know how it is! You always want to go faster, faster, faster.”
He then settles into a lawn chair and lights a Marlboro. It is a spring day in Italy, after all, and well past lunchtime.
Photo Credit: Larry Parker and the author