Maserati Coupé GT (6-speed)
Why 6.0: The engine is the F136 — designed and built at Maranello, and the direct ancestor of the unit in the F430 — mounted up front and connected to an open-gated six-speed manual. Maserati also sold it with the Cambiocorsa automated single-clutch, which is the version that ruined the model's reputation and made the manual the one worth having.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
The F136 is built alongside Ferrari's own V8s and revs to 7,500 rpm, with an exhaust bypass valve that opens under load and lets it properly bark. But the cross-plane crank gives it bass where a 360 has a wail, so it is deep and hard rather than piercing.
8-cylinder · naturally aspirated · 7,500 rpm redline · rated 7.7 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €78k (2004) → €31k (2026), trending down · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
ISOFIX was spreading through these years rather than fitted across the board — whether a given car has rear anchors depends on its year and market.
Children were expected in the back. Front-passenger ISOFIX effectively didn't exist in this era, and airbag deactivation was patchy — treat the front seat as a no unless a specific car proves otherwise.
Derived from production years and seating layout, not a per-car source. ISOFIX was standardised as ISO 13216 in 1997, required on new EU model types from 2011 and on all new EU cars from 2014.
The long version
The 4200 was Maserati's return to the United States after fifteen years away, and it arrived with a Ferrari-built V8, a Giugiaro body and a choice of gearboxes that turned out to be the most consequential decision in the car's history. Most buyers took the Cambiocorsa paddle-shift, because it was 2002 and paddles were the future; a single-clutch automated manual in a heavy GT ages badly, and two decades of jerky low-speed shifts and expensive clutch replacements did the model's reputation lasting damage. The GT with the open gate escaped all of that. It is mechanically simpler, it is the version every enthusiast asks for, and for most of the last fifteen years it has traded at a price that made no sense for a naturally aspirated Ferrari-engined Italian coupe — low twenties, sometimes less, at a point when a timing-variator service could cost a fifth of the car's value. That is exactly the shape that produces a self-selecting owner body: nobody buys a 4200 GT unless they have read the forums and made peace with the maintenance, and having done so they drive it, because there is no resale value to protect. Prices for gated cars have finally started moving. The ones that get used are still the majority.