New Maserati Quattroporte revealed

New version of Maserati's slinky four-door for Detroit debut

The all-new Maserati Quattroporte has been revealed ahead of its official debut at the Detroit show early next year and it looks ... very much like the old one. Not that this is anything to moan about of course, the Quattroporte being about the sexiest way to transport four people about and still the benchmark for high performance saloons. Well, if your buying decisions are made by your heart and not your head.

What, you were going to buy a Panamera?

Now, if this were a conventional motoring website we'd now throw lots of stats and information (or in the absence of that, pure conjecture) at you concerning the new car, its increased size, no doubt much improved performance, reduced CO2, that kind of thing. OK, for the record and in very Maserati language <clears throat> it "reaches new heights in terms of performance and handling, driving enjoyment as well as respect of the world we live in." And that's as much as they're saying for now. Oh, other than revealing that it has a V8 in the pictures. We're guessing it's not a diesel.

PistonHeads clearly isn't a conventional motoring website of course and the natural reaction to the news that there's going to be an all-new Quattroporte released soon is to head straight off to the classifieds and see how cheaply you can get one of the old ones.

Or you could have this for just £20K

And the answer is that there seems to be plenty of choice in the sub-£20K bracket, though most of these will be early versions with the clunkier Duo Select robotised manual gearbox. A quirky choice for a luxury saloon, sporting or not, and replaced by a much smoother and more appropriate ZF auto in 2007. The cheapest with this option is still only a couple of grand more so not exactly out of reach. Saying that this Duo Select car in romantic sounding 'Bordeaux Pontevecchio' with just 31K on the clock and priced at a smidge over £20K looks pretty tasty.

More on the new car when we get it. In the meantime happy browsing...