Celebrate the Maserati Quattroporte’s 60th birthday by seeing how cheap the fifth generation is second hand

Maserati has decided to celebrate the Quattroporte’s 60th birthday with the series of archive images you can see up above. Usually we wouldn’t bother to bring this to your attention, but the four-door Maser is really very cool.

In fact, the old shots inspired us to dig around the classifieds, and it turns out fifth generation Quattroportes are worryingly affordable. You can pick up early 2004 examples for under £6,000, which is still a fair chunk of cash, but for that you get properly menacing Pininfarina design and a Ferrari-derived 4.2-litre V8. Ooft. Just don’t mention the running costs.

Want to splash out a little more? This glorious Deep Burgundy Metallic example with a cream leather interior and a walnut dash is up for £9,995 and only has 66,000 miles on the clock. If you get lucky and avoid the really big maintenance bills, that could be a heck of a used buy.

“It has become the choice of our most select clientele, as well as the world of entertainment and for the international establishment,” says Maserati boss Davide Grasso about the Quattroporte.

“It’s a source of pride for us and an acknowledgement of the distinctively Italian character that Maserati has always aimed to export around the world with its creations. Now as before, Quattroporte remains our flagship, synonymous with a unique luxury.”

How could you not want to become a part of that select group? Maserati says it has sold over 75,000 examples of the Quattroporte across its six generations, and it’s still the coolest car to wear the trident badge.

Anyone got any horror stories to help put us off? Because at the moment we’re dangerously close to adding a 20-year-old Italian saloon to the TG fleet.