I suppose we all knew what to expect from those 3 clowns, the format is getting a little tiring, buy 3 perfectly good cars, go on a road trip and trash them. Its good in a way that they didn't rubbish them and actually seemed to quite like them but it is a shame to see 3 fairly nice examples treated in that way.
Unfortunately the perceived wisdom of the Biturbo is that they were unreliable and poorly built which may have been the case in the early years but the Biturbo was continuously updated on an almost yearly basis and became a very good car, unfortunately the early publicity continued to be held against it. Without Alejandro de Tomaso and the Biturbo it's possible that Maserati may have slipped into oblivion many years ago and I find it strange that the Biturbo years seem to be an era that most people would rather forget. The reputation for unreliability mainly relates to the carb versions which did have problems with going out of tune quickly and for having hot starting problems due to fuel vaporisation, an issue that Maserati resolved fairly quickly with the introduction of fuel injection in 1985. The perception about rust is largely exaggerated, don't get me wrong, Biturbos love to rust but they weren't any worse than any other cars of the era.
The red car was advertised on Carandclassic.co.uk a while ago and appeared to be very nice. It seems that no-one knows what model it actually is, some say itsa 222, the DVLA have it listed as a 2.24v. Clarkson was almost correct in saying it was a Biturbo S but it is in fact a Biturbo Si. They were produced between 1987 and 1988 and I think there must have been a mix up with the DVLA for it to have been registered on a k-plate. We can tell its an Si rather than the earlier carb S because it has aerodynamic door mirrors and a rounded instrument binnacle (the carb car has a large square binnacle and square mirrors). When Clarkson opened the bonnet you could see that the intercoolers were not visible, on the S they were on top of the engine and were fed by the twin NACA ducts in the bonnet, on the Si the intercoolers were moved to the front negating the purpose of the bonnet vents but they remained. This particular car has obviously been repainted as from the factory all Ss and Sis would have had a grey lower half, that car also has later bumpers from the 222SE/2.24v. In Italy the S and Si models are quite sought after as they were the final development of the Biturbo before the 222 was launched, the limited edition Si Black Series is particularly sought after.
