Maserati Khamsin – Fine Body, Great Engine
The challenge: Make an even better Ghibli through power

1956 was a hugely significant year in Maserati history – although its significance wasn’t immediately apparent at the time. It was the year that the Tipo 54 V8 engine was used for the first time, in the mighty 450S racer; an engine so adaptable and so innovative that derivatives of that first racing engine were still being fitted to road cars over thirty years later.

One of the cars to be fitted with the 90-degree V8 motor was the Khamsin. This car, introduced in 1974, was the final project overseen by Ing. Giulio Alfieri as Maserati’s chief designer. It was the successor to the Ghibli, both stylistically and mechanically – it had the same wheelbase and front track, same engine and transmission. The body shape was also very similar, despite coming from a different design house – Bertone of Turin styled the Khamsin, where the Ghibli was a Giugiaro design.

Like its predecessor, the Khamsin was a striking, low-slung coupe – theoretically a 2+2, although rear leg-room was almost non-existent. Bertone gave the body a more prominently creased waistline than on the Ghibli, and added a further crease running the length of the car, just above the sill. The most obvious difference was in the front-end treatment; the Khamsin did away with the chrome grille surround used on both Ghibli and Bora to emphasize its aggressive appearance.

The engine in the Khamsin was mounted behind the front wheels, to aid weight distribution and handling. Maserati made inventive use of the space ahead of the engine by mounting the spare wheel under the engine radiator, thus permitting a useful volume of trunk space at the rear. Slats running part-way across the hood allowed hot air from the radiator to escape the engine bay.

Another neat design touch came at the rear. The luggage compartment was reached by raising a large glass hatch; below the hatch was the vertical panel holding the rear lights. To help with visibility when reversing, there was a second glass panel between the rear lights. When the Khamsin came to America, the rear lights were positioned lower, allowing the glass panel to be even larger.

One area where the Khamsin was truly ground-breaking was in the use of hydraulics to provide power-assistance. Speed-sensitive power-assisted steering made maneuvering the car an easy task at any speed, while the hydraulically-actuated clutch was a huge leap forward from contemporary sports cars – high engine power demands a strong clutch, and almost every rival had a clutch which made every drive a workout session.

As with all of the classic Maseratis, the engine was at the heart of the matter. In the 450S, the Tipo 54 was a pure racing engine – gear-driven camshafts, dry sump, high-revving and with four huge 45mm Weber carburetors. Fitted to the first Quattroporte, in 1963, the camshaft drive used the quieter chain-drive arrangement, it had a wet sump and the carburetors had shrunk to 38mm. As it was developed, versions of the engine wereused in the Mexico, Ghibli, Indy and Bora coupes; by the time it was slotted into the Khamsin chassis its capacity had reached 4.9 liters, it was fitted with four 42mm twin-choke Webers, and it put out 320 bhp - enough to give the Khamsin a top speed over 160mph, and a 0-60 time of 5.6sec.

All this – and yet only 430 examples of the Khamsin were produced. Alas, it was a victim of its time – the oil crisis of 1973 saw gas prices shooting up across the world. Demand for cars such as the Khamsin, with a large, thirsty engine, was slashed. Sadly, since it was in so many ways a significant improvement over the iconic Ghibli, far fewer were built.  Nonetheless, the Khamsin has gone down as one of the great Maserati coupes, an unsurpassed beauty with a design ahead of its time and a character of bespoke maturity in a world descending towards automotive drudgery in the wake of the oil crisis.