I attended the annual Best of France and Italy car show held in Van Nuys, California over the weekend. It’s always one of Los Angeles’ best automotive events of the year since French cars are the best ones and the Italians are second. While chatting with my dear friend and Jalopnik contributor Derek Powell about my favorites from the show, he told me a great trivia fact about the Maserati Quattroporte III from the 1980s: It got truly horrific gas mileage.
Like, not only worse than any car currently on sale, including the Bugatti Chiron that holds the crown for the worst EPA-rated gas mileage in 2024, but worse than pretty much all of its contemporaries, Ferrari Testarossa. The Quattroporte III was sold between 1979 and 1990, and it was initially offered with either a 4.1-liter V8 or a 4.9-liter V8, though the former was discontinued after 1981. In the U.S., the only transmission option was a three-speed automatic, which likely contributed to the awful fuel economy.
The EPA’s website only has results for the 1984 to 1986 model years of the Quattroporte, but they were all rated the same: 8 mpg combined, 7 mpg city and 10 mpg highway. That is absurd. In Car And Driver’s 1982 test, they observed 9 mpg overall. The Bugatti Chiron Super Sport is the worst-rated car by the EPA for 2024 at 9 mpg combined, 8 mpg city and 11 mpg highway. Yes, the Bugatti has four more gears in its automatic transmission, it also has an 8.0-liter W16 engine with four turbochargers. The EPA does say it will cost you less to fill up the Quattroporte, with an annual fuel cost of $5,950 versus $6,800 for the Bugatti. The EPA’s lowest rated truck is the Mercedes-AMG G63 4×4 Squared, which is essentially a V8-powered monster truck, and yet it still gets even better gas mileage than the Bugatti at 11 mpg combined, 10 mpg city and 12 mpg combined.
Compared to other ’80s gas-guzzlers the Quattroporte is among the worst, at least per my unscientific research. The 1986 Ferrari Testarossa got 11/9/14 (combined/city/highway), and the 1984 Lamborghini Countach LP500S got 11/10/13. Even a 1985 K10 Chevy Suburban 4WD with a four-speed auto beats the Quattroporte with ratings of 12/11/15. It’s only the absolute luxury excess that has worse fuel economy than the Maserati. The later 1988 Countach got 7/6/10, while the 1986 Rolls-Royce Silver Spur matched the Quattroporte’s combined and city figures but got 1 mpg fewer on the highway.
Do you own a Maserati Quattroporte III? What sort of gas mileage did you get? What’s the worst gas mileage you’ve ever gotten in any car? For me it was a normal G63 and the Hyundai Kona N, both of which I averaged about 8 mpg in.
