Back in 2014, Maserati revived the Ghibli name to give us a smaller, less expensive alternative to the Quattroporte. The new Ghibli sounded great and looked pretty good, but that’s also about where the praise stopped, especially when you considered the base model cost nearly $70,000. Adjusting for inflation, that would be more than $95,000 today. If there’s one thing you can count on with a Maserati, though, it’s massive depreciation, and the new Ghibli was definitely no exception.
In fact, fast forward to today, and you can pick up one of those used Ghiblis for scarily little money. Dangerously little money, even. I mean, here’s a 2015 Ghibli in Naperville, Illinois, listed for $9,650. It does have nearly 100,000 miles on it, but the title is allegedly clean, and it’s still a Maserati with a twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter V6. When it was new, it was overpriced and uncompetitive, but for less than $10,000? How bad could it really be? Certainly not worse than the photos the dealer posted.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I know it would have problems. Consumer Reports doesn’t have a reliability score for the Ghibli, presumably because anyone who subscribes to Consumer Reports is already too smart to spend their hard-earned money on a brand-new Maserati, but I don’t think I don’t think I’m going out too far on a limb here to suggest the Ghibli is probably a lot less reliable than a Lexus GS F (a car you might be able to find for less than $50,000 if you’re lucky). On the other hand, the $40,000 you’d save buying the Ghibli over the GS F would pay for a whole lot of repairs and replacement tires.
It’s less than $10,000
I want to be clear here, I have no intention of buying this Ghibli. One day, I’d love to buy a car in a different state and drive it home, but I definitely won’t be doing that at least until I get back to the mainland, and when it does happen, it definitely won’t be a Ghibli. But, I mean, that’s still a heck of a lot of car for less than $10,000. Or rather, it’s a lot of exhaust note.
From the subpar interior (and that’s putting it lightly) to the small back seat, all the things reviewers didn’t like about the Ghibli when it was new are still going to be there. But surely you could put up with that in a $10,000 Maserati far easier than you could back when these things were new and (allegedly) selling for $70,000 or more, right? Just how bad could this decade-old, heavily depreciated Maserati Ghibli be?
I mean, it’s not like we’re talking about a Maserati from the ’80s. It’s at least nominally a real car built by a real automaker. It couldn’t be that expensive to keep on the road if you did some of the work yourself, right? Heck, you might even be able to drive it until it dies, never fix anything and get at least two years out of it. And how many people spend more than $10,000 on a lease they then give back after two or three years? How many people buy cars that lose more than $10,000 in value after a few years?
Clearly, the only option here is for one of you to buy it and report back. It’s a little risky, sure, but isn’t that what you have disposable income for? And while everyone here assumes it’ll be a disaster, wouldn’t it feel great to be able to prove to the world that the sub-$10,000 Maserati Ghibli was actually better to own than everyone expected?