

Last year, Maserati rolled out its first original halo car in more than 50 years: the MCXtrema. This one-of-62 track car is more or less a meaner MC20, with enough horsepower and wing to make a Sopwith Camel look like a diving bell. It was Maserati’s way of saying it’s ready to take all comers, and it seems to be ready for a second round, as the leader of Maserati’s racing program says the company’s interested in more special models like it.
This comes straight from the man himself, Maserati Corse head Giovanni Sgro, who I spoke to in an interview following Formula E’s enlightening Portland E-Prix. As we’ve previously reported, the MCXtrema was produced in a flash, with its fully digital development taking just eight weeks. That’s an enormous feat for Maserati’s highest-performing original halo car in history. And despite its short gestation, “the beast” (as Maserati calls it internally) has more than proven its value, according to Sgro.

“I think it makes a tremendous amount of sense to explore what the future of this ‘few-off’ really means for us,” Sgro told me. “It is a halo product that allows us to really represent the brand at its fullest. We were born on-track, so we have to obviously talk about performance. And this car obviously does that, but we didn’t sacrifice design for it.
“But it is a really incredible object that underlines our value. It really secures the commitment that these race car drivers, gentlemen drivers, [and] collectors have for this car. And it really gives us great indication that these objects, these performing machines are what our audience wants. And I think it’s really important to continue on this path as well.”
What may lay down that path wasn’t touched on by Sgro, though there’s an obvious candidate after the MC20. The fully redesigned GranTurismo is both the newest and second highest-performing model in Maserati’s lineup, making itself ripe for adaptation into a track car. Maserati doesn’t otherwise have a wealth of options; the Ghibli and Quattroporte are both more than a decade old, while the Grecale and Levante are both crossovers. This isn’t to say Maserati couldn’t surprise us with a Grecale Corse, but such a car seems much less likely—and as Sgro would say, emotional—than a GranTurismo Trofeo.
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