The Last Maserati of a Dying Era

December 14, 1989. Maserati’s factory in Modena. Alejandro de Tomaso, the Argentine industrialist who had owned the company since 1976, stood before a room full of journalists and pulled the covers off a coupe that looked like nothing else wearing a Maserati badge. Low, wide, aggressive in a way the brand hadn’t been in years. 

What most of the people there didn’t know was that nine days earlier, Fiat had signed a deal to acquire 49 percent of the company. The brand de Tomaso had spent over a decade trying to rebuild was already, for all practical purposes, no longer fully his. The car was the Shamal. It went on to be one of the rarest and least talked-about grand tourers of the decade. That reputation was never deserved.