A follower on our Instagram account took note of the fact that we love featuring potential project cars, so he tipped me off to a pretty unusual spotting: a Maserati convertible sitting in the weeds on a vacant lot in a fairly high-income zip code. The car in question is a GranSport Spyder, and it has the extremely rare manual gearbox.
The GranSport was not a major hit when introduced, despite having a Ferrari-derived V8. The biggest flaw with these cars was the prevalence of the sequential automatic transmission, which was an unmitigated disaster. Most of these GranSports you find, in both hardtop and convertible form, have this two-pedal option, which has rendered the value of many of these cars to be that of a used Hyundai.
Now, this car is peculiar not only for being abandoned on vacant land but also because it has a V12 and Biturbo badge on the trunk lid. Maybe I'm an idiot, but there is literally nothing out there that suggests this model ever came with a 12-cylinder option. I'm inclined to believe this is just a case of someone playing fast and loose with badges, but who knows? The bigger mystery is why it's here in the first place in seemingly decent (cosmetic) condition with a sought-after gearbox and no license plates.
Today, the GranSport is one of the better-kept secrets on the exotic car marketplace, as you can find the coupe for sale for under $30,000 without trying too hard. Most will have the dreaded paddle-shift activated gearbox, so a manual-equipped convertible would quickly find a new owner if the current "caretaker" decides to set it free.