Granturismo MC Trofeo - Road Registered

StuartW

Member
Messages
9,306
A number of you here already know this, but last year I treated myself to a second Granturismo. I have always wanted a bit of a project car with a nod to motorsport so considered a Lancia Stratos kit a Rallye and even an Audi Quattro. I have already owned an Integrale Evo and a Pajero Evo & wanted something on those lines. I wanted something that I could tinker with & take out occasionally to events & track days.
I then hit upon the idea of the Granturismo MC Trofeo & wondered whether one could be converted to road use. I didn't want to have to take this car everywhere on a trailer, I wanted to be able to fire it up and drive it out of my garage. Having owned two GTs & found them as reliable as other modern cars if maintained & stored properly, so I figured why not.
By way of background, Maserati ran their 'MC Trofeo' racing series from 2010 to 2015 where rich amateur & semi-pro race drivers holding appropriate FIA race licenses, would pay an annual fee and make their way to a circuit for a weekend of racing with a fully prepared race car, set up & maintained by Maserati race mechanics, ready & waiting for them. There would be a grid of 26 identical cars and each driver would carry out qualifying on the Saturday morning to determine the race 1 grid position and then compete in race 1 on Saturday afternoon and race 2 with a reverse grid on Sunday. The drivers would then fly home until the next race, when they would once more fly out the circuit where their, now serviced & fixed, car would be waiting for them once more. There would be 6 race weekends over the season visiting circuits such as Monza, Paul Ricard, Virginia Raceway, Zandvort, Suzuka, Abu Dhabi.
Maserati produced 42 of these cars in total as they had a few spare cars on hand plus used some for promotions and events such as Goodwood FOS etc. Each of the cars started out as a regular 4.7 GTS on the production line and indeed were assigned a VIN, and logged internally as a Granturismo finished in Bianco Eldorado. However, mid production & assembly, once the engine was fitted to the body shell, they were taken off the line and moved to racing division for the remaining build. This is where the magic happened and where they differ hugely from the road car. The engine and body shell is the same but ancillaries such as the manifolds and air intake are different plus there are no catalytic converters. There is no ABS, they have race brake discs and pads, there is no park brake, the gear box does not have an automatic option. There is a different, fixed damper suspension set up, different anti roll bars, there is a bladder fuel tank and unique 18" diameter wheels which are a colossal 11" wide at the front 13" wide at the rear. The glass is all plexi, the wings, bonnet, nose cone, boot, doors & rear bumper are all composite material. They have a heavy duty roll cage with Sparco 6 point harness & a single Pro-Adv seat, a plumbed in fire extinguisher system, toggle switches for all controls & a removable sparco steering wheel. It has a rear diffuser, straight through rear pipes, canards and a front splitter, extending to a full floor aero section. There are probably many other differences that I am forgetting but the good thing is that there is a full parts catalogue published and in theory, all parts are available to buy from your main dealer. Indeed, I needed a pair of track rods and sure enough, I got them from Marshall Maserati via Italy within 5 days.
At the end of 2015, Maserati announced that they would end the series and 40 of them would be serviced and converted to GT4 spec. They would then sell these cars to private teams around the world who wished to enter them in the GT4 class of their respective GT racing series. Many ended up in America where they competed in the Pirelli World Challenge and the others were scattered around the rest of the world from Europe, to South America and the far east.
Two of them were imported by Ebor GT in Yorkshire with one being successfully campaigned for a season in the British GT Championship and various other guest entries in the UK and mainland Europe. The other car was supposed to be raced in the UK too but Ebor were not able to find a pair of drivers who could bring a sufficiently competitive sponsorship package, so it was used as an occasional track day & test car. It is this car that I purchased which is car number 04 of the 42 made, it came to the UK having covered around 16,500km and has covered a further 1,500km since then. The first four were built in the second half of 2009 with the remaining cars built in late 2009 and early 2010. All of the cars were rotated throughout the seasons and in the final season, my car was entered into four of the six rounds of the series at Paul Ricard, the Red Bull Ring, the Virginia International Raceway and finally at Abu Dhabi which was the final race of the series in December 2015.
I bought the car in April last year and with the help of Angus at Ebor, we devised a programme of work needed to get the car road legal. With it being a race car, it does not have a certificate of conformity so we thought that we would have to undertake the extremely arduous task of an imported vehicle IVA test. This would have meant losing the plexi glass, possibly cutting out some of the cage as it obstructs rear visibility, changing much of the switch gear and countless other items. However, once a car is over 10 years old which for mine, occurred last October, you simply need a valid MOT so we decided to go for a day light test meaning that the car can only be driven in day light hours and not in gloomy conditions - I plan on fitting lights in the future. We submitted it for an MOT to see what it failed on and then we knew what our starting point would be.
This left us with needing road legal tyres (easier said than done with the wheel dimensions), a park brake, windscreen washers (it has wipers) and the emissions needed to be significantly cleaned up. We worked through each item on the list with the emissions being the most difficult to tackle.
The car had a race map written onto the ECU, no cats and a non standard manifold. We had a pair of cats made and fitted into bespoke pipes by CSK race exhausts who used HJS for the 200 cell cats, the same used by Larini. Fortunately, Maserati used a standard loom for the race car so there were connectors already there to fit the front & rear lambda sensors into which in turn, send their readings back to the ECU. The ECU however had a specific race map which was designed to dump so much fuel through the injectors and was used to working with 110 octane race fuel. Rather than replace the ECU, we decided to take it off and send it to DMS who have worked with 4.7 GT engines for a number of years and they took off the over-fueling race map (saving it on their hard drive in case we need it in the future) and put their road map on. We re-presented it for the MOT and whilst it was much better, it was still way to high on the hydro carbons so we decided to send the car down to DMS to tweak the ECU on their rolling road with the car, rather than just bench testing it. The car was then running very well and gave us peak power of 506bhp at around 6,800rpm but still the emissions were too high. This is where Matt & Ash at SportsItalia come in. With the car already being in Southampton, I called Matt with my conundrum and asked if they could take a look for me. Without hesitation and despite being super busy, they graciously took my car in and within 5 minutes they were on the phone to me saying 'I think I know where your problem is' - music to my ears! The race car does not have the usual air box & filter, instead is had a cone air filter with no box and subsequently does not have a MAF sensor. The ECU therefore cannot accurately mix the fuel & air resulting in dirty gasses. A MAF sensor was ordered, a beautiful bespoke billeted section was manufactured to house the sensor between the filter and the throttle body and hey presto, problem solved!
Once we had an MOT, I had MyCarImport carry out the registration process which was also tricky because you are supposed to inform HMRC via the NOVA scheme within 14 days of a car entering the country - it's been here since early 2016! You also need a date of manufacture letter from the manufacturer which you would ordinarily get through your main dealer but it's not so easy when the VIN is not listed on their usual system. I spent many hours on the phone to Italy to get this! However, the registration process went very smoothly and was confirmed in less than 2 weeks. Anyone that knows me will know that I don't go in for personal number plates but I had to pick something for a first registration and with this being car number 04 of the MC Trofeo series, you will see the logic and it was also from the list of cheapest registrations available!
The car then stayed with Matt & Ash to have a thorough inspection, all of the belts & fluids changed, track rod ends and drop link replaced and anti corrosion treatment applied to the chassis and some other fettling.
The car is now back at Ebor in Yorkshire for a new front floor to be made to take the place of the splitter which is far too vulnerable and is also an MOT failure as it sticks out at least 20cm. Also, the rear pipes have been hung in the wrong place and the diffuser no longer fits so this needs to be modified.
It should finally be ready for me to bring home during next month and then I can get busy on my own list of jobs that it needs - fitting a passenger seat & harness, an immobiliser (it is just a push start currently), it leaks in a number of places which needs to be addressed and a whole other list of jobs that any project car should have.
I can't thank Angus @ Ebor and Matt & Ash @ SportsItalia enough for making an ambitious & risky project a reality, you have all been incredible.
I hope some of you get to see it when I am out and about in it later in the year.
 
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StuartW

Member
Messages
9,306
The car's last competitive outing at Abu Dhabi
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At Ebor GT before I bought it, both of their cars were returned to their intended white as a blank canvas for racing livery to easily be applied

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Some interior shots, not quite the comfy continental tourer that you would usually associate a Granturismo with

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Now registered and almost ready to come home

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zagatoes30

Member
Messages
20,759
Oh, sounds like one **** of a project and good to hear that you have worked through the issues, all we need now is photos
 

Zep

Moderator
Messages
9,110
This thing is an absolute beast. I happened to be in Soton and followed it to the MOT station. It got a lot of second glances!
 

Felonious Crud

Administrator
Staff member
Messages
21,013
Stuart, that's fantastic! Well done, to you and all involved.

Dan! and I were poking round a few Ferrari race cars for sale up at Lancaster recently. It's interesting, but potentially financially ruinous, to know that conversion to road legality is achievable, with the right will and available talent and tenacity.

How does it sound?
 

woody1144

Member
Messages
108
I don't really know what to say but HUGE respect for undertaking such an arduous yet worthwhile project. It and must surely be the only Trofeo on the road globally? I know a few people have done the F430, 360 challenge and there is that FXX road legal but yet to see a Trofeo which is awesome as they are clearly the prettiest GT race cars. I really hope you see (and hear) the thing on the road sometime! Congratulations!
 

Andyk

Member
Messages
61,039
Bloody ****...didn't see that coming Stu...Amazing and big respect to you for taking the plunge. Look forward to hearing more over time.
 

rossm

New Member
Messages
27
Wow, definitely need to see (hear) some videos of that running!
Any idea what it weighs in its current form?
 

MaserAndy

Junior Member
Messages
76
I saw your car at a car show a couple of years ago. Ebor's other car had just won the spa round of the British gt (having started at the back of the grid) but hadn't made it back in time for the show. The driver was matty graham and was only 21. I knew ebor weren't racing their cars any more and had seen them up for sale and wondered where they'd ended up. But for a lack of money and talent i might have picked one up myself.;)

Seriously though this looks like an epic project!
 

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