Custom Masers look back to the company’s past
Designs include ultra-retro Ouroboros
Maserati brought a trio of custom GranTurismo one-offs to Milan Design Week. The fashion-forward event is the perfect place to debut some very fashion-forward cars, including the Prisma, Luce, and the super-cool street-style Ouroboros.
The Maserati GranTurismo One Off Prisma is the green and yellow one. It’s actually 14 different colours and they were all painted by hand instead of machine. Then more than 8,500 letters were hand-applied and hand painted. The letters, naturally, are the ones used in the names of Maserati cars.
Two of the colours are future options. The other 12 were picked from GranTurismo models from the past. Colours like Amaranto taken from the 1947 A6 1.500 and Oro Longchamps from the 1973 Khamsin.
Luce is the chrome one, but look deeper and you’ll see the dynamic laser-etched pattern. Plus the car itself is coloured to help make the model blend into its surroundings. Which seems like the antithesis of a Maserati, but it does look cool.
The interior is a recycled nylon yarn (Maserati hilariously calls it “a hymn to the future”) finished in a monochromatic blue. The blue is meant to represent the ocean because that’s where the nylon to be recycled came from.
Last but not least is the Ouroboros, designed by street culture icon Hiroshi Fujiwara. It’s his interpretation of the car, inspired by the Ouroboros. A symbol of perpetual destruction and recreation.
The car gets a grille and side vents from the A6GCS and 3500GT of the 1960s and covered headlights inspired by the 1950s Typo 151. Then there are the turbine alloy wheels inspired by the 1970s Bora. Everything old is new again with this retro ride.
“GranTurismo Ouroboros has been conceived as a visual and cultural link between the various eras of Maserati design and the current GranTurismo generation. We worked with Maserati team to connect the pinnacle of tech and performance that they have today with the icons of style that generated and fuelled the myth through the decades,” said Fujiwara.
None of the cars will be built in series, but they do show off Maserati Fuoriserie. The part of the company that builds custom Masers, and that can make you something quite close to one. Or your own one-off of your own design.
