This Hidden Gem Maserati is a CHEAP Way Into Italian Exotics

This car somewhat fits the profile of a US citizen drug dealer. I'm on my way to the airport right now because I just bought

this

2009 Maserati quattra Porte s with the 4.7L V8 engine. This car has probably the best sounding exhaust from the factory. Anyway, of any four door sedan, I'm flying from Boston to Phoenix and plan to drive

this

car to New Hampshire about 2700 miles, although this car looks pretty good for the most part, there are a couple of red flags, but in As for the good things the auction lists this as it runs and drives and also appears to be in very good cosmetic condition indicating it was probably attended to as far as red flags go, Carfax shows five owners the last of which only drove the car. 400 miles before you trade it in, as the saying goes, not all cars at auction are bad, but all bad cars go to auction, so the concern here is that there could be some serious problem that could be expensive to fix.

The other red flag is that the auction listing shows the car had its engine codes reset 30m ago, so I expect the check engine light to come on after driving it for a while. Will this car make it home under its own power if you buy one? of these, let's go to the auction yard in Phoenix and find out, oh, let's just approach it, now it's on its own. What makes this car so special is that it was designed before the Fiat Chrysler era at a time when Ferrari was in complete control. of the company and proposed Maserati as its luxury division.

I bought this gem for just $9,000, which is ridiculously

cheap

for an exotic Italian car. If you look at the comments, I can already tell you that you will find people who have never had one. of these that tell you how unreliable and horrible it is, well I have good reason to suspect they are wrong, which I'll talk about later, well, here it is, I guess let's jump in and see if it starts, we've got some beeps, right? OK? Lovely, if you look there, the suspension warning light is on and it wasn't revealed at the auction, but let's get this car off the auction yard and then we can check it out and see what's going on so far, it seems to be driving well. everything seems fine, hello, it's very easy, so we'll pull into the parking lot here so we can put some plates on it and we'll check this out first as well.

That exhaust sounds good, very good, look. this beautiful Ferrari derived V8, so the coolant here looks blue and the level seems to be fine, as for the engine oil, the oil looks good, you might also check the power steering fluid H, which might be a little low, I mean, I can see. There's fluid in there, so it'll probably be fine for the ride home. The brake fluid is back here and I can see brake fluid there, so it looks like it's probably fine, it needs a flush, but honestly, that's par for the course, look at this thing. it has a lot of options it has four zone climate control it has the tables here for the rear seats it's a little bit of a strange position for the controls for the heated and cooled seats but it has heated seats with air conditioning and it has the beverage cooler it's well before we go anywhere let's see what we have for the codes for this Maserati we'll start with the engine let's see so the me7 I think is the 4.2 L and the me9 is the 4.7 L that I have and let's just check. codes and see if there is anything, no good codes now for the suspension, okay, sky hook suspensions and fault codes, okay, front right solenoid valve maximum threshold exceeded, maximum throttle threshold exceeded the left front solenoid valve, they are stored, why don't I delete them and we?

I'll see if they come back yeah okay there are no codes so I have to get out of my hotel room and then I arranged with a local auto shop so I can go in and have a bay to use to make an oil. change and then just give this thing a little spin and make sure it's good to go across the country. Well, I'm going to start by doing an oil change on this and then while it's draining, we're going to go around and take a look at the rest of the vehicle here we go, the oil looks like oil, you know, yeah, it looks good, as far as I can see. , there is no water or debris while the oil is draining, let's take a look below, it looks very good down here.

As far as corrosion goes, there is absolutely none of that, as you would expect from a southwestern car. Good access to the front of the engine down here. There is a bit of oil leaking somewhere, although it appears to be a fairly minor leak. too worried about that, looks like there's a heat shield protecting that kneecap, that's cool, never seen anything like that before. I mean, everything here looks pretty good, the bushings look good, this one has the desirable ZF automatic transmission and then here on the back it's pretty much the same, like everything looks pretty good here, look at this, the drain plug even has a magnet on it, isn't that amazing, the oil filter here is really easy to access, love it, don't forget to grab it.

Your seal is closed so the old filter says Maserati and the new filter I bought came like that. You can see it says Ferrari below. Curiously, it says new Maserati filters. They ship them with a little oil, so is it soaked in oil? Yeah, the same filter is really important before I drive this across the country, is making sure all the suspension wheel bearings are tight and this one has a little bit of side to side play, it's good up. below, we'll take a look underneath and see where this piece comes from too while I'm here, pen and finina designing this bad boy, so if you look at this right here, that's the sleeve for the inner end of the tie rod.

Moving the wheel now, do you see how much play there is? That tells me that the play is either on the inner end of the tie rod right here or it's on the steering rack. I think it's most likely on the steering rack, which means you know. I don't really think it's a big deal, if anything there might be a little bit of play in the steering, but I haven't noticed anything here on the other side, it feels totally fine and then here at the rear. Everything feels good. and tight, okay, so this thing requires 9 liters of 5 w40 oil other than that it's actually not that demanding when it comes to motor oil.

The hood lid is eating me up here apparently these hood struts are a little weak okay let's get started. Let's turn it up and check the level. Okay, I'm trying to do this. One hand oil level seems like the oil level is excellent. SP on. With that service done, it was time to hit the road and begin what I hoped would be. an epic road trip home. I would also like to thank Joe's Auto for letting me use one of their bases. It was certainly nice to work in a clean workshop with a concrete floor, so the surface worked very well and I'm very happy with the mechanics.

Condition of this vehicle, it certainly looks like I have a good chance of making it home, of course exposing unforeseen circumstances or

hidden

problems that have not yet appeared. Anyway, I'm on the road now and have a 2 hour drive to my Overnight Stop in Tucson and beyond Tucson is nothing but desert and that's why I wanted to stop in Tucson tonight in case something comes up with that you have to deal with. I will be in a city so I should have access to parts, fluids and tools. stuff like that I should also mention that I'm taking the kind of less direct route to the south.

The quickest route home would be to get on Interstate 40 and take the eastbound route, but the problem is that there are no Maserati dealerships until you get there. I like St Louis or something and if I need parts that could be a problem, whereas if I take this southern route, I take Interstate 10 to Interstate 20, there's a Maserati dealership in El Paso and then I think there are three Maseratis . So there are dealers in Dallas, I think there are a couple of them at least in ten, so the route I'm taking essentially gives me good access to parts should I need them.

Good morning, so I arrived in Tucson last night without any problems and my goal. for today is to get to Midland Texas, which is about a 9 hour drive, now the interesting thing for today is that because I'm taking Interstate 10 eastbound and I'm so close to the border, at least I'll be, is that I'm going to having to go through the border patrol checkpoint in Texas and I am aware of, let's say, the possibility that this car fits the profile of a drug smuggler. I mean, it's an old, blacked-out Maserati whose windows are really dark. tinted and I'm driving with temporary Arizona plates heading east, away from the border, so who knows what could happen now, normally what happens when you go through these checkpoints is you roll down the window and the border patrol agent asks you if you're in.

You say yes to an American citizen and then they say, "Okay, have a nice day," but for me, I wouldn't be surprised if they asked me more questions than that, and unfortunately, I wouldn't be surprised if I was asked They asked me to stop. for closer inspection i just hope this car wasn't owned by a smuggler or drug dealer because who knows what could be here and how much trouble i could get into when i approached the border patrol checkpoint there was a ton of truck. traffic as you can see on the right for some reason the truck in front of me took the car Lane whatever sir good afternoon American citizen yes sir thank you have a good day thanks to you too okay it was easy driving through the western desert Texas was pretty nice with open roads and an 80 mph speed limit.

Good morning, obviously it's the next day. I arrived at my destination last night without any major problems. The only thing really worth noting is that the sleep light that was on on the dash went out. It went off yesterday and then it came back on this morning and now it's gone again and one thing I've noticed is that the ride quality is much better. Much softer when the light is off. I think when the light comes on, the suspension turns off. in a sort of default error mode where the sleep isn't as smooth, but at least I have something to fix on this card.

The plan for today is to drive to Little Rock, which is about 9 and a half hours or so depending on traffic. It was while driving through Dallas that I needed to stop for gas. I decided to stop at one of the largest gas stations in the world. I guess everything is bigger in Texas. Look at this. I always wanted to go to one of these. I thought while we're here I might as well calculate the fuel economy and from Midland Texas I used 15.8 gallons of fuel and averaged 23m per gallon and that's not too bad for a car like this obviously the main reason why Buying this car isn't about saving fuel, but that being said, it's nice to not have to constantly stop at gas stations to fill up your tank driving around East Texas.

The first thing you notice is the humidity and, consequently, the greener vegetation; Otherwise, there's not much else to report. At this point in the trip, good morning, it's day four of the trip and I'm just leaving Little Rock. You can see by the dramatic change in scenery that I am now completely within the humid eastern half of the country, everything is green and there are big trees and such, the plan for today is to drive to Columbus Ohio, it is about an 11 hour drive and I am driving through many cities today. I hit Memphis, Nashville, Louisville, Cincinnati and then Columbus, we expected some severe weather. today so hopefully nothing too crazy, we had tornado warnings last night although luckily nothing materialized so I've been in traffic for about an hour and the transmission is giving me trouble, the transmission light came on, I'm not sure what that red thing is.

Actually the light is supposed to be like that but it said check transmission go to dealer and now it says manual mode is not available so the transmission is also behaving strangely too well now that we are moving it seems like the transmission is in limp mode and I'm stuck. a low gear, maybe second gear, so yeah, this is not going to be fun. I have to stop and check the codes. Well, I managed to stop at a rest area, so let's check the transmission trouble codes. Smarter application time. There may be no signal and gear 34. selection error no symptoms available yeah, I mean I honestly don't know what they mean.

I'm wondering if maybe if I turn it off and on again, if it goes away I'll clear the ignition codes. and engine off yes yes ok no trouble codes at this time ok i will start it again the transmission light is off right now it looks like the transmission is ok or at least it doesn't have any codes and It's probably not in limp mode right now it will come back. I think thatthere's a good chance he'll be back, but we're going to find out, so I'm in this rest area now. I'm going to get back on the highway and hopefully that problem doesn't happen again because if it does I'm not really going to make any progress trying to cross the country with the transmission in limp mode, I'll just try to go easy and not push too hard until now.

Well oh that felt a little strange, so when I was in traffic, most of the time we were stopped, there was a lot of traffic, but sometimes we got up to speed and the codes showed a 3 to 4 speed error. I could have been in it. third or fourth gear when I felt kind of... I guess it may have felt like the clutch was slipping and you tried to shift gears and the transmission got a little scared at this point. I'm doing 65 mph and no problem so I think I'm fine I don't know maybe the transmission got hot or something in traffic it's a hot day so far so good if that happens only once in a while I can live with that, I can stop. and reset the codes and then hopefully it won't happen again too soon, but yes, I can make progress so now it's 10: p.m. and arrived at my hotel in Columbus the traffic was absolutely horrendous today.

I sat in stop and go traffic for probably 2 to 2 and 1 half hours as for the transmission it didn't go back into lymphatic mode, which is very good news. I was driving. very carefully so as not to alter it. I think what happens is that when you shift from third to fourth there is a little bit of slippage, so I guess I'll have something to fix when I get home. Well, it's the last day five. On the day of my trip I have about 11 hours of driving to get home to New Hampshire, as long as there's no traffic so far, things are going pretty well.

Now when I get home, I have a lot of things to do with this car. fluid and filter to change it, do a full service because that's what I like to do. It will be interesting to see how much it costs and I suspect it will be expensive. I also have to deal with the suspension. I want to take a closer look at the end of the left front inner tie rod to see if that is actually the source of that steering lean and then lastly the transmission. I mean I want to change the fluid and filter anyway, I can put a new shift solenoid in there but if that doesn't fix it then the transmission probably needs a rebuild, that's something I've never done before but I guess You have to start somewhere, there is a first time for everything.

The highlight of my trip was driving through the Green Mountains of Vermont with the winding and curvy roads, it was a pleasure to drive this car between the agile handling and the exhaust note, this car really showed what it was normally built for. I don't like driving this road, but this car made me smile from ear to ear, well I did. I made it home successfully and to be honest it's been several weeks since then and I've covered several thousand miles since then and I've come up with a big list of things that need to be fixed so I need to set my priorities. and I'm going to start by making it sound better.

This is a work of art. It's an xpipe and does magical things with the exhaust. Now if you look under the car, you can see that it already has an xpipe here. However, the problem is this, which is a muffler, in fact, the car has three mufflers, which is at least one too many now. I'm usually not a big fan of loud exhausts, however when you have an exotic Italian car, people want to hear the exhaust, it's just like you. You are doing people a favor by adorning it with the beautiful sound it produces. In fact, the other day I was in the supermarket walking to my car and there was an old man walking to his car and he said, let's listen to it when you start it, people want to hear the exhaust in this well, this should come out nice and easy because it doesn't there is rust.

I have removed the exhaust brackets for the rear section of the exhaust here and I have a strap here to hold the exhaust when it falls, so this operation is like lifting, moving and pulling, be patient and then I think it will eventually come off, I already have it I got, hey, nothing you can't solve with a little hammer, hey, great, okay, new xpipe, beautiful polished stainless steel. piece of steel art, the Now, the next day, you can see that I am wearing different clothes. Yesterday I installed the xpipe you guys saw and then I went golfing so I drove this car and then on the way home it developed a pretty big coolant leak. the temperature rose to the red line and I had to stop and let it cool down.

It wasn't too far from my house, far enough that I couldn't drive any further, but not so far that I couldn't drive it back this morning. The engine was cold and I was able to drive it the rest of the way home, so anyway Anyway, what I mean is you might have to wait until the end of the video to see what this exhaust sounds like if I had to describe what it sounds like in one word I would probably say raw which is good it sounds good it's louder but not too loud my opinion is not so loud that it would bother the neighbors if I go out early in the morning or come home late at night, but it is loud enough that when I step on it it sounds good and can be heard well, so when I arrived To the car this morning I added about a gallon of distilled water here and I didn't see it leak. but it looks like it's empty now, so I think we might have some kind of slow leak.

I couldn't identify the leak yesterday but it looked like it was happening from this side of the engine bay, ah ok I found it. this radiator hose here has a burst back here, you can't really see it, but I can certainly feel it, that's a little strange, radiator hoses usually just blow up like that on their own, okay, here's a new radiator hose . I had to drive several hours to the nearest Maserati dealership to get it, but it says made in Italy here, which probably means it's going to break again. Speaking of which, why did this radiator hose break?

Probably because the system had too much pressure. And why did that happen? Did the system overheat before it leaked? The radiator cap here maybe not working properly? That's something I'll have to keep an eye on to see if there are any other issues that caused it to break. Okay, I'm going to relocate this expansion tank here so I can see better there. I can reach this hose clamp over there with the screwdriver. Yes, I removed it. Well, I have a tool to remove stubborn radiator hoses from this little sticky hook. there and you can pull it out oh wow I think the hose is brittle because I just broke the hose with this something I've never done before on a radiator hose oh my god the hose is breaking yeah this this oh god mine, this radiator. hose so there may not have been any other problem for some reason this radiator hose is incredibly weakened okay this is the radiator hose this is where it broke and then when I got my tool in there to try Taking it out, he tore off the rest.

By the way, this looks very fragile, so I'm going to say that's probably the problem, there's also a small break right there. I didn't see some of you wondering how much a radiator hose like this costs. a Maserati and this was I think about $158 including sales tax and expedited shipping because they didn't have it in stock and I wanted to get it as soon as possible, get in there, come on, okay, I put the new hose on it, there's a. end and then there's the other end which was a little tricky to get, the coolant here was blue which is good because as far as I can tell it uses g48 coolant which is the same thing BMWs, Mercedes and Volvos use . so I took a gallon of concentrate here and mixed it with a gallon of distilled water and now I have 2 gallons of 50/50 okay so far it's used a little over a gallon and a half of coolant once I run it and I pick it up. at temperature it could use a little more as it circulates through the system naturally when you have a four door luxury executive sedan you have to compare it to the gold standard of four door luxury executive sedans and that would be the Mercedes S class now.

I like both cars, but they both have their strengths and weaknesses and are actually very different technically. I think the Mercedes is a better car in many ways, however the Maserati really comes into its own when it comes to being a driver's car, the handling is far superior to the S-Class which is pretty crazy even when in gear. Sport mode, the exhaust sounds unbeatable, although the S-Class actually sounds quite good and you can even hear some turbo noise with this general driving. The experience of this is better, for example, one of the things I love about this car is the paddle shifters on the steering wheel.

The paddle shifters on this one are large, beautifully designed and very pleasant to use as part of the overall driving experience when it comes to I like the look of both cars, I mean the S Class, in my opinion this is the Class S most attractive of all time, however this is really special, in fact if you want something rare these are not exactly common, however this is just rare. 4,000 fifth-generation quattra Porte s were manufactured for the entire world. Now I should mention that this card has its quirks, the check engine light for example comes on when you start the car and stays on for a very long period of time, causing you to have to worry, oh no, does it go away? to turn off another Quirk?

There are six buttons on the back of the steering wheel that you can't see, you can only feel them and I still don't know what they do to this day. On a more general note, the Maserati's usability is really lacking in some areas, for example the heated seat controls in the Mercedes. They probably employ a thousand people to determine where the control will go and how it will work, and they do it. Great job, the Maserati on the other hand, they have a guy called Giovani who comes to work on a Tuesday and says the heated seat controls I think I put it here and then he goes to lunch and you really get the point. that he is thinking more about whether he should have the red or the white with his lunch than about where the control should go and how it should work.

Another peculiar thing about this car is the door handles. It has a really nifty electric switch that opens the door very smoothly. however, they knew it would break so right next to it there is a mechanical switch to open the door and the fifth generation quat report has a very poor reputation for reliability and I think that's why they are so

cheap

, however the The reason this car is a

hidden

gem is because I don't think it deserves that reputation for unreliability now the early models had the 4.2L V8 which had reliability issues but worse than that was the transmission it had a manual automated in Maseratis and was called Duo select. but the same transmission that was in Ferraris was called an F1 gearbox.

The driving experience, from what I've heard, is poor on those transmissions, but even worse than that was that the clutch needed to be replaced every 15,000m or so on a Ferrari that probably isn't. It's a big deal because people drive their Ferraris maybe a couple thousand miles a year, but people drive Maseratis as their daily drivers, so it could be like a clutch a year. Now I'm not going to say this car will have the reliability of a Toyota or a Honda, but it could have the reliability of a Mercedes or a BMW. I think it could have the 4.7L V8 engine which it has is pretty good and the transmission is a ZF 6 speed automatic which is founding many BMWs, Fords, Land Rovers and Jags.

In fact, my Range Rover and Jag have this transmission now before you miss out on buying one of these. Keep in mind that the parts are very expensive and not particularly easy to get, most of the time you have to go to the Maserati. Dealership, you can get them online, but they are very expensive there too and the other thing is the corrosion is very bad on these. This is just a summer car and that is certainly my intention. I won't be driving this in winter or anywhere salty. roads, well I've been talking too much and this video is going too long so stay tuned for the second part where I try to fix the transmission and suspension and do all the fluid INF filter services and we'll see how much all that costs.

Thanks for watching.