Registered as a road-going car, the Boomerang was a one-off design meant purely for show. The Boomerang was unveiled in 1972 at the Turin Motor Show and was extremely well-received. It then made a short auto show circuit before being retired in 1974 and sold to a collector.
The Boomerang began as a non-functional Epowood model in 1971, but was then redone on a Maserati Bora chassis as a functioning show car. Designed by Giorgetto Glugiaro at Italdesign (which still maintains a page dedicated to it), the two-door, rear-engined coupe had a 4.7-liter V8 and 5-speed manual transmission. The Boomerang’s wheelbase was 102 inches on a 171-inch total body length design.
Innovations in the car included a collapsing chain connecting the steering column designed to absorb impact and prevent the steering column from spearing the driver. Something new in the early 1970s as safety began to creep into automotive design.
Maserati’s Boomerang would be most associated with Glugiaro and would affect his future designs for years. Geometric in shape, the Boomerang was a glorious wedge with sharp edges and shelves. These same designs would be seen in Glugiaro’s later works such as the Lotus Espirit, Maserati Quattroporte III, and Lancia Delta. Not to mention the DeLorean. It was with the Espirit, for example, that the extreme rake of the Boomerang’s windshield (a sticking point with the car’s few critics) would prove viable.
Inside, the Boomerang had a unique interior with a gauge cluster and steering wheel as one console that emerges from the dash. Wherein the steering wheel rotates around the gauges.
After its auto show debuts and its entrance into private life, the Boomerang was shown at the Bagatelle Concours in Paris in 1990 and then the Concorso Italiano, Carmel, and Pebble Beach in 1993. Then it appeared in 2000 in the Monterey Historic Automobile Races and 50th Anniversary Pebble Beach show. It won Best Of Show in the 2012 Pebble Beach and 2013 Best of Show in Monte Carlo. then again in Belgium in 2014. In 2015, the Maserati Boomerang came up for auction at Bonhams in France and sold for $3.7 million.
Photos courtesy of Wikimedia and Italdesign.
