Doug Magnon – Maserati Collector Extraordinaire
Passionate and knowledgeable, friendly and generous – the ultimate Maserati owner

One of the ‘fringe benefits’ of writing Maserati Monthly is that we meet a remarkable variety of people. Almost without exception they are pleasant and interesting, eager to talk; what links them all is a shared interest in Maserati. Occasionally we are fortunate enough to meet someone who, even in this company, stands out as truly exceptional. Doug Magnon is in that category – in fact, he is probably the most extraordinary Maserati owner we have met.

Doug is a 47-year-old commercial real-estate developer, based in Riverside, California. Actually, we suspect that developing real estate is something Doug does when he can’t avoid it, because he plainly would prefer to devote every waking hour to his true passion. Because Doug, along with his father, owns an astonishing twenty-eight Maseratis.

What’s more, he doesn’t simply collect them for the sake of it, and neither do they all sit in a series of garages waiting for the rare opportunity of turning a wheel. Doug isn’t interested in owning ‘garage queens’, nor is he interested in keeping cars in concours condition. He aims to have every car roadworthy and regularly used – and willingly volunteered the use of two of his stable for us to take part in The Maserati Club’s Pismo Beach Rally.

We first met Doug at Maserati of Orange County, where eight of his cars were on temporary display in support of the Quattroporte Automatic introduction. Our first question was the obvious one: why Maserati? “I had always intended to own a number of cars, but a combination of things – the economy, buying a new house, that sort of thing – meant I wasn’t in a position to start seriously until the 90s. A friend of mine suggested that I look at Maserati, and when I did, I found that I enjoyed the cars, I preferred the more subtle styling that Maserati has always had against the flashier look of Ferrari and Lamborghini.”

“And as I got to know more about Maserati, about the history and the depth of the company, with them being one of the oldest car companies in the world, I started to look at Maseratis in terms of acquisitions,” he continued. “One goal got interrupted – that was to have a sports racer, but by the time I started looking, their prices had gone way out of sight. So then I decided to start collecting one example of each of the production models imported to the US, starting with the 3500 GT. I’m happy to say that I’ve achieved that, but only by acquiring a Sebring project car. Two or three years ago nobody wanted one – you could hardly give a Sebring away. Now, they’re one of the most sought-after models, and have tripled in price – if you can find one.”

One of the obvious issues with so many cars is where to keep them – and here, Doug mixed business with pleasure. His company was developing an R&D park in Riverside, so they moved into a building on the park – offices upstairs, with almost the entire ground floor given over to the cars and workshop. As the collection has expanded, so has the workforce; Doug has a full-time mechanic, Bill Losee, plus two part-time workers, one a bodywork specialist, the other an upholsterer. Doug is in discussions with the Riverside authorities to build a museum to house much of the collection, together with the workshop. He envisions a ‘working’ museum, with visitors able to see the day-to-day work of restoration and maintenance.

Having achieved his goal of owning at least one example of each road car, will he be turning his attention elsewhere? “My father looks at the collection and tells me, You’ve got to buy something other than Maseratis. I tell him: ‘You buy the other stuff, I’ll just buy the Maseratis.’ My heart and soul is with Maserati, on the street car side – on the race car side as well, but that’s stepping up to another level,” he tells us. “I hope I can eventually get to the sports racers - a ‘Birdcage’ is high on the list, both in terms of desire and cost! An A6GCS is another model I would love to have. In the interim I’m satisfying the sports side of it – I have a couple of Gurney Eagle Indy race cars and a Penske PC7 race car - and I’ve been doing some vintage racing. I’m also looking to continue the Riverside connection by continuing to collect more Gurney Eagles.”

We met up with Doug a second time when we went to Riverside to have a look at the collection. “We have established a non-profit museum, and technically some of the cars are owned by the museum. Unfortunately all the roads around here are torn up at the moment, while they put in new utilities, so we’re not publicizing it much – but it is open to the public.”  During our visit, it became clear that besides Maserati, Doug is also a fount of knowledge about the Riverside area, especially the Riverside International Raceway which played host to Formula One, NASCAR and Indycars. Doug is also a fan of Dan Gurney, who grew up in the area.

When speaking to Doug, it becomes obvious that he is truly passionate about both the cars and the Maserati brand. He hasn’t simply set out to acquire cars just to check off another model, he knows each car individually, and can tell you about its history, about how he acquired it, and about where it fits into the Maserati pantheon. Naturally, it helps when he can talk about a car which is one of only two prototypes ever built.  In this case it was created by Frua for the Quattroporte II, a car which was once owned by the King of Spain – but whatever the car, Doug is both interesting and knowledgeable, a rare combination.

Quattroporte II

Doug may have his own extremely accomplished mechanic, but he is very definitely hands-on with his cars. “The first car I bought was a Porsche 911, when I was 22. The only way I could afford it was to buy a used one, and the only way I could run it was to maintain it myself,” he explained. “I rebuilt the engine from the crankshaft up, I redid the suspension and the brakes, so I was quite involved.” While showing us round the cars, he explained the technique he had personally used to get a ‘crackle-black’ finish on the cylinder heads of the 3500 GT, and when some minor electrical gremlins showed up whilst we were out on the road, he quickly sorted them out himself.

Ask him to name a favorite, and Doug demurs. “What I like about collecting cars is that, if you drive one car every day you lose touch with the uniqueness factor of that car, especially with vintage cars. Older cars have real character – they do certain jobs quite well in favor of doing other jobs less well. Each one has its unique character to drive. But if you were to drive any one car all the time, you’d lose touch with that uniqueness. When you jump from car to car, it puts you back in touch with what’s special about the car, what attracted you to the car in the first place.”

MC12

Since the aim was to have one of each road car, the collection includes modern cars – including the mighty MC12 supercar. At the moment, it’s one of his least-used cars, not least because the attention it gets can be worrying. “The most common sight you see when driving the MC12 is other drivers flipping open their mobile phones to take photos, and that scares me, because they’re not paying attention to the road,” Doug explained. “Also, it has very little ground clearance, being almost a racing car – that doesn’t encourage me to take it out, with the local roads currently being like a war zone. Still, we had a great line-up for the company Christmas party; outside the restaurant we had an MC12, a Jaguar XJ220 and a Ford GT!”

As he owns both old and new models, we asked Doug how the modern era compares. “It’s hard to compare the two eras - during the Carrozzeria era of cars, Maserati could have a production run of less than 500 cars and be satisfied,” he told us. “Not every model was a Ghibli, an Indy or a 3500, which sold into the thousands. It was a fantastic era, when such a small car manufacturer could make so many different types of car.  Here’s a company making less than a thousand cars a year, and they could have five distinct models on sale. No wonder they were on the covers of magazines, and got so much press.

“The cars today, because they have to sell more, probably have to appeal to a broader market – although they still have to retain their uniqueness,” Doug continued. “I think they’re doing a good job of that; the more I drive my current Coupes and Spyders, the more I enjoy the design. I love the aggressiveness yet subtlety of the GranSport lineage. When they first brought out the GranSport I felt they should have had something with more aggressive styling, and they seem to be going down that route with the GranTurismo.” His father’s daily driver is a current Quattroporte, a car they both enjoy driving; Doug is a big fan of the DuoSelect electronic gearbox, something he feels is ideally suited to the sporting character of his GranSport MC Victory.

Doug recently bought a car on eBay – what looked like a ‘basket case’ 3500 GT, for less than $5,000. “The guy had four fuzzy pictures of the car, and he really hadn’t ‘sold’ it in the description, so almost no one bid on it. I took a chance and bought it. The guy had never looked in the trunk, because he thought the key didn’t fit – it turned out, it was just stiff. I knew that if I pushed it just so, it would pop open – and inside are the three Weber twin-choke carburetors for the engine, and they’re worth as much as I paid for the car! The bodywork is in good condition, all the panel gaps are about perfect, so I’ve decided to rebuild it rather than use it for parts.”

As we mentioned, Doug wants all his cars to be usable – and he is happy for them to be used. “I’m involved in organizing the Western chapter of The Maserati Club, and I’ve loaned cars out to people,” he told us. “If a member is coming from some distance, or if the car of a local member is off the road, then I can lend them something from my collection. It’s reciprocal – we’ve had events in Italy, and at the last one I was lent an Indy to use. So I don’t want my cars to be in concours condition, I don’t want to lose sleep if they get a rock chip or a door ding.”

You can read more about The Maserati Club, the event we attended and some of Doug’s cars elsewhere in this issue of Maserati Monthly.

Favorite drink: Red wine – Italian or Californian.
Favorite meal: Seafood.
Favorite current TV show: Formula One.
Favorite movie: I’ll go with Chinatown – it would either be that or Citizen Kane.
Last book you read: It was a book about Mulholland, written by his granddaughter.
Favorite genre of music: I like all music – although for me, some things don’t qualify as music. I think rap is beat poetry, not music.
Favorite composer, performer or group: Puccini.
Favorite hobby: I’ve got a lot of them, but for the longest time it’s been automobiles.
Favorite vacation spot: Italy.
What place would you most like to visit for the first time: Spain, or St. Petersburg, Russia.
To what place do you most like to return: Italy.
Favorite man-made wonder: Rome – you can pick and choose many things in Rome.
Favorite natural wonder: The high sierras of California.
Whom do you most admire: Dan Gurney.
Which figure from history would you most like to meet: Alfieri Maserati.