What is up engine heads! Today we're doing a bit of time travel! Why? Because I want to tell you a really interesting story about Maserati, and their incredible 6 valve engine from the 80s.

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Our Journey starts in 1975. Why in 1975? Because that's when Argentinian entrepreneur Alejandro De Tomaso, yes, that De Tomaso, the one that founded the DeTomaso car company that would eventually make the Detomaso Pantera, the Detomaso Mangusta and other seriously cool cars. In 1975 Alejandro de Tomaso was living in Italy instead of his home country of Argentina, because in 1955 he forced to flee his country after being implicated in a plot to overthrow Argentinian president Juan Peron.
After arriving in Italy Alejandro De Tomasso became Alessandro de Tomaso, he worked as a mechanic, then a race car driver, and then using money from his wife's wealthy relatives he went on a shopping spree and bought out coach builders Ghia and Vignale, motorcycle makers Moto Guzzi and Benelli and car and scooter maker Innocenti.
But his most famous purchase happened in 1975, when he managed to convince the Italian government to help him rescue Maserati from bankruptcy. In 1975 Maserati was owned by Citroen, who were also undergoing financial struggles at the time, so with support and funds from the Italian government De Tomaso bought Maserati from Ctiroen in 1975 and immediately set out to transform the company.
De Tomaso's plan was to bring Italian luxury to the masses, and make make cars that were more affordable and produced in larger volume than the cars Maserati was making under Citroen, such as the Maserati Bora or the Maserati Khamsin.
And in 1982 his plan was materialized with the launch of the Maserati Biturbo. The first mass produced twin turbo-charged car in the world. A car that cost half as much as previous Maserati models and aimed to compete with BMW and Mercedes coupes and sport sedans.

And although some may not like the styling of the Biturbo it featured a very clever engine for the time. And it had to be clever, because at that time Italy heavily taxed any cars with engines larger than 2.0 liters. So Maserati had to make a 2 liter or smaller engine but still make the power expected from a luxury sports car. So what they came up with was a pretty revolutionary engine for the time. It was an all aluminum 2.0L SOHC V-6, with Nikasil coated wet-sleeves and twin oil cooled IHI turbos. BTW IHI stands for Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries, and it's a Japanese company that in addition to turbos also makes suspension bridges and ships. The turbos were installed one on each bank of cylinders and were pretty small. Small turbos were chosen so they could spool up quickly and prevent the dreaded massive turbo lag that plagued many turbo cars from the 80s.
But despite this, the engine made 180 hp from just 2.0 liters and propelled the BiTurbo to 100 km/h in just 6.5 seconds. Pretty impressive for 1982.
And while time would show that the initial carbureted Maserati Biturbo cars would be plagued by many reliability problems, the car was a business and sales success. With almost 40.000 Biturbos sold throughout the years, generating the much needed profit to save Maserati from bankruptcy.
DeTomaso succeeded in his plan, but he wasn't satisfied yet. The newly acquired profits meant Maserati could go invest into some R&D and show off to the world what they're capable off by further developing the tiny little v6 engine.

The 2.0 liter Biturbo engine had three valves per cylinder. 2 intake and 1 exhaust, and this wasn't enough. If you wanted to be on top of the performance game in the 80s you needed 4 valves per cylinder. But DeTomaso wasn't a man of small appetites, he wasn't just going to increase his valve count by 1, so he decided to skip a few engine evolution stages and instructed engineers to start working on something truly incredible. A six valve cylinder head. He even one upped Yamaha's craziness of their 5 valve FZ750 super-bike that they introduced in 1984.

So 1985 a late 1985 press release titled "Hi-Tech News," the Maserati 6.36 engine was a 2.0-liter 36-valve V6 set to hit the road in a two-seat sports car in just a few years time. The press release got everyone excited but after some time passed....nothing. Silence. Nobody ever heard anything about the 6 valve from Maserati again.
Why? What happened, why did they never make this truly incredible engine? Well, for that answer you'll have to watch the video :)

A very special thank you to my Patron:
Daniel
and http://maserati-alfieri.co.uk/ for maintaining an incredible website full of amazing information on the 6.36 and everything else Maserati

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