1975 | Maserati Khamsin

Already as a little boy we loved it. The, in our eyes, outrages sleek lines of the Maserati Khamsin was really something special at that time. The body lines are etched in our memory, partly because my father visited the Auto show RAI in Amsterdam in 1973 or 1974, we don’t remember exactly, and returned with a file of brochures and press photos of, among other cars, a silver Khamsin. Pictured in the garden of an Italian villa, the photo had a central place above my bed for many years, as it should be in a real car boy sleeping room. And how beautiful it is to see the same sleek bodywork from our office every day. Back in memory lane..

And we still have the same opinion as then: it is, even though the design is now more than fifty years old, still a very special car. This applies to both the technique, which partly came from Citroën (at the time owner of Maserati) and the design. It was designed by one of the greatest designers, Marcello Gandini, who works for Carrosseria Bertone. And this design task was important. Not only because Gandini had a reputation to uphold as designer of the iconic Lamborghini Miura, the extreme Lamborghini Countach and unique Lancia Stratos (but also of practical cars such as the Fiat 132, the Citroën BX and the first generation of the BMW 5- series) but perhaps even more because this was Bertone’s first job for Maserati. His design was approved without any problem, and the rest is history.

After the last test drive in Modena, the Khamsin we now offer was transported to Los Angeles California  in the United States and was registered there on February 28, 1975. The car stayed in the US until 2011 and then went to Magione in Italy in Perugia until a Dutchman set his sights on it and brought it to the Netherlands. The car went directly to one of the best restorers for an exotic like this, namely the internationally renowned company Classic Skills from Lomm in Limburg. Take a look at their website https://www.classicskills.nl/ , that says more than  thousand words. An additional advantage is that this gives us a bit more space tell you about this quality car. It should be clear that there are restorations and “restorations”. Let’s not consider the latter, because that is not our cup of tea. The former means that no concessions are made to quality or originality and that the restorer completes the restoration at the highest possible level in close consultation with the client, bringing out the best in his team of professionals. That this has been very successfully with the Khamsin, is shown by a number of photos on their site. https://www.classicskills.nl/vervolg/maserati-khamsin.html

Obviously, hundreds of photos were taken of the entire process and we dare to say that this Maserati Khamsin is now a lot better in terms of overall quality than it has ever been. In fact, we are saying that better than this level is simply impossible. It is of course often suggested to offer the best car, but in this case we like to take on the challenge that it is impossible to find a better one. We can point out the sublime condition of the body, the perfect seams between the panels, the deep shiny polished silver paint, the challenging red full leather Connolly interior, and last but not least, the fantastic V-8 engine and associated technique: everything is really of the highest level. All these things are very difficult to capture on a photo, so in order to really assess the quality, you should actually come over to view the car in the flesh.

On August 8th 2019, the car was provided with a Dutch license plate and since then it has only driven 1878 km. Purely as test mileages and to keep everything in good condition. Naturally, this truly “better than new” Khamsin has not seen a drop of rain during these rides. In the meantime, the car was carefully storaged at the owner’s heated garage as parts of a small collection of Italian cars.

It is not unimportant to mention that the car is completely matching, which means that everything is exactly the same as when it left the factory. Same engine, same color, same interior, etc.. This is proven by the present Certificato di Origin, and other original documents.

In addition, a FIVA Card has been issued, which opens the way to participation in the most beautiful car events. How nice would it be if the registration for this would be in your name…