The Merak Curiosity
The Maserati Merak. The name Maserati is one of the most exotic sounding automotive brands to date. An old brand with an interesting history of victories and defects. The Merak concept was born in 1971, as a cheaper offering of it's big brother and flagship model the Bora. The styling was derived from the general shape and proportions of the Bora, but the fastback shape was cut vertically right behind the seats and only 'flying buttresses' above the rear bootlid maintained a continuous silhouette. The Bora and the Merak share the same front end body work, roof line and doors. The Merak was offered to expand the Maserati brand with a quality lower priced car to compete with the Lamborghini Urraco, Ferrari 308 GT/4 and Alfa Romeo Montreal, all of which were 2+2 sport models from the top Italian sports luxury brands.
During the time of the Bora/Merak, Maserati was owned by the French automaker, Citroen. As part of the new ownership, Maserati was to develop a new V6 engine that was to be used in the flagship Citroen SM sedan.
Most people today are not familiar with Maserati and it's history. The Merak is even more unknown to people. Of course I even had to look back at some old period magazines articles to renew my knowledge of the model. The name Merak comes from a star from the Great Bear constellation. Giorgetto Giugiaro at Italdesign was commissioned to design the car. Introduced in 1972, and during Merak production run the car received some cosmetic design and mechanical changes during. Most notably, the interior was changed from the early Citroen early to later receiving the Bora dash. The Merak was offered in three different variants; 2000GT, Merak and Merak SS.
The following 1980 Merak SS is our newest addition to our Open Road Portfolio. A very original example with only 14,XXX miles. Found the car through a Maserati specialist and historian. The car has recently received some needed servicing, but we plan to give the car some more love and attention. Too early to tell what we will be doing to the car, but we will share our progress. We will be posting more info on this car and them model over the next few weeks/months. For now enjoy a few photos of the car.
Below are a couple of videos about the Merak.