Maserati Kyalami – Cult Classic, Not Best Seller

Park a Maserati Kyalami next to De Tomaso’s Longchamp and you may notice a passing resemblance. Like the celebrity impersonator who looks just enough like the individual they’re trying to mimic to perhaps make a buck or two doing birthday parties or low end high street shop openings. Look a little closer though and you’ll begin to realise that the similarities start to stack up. Perhaps that Johnny Depp look-a-like has the mannerisms down pat, or has nailed the voice idiosyncrasies and quirks of speech, and all of a sudden you realise he’s actually pretty good. Well, if you’ll forgive this rather heavy-handed metaphor it’s the same case with the Kyalami and the Longchamp, the reason being they’re pretty much the same car.

To understand why this was the case we have to travel back in time to the mid-seventies. Maserati was on Citroën’s books, who at the time were going through the ringer. The culmination of poor management decisions and financial instability, exacerbated by the 1973 energy crisis, put the company in a bit of a pickle and the only option was to declare bankruptcy the following year. This wasn’t the first time for the French firm either, with Citroën dancing to a similar tune back in the mid-thirties, but the outcomes were essentially the same.

The result of this series of unfortunate events led to Maserati being sold off to the highest bidder to try and recoup some losses and in stepped Argentinian business man and former F1 driver Alejandro de Tomaso. De Tomaso had already proved he could successfully run a car company with his own De Tomaso brand having been producing tasty sportsters since the mid ’60s. Here was the saviour Maserati needed to inject a new lease of life, and indeed success, into proceedings and he immediately set about devising a plan.

The De Tomaso Longchamp served as the basis for the Kyalami

De Tomaso realised that the best way to achieve prosperity was to produce a brand new luxury grand tourer, something with which he had experience. Unfortunately there was not enough dosh available to develop anything from scratch – the coffers were empty following the demise of Citroën. Undeterred, De Tomaso said sod it and gave the designs of his own Longchamp (itself based on the previous De Tomaso Deauville which in turn was built upon the third gen Quattroporte!) to Pietro Frua, a well respected Italian designer who had worked with Maserati in the past, and told him to do his best.

The resultant Kyalami, named after the South African race track where a Maserati-powered Cooper T81 Formula 1 racer driven by Pedro Rodriguez had won the 1967 Grand Prix, although incredibly similar, did have a number of significant differences. It was bigger for a start. Frua not only lowered Tom Tjaarda’s original design, but he made it longer and wider too, giving the Maserati a sleeker presence. The De Tomaso’s rectangular headlights were binned in favour of a more elegant, circular setup and the car was also smoothed out and made less angular overall.

The somewhat agricultural Ford V8 engine was also swapped out for Maserati’s own, more refined Tipo quad-cam 4.2-litre. Still with eight cylinders the replacement engine developed 265bhp, later being upgraded to 4.9-litres in ’78 that gave the Kyalami an additional 11 horsepower. Both versions were mated to a five-speed manual ZF gearbox but a three-speed slush box could be optioned if required.

Basing the Kyalami on the Longchamp wasn’t akin to trying to build a Testarossa from a Toyota in a shed though. The Longchamp was already a great car and by default, so was the Kyalami. It was good looking (widely recognised as better than the De Tomaso), luxurious, practical and powerful. Everything a good GT car should be then. It drove well due to Gianpaolo Dallara’s excellent chassis and it was cheap to build, too, thanks to De Tomaso’s ability to keep production costs down. It was even famously endorsed by operatic maestro Luciano Pavarotti who bought one in 1978. So why did Maserati only sell a handful over 200 during the car’s six year production run then?

Pavarotti was clearly thrilled with his Kyalami. Look at his little face.

Unfortunately, despite it being a good car, there was a great deal of snobbery involved, with many claiming that the Kyalami wasn’t a “real” Maserati. You know, stupid people. To be fair it was quite a bit more expensive than the Longchamp but we think the higher price was justified. There was also a changing tide in the greater automotive landscape with a shift away from expensive and inefficient, big engine sports cars to more economical fare in light of that oil crisis we mentioned earlier. If De Tomaso had had a little more leeway with regards to potential investment in a car he could build from the ground up things may have been different but his hands were tied and the Kyalami, built out of a period of turmoil, was the best that could be achieved at the time.

Today the Maserati Kyalami is an incredibly rare, 150mph two-door luxury Italian GT car that can seat four people comfortably. Still deeply underappreciated prices today remain fairly reasonable. Try and find a similar car from the same era built in such limited numbers that you can buy for fifty grand. Go on, we’ll wait… You can’t do it can you. And that’s what makes the Kyalami so appealing. Prices won’t stay this low forever though and we’re pretty sure the Kyalami will begin to be appreciated for what it is, and when it does you’ll be berating yourself for not picking one up when you had the chance. Like this original 1981 4.9 model for instance. Currently available (at the time of writing) via our classified ads it may be in Australia but importing a car nowadays is as easy as pie so the only thing stopping you is… actually, we can’t think of a single thing.