All posts by Francis Mitterrand

News

Maserati Blocks Sale of First Customer MCXtrema After Bidding Hits $751K

For a company that’s spent the last decade searching for relevance, Maserati doesn’t get many moments of genuine buzz. The MCXtrema should have been one of them. A track-only, 730-horsepower evolution of the MC20, limited to just 62 units worldwide, the MCXtrema is exactly the kind of unhinged halo car that makes enthusiasts lean in and start paying attention again. Instead, Maserati has found a way to turn that excitement into confusion, frustration, and a canceled auction.

Late last month, the first customer-owned MCXtrema ever to hit the open market appeared on Bring a Trailer. The car was essentially new, showing just 228 kilometers (141 miles), and had been delivered to its original owner during 2024’s Monterey Car Week. Not long after, it landed in the hands of a dealer—almost certainly with resale profits in mind.

Bidding quickly surged to $751,000. Then, just as quickly, the entire listing vanished.

The reason? Maserati didn’t like it.

Bring a Trailer confirmed that Maserati of North America intervened and restricted the sale of the car, forcing the auction to be withdrawn. No official explanation was offered as to why Maserati would block the resale of a vehicle that had already changed hands once.

“We obviously cannot put the eventual winning bidder into a problematic post-auction situation,” BaT wrote, adding that the seller was informed Maserati was restricting the transaction. Translation: the manufacturer made it clear the buyer might not be able to register, service, or even properly take ownership of the car if the auction continued.

That’s not how you want your million-dollar track toy introduced to the world.

Unsurprisingly, the enthusiast community didn’t take it quietly. On BaT’s forums, reactions ranged from annoyed to outright mocking. One user summed up the mood perfectly: “For the first time in years, there’s finally some excitement around a new Maserati… and Maserati of North America finds yet another way to mess it up.” Another commenter was less subtle, suggesting Maserati should instead focus on stopping its normal cars from depreciating “like used Kleenex.”

The irony is that the MCXtrema is exactly the kind of machine Maserati should be celebrating in public view. Beneath its wild aero and track-only bodywork sits the familiar MC20 architecture—but turned up to a near-ridiculous level. The twin-turbo 3.0-liter V-6 has been cranked to 730 horsepower, channeled through a six-speed sequential gearbox and a mechanical limited-slip differential driving the rear wheels. It’s lighter, louder, more aggressive, and entirely unconcerned with things like emissions, ride comfort, or road legality.

In other words, it’s everything modern Maseratis usually aren’t.

Manufacturers trying to control who buys their ultra-rare cars isn’t new—Ferrari has made a sport of it—but blocking a resale after a car has already been delivered sets a different, far more awkward precedent. If Maserati wants the MCXtrema to be taken seriously as a hardcore driver’s machine rather than just another rich-guy toy, it probably shouldn’t treat its first public resale like a scandal.

The MCXtrema was supposed to signal that Maserati still knows how to build something wild. Instead, it’s also becoming a reminder that even when the hardware is finally right, the brand can still trip over its own shoelaces.

Source: Bring a Trailer

News

A Million-Dollar Porsche 911 Speedster That Lost Six Figures Before Its First Oil Change

In the high-stakes world of Porsche restomods, depreciation is supposed to be something that happens to Cayennes, not carbon-fiber 911 Speedsters. But this Gunther Werks build just proved that even the bluest of blue-chip air-cooled exotica isn’t immune to gravity.

This particular Gunther Werks 911 Speedster—one of just 25 ever made—recently sold for $965,000. That sounds outrageous until you realize it had traded hands for $1.15 million only a few months earlier. That’s nearly $200,000 gone in under a fiscal quarter, which is about the same rate of value loss as a Bentley leaving the showroom.

Ouch.

The car left Gunther Werks’ Huntington Beach facility in October 2022, built to the firm’s obsessive standards and finished in a bespoke Gin Tree Green metallic. A year later, it landed at New York–based HK Motorcars, who apparently saw it less as a toy and more as a rolling financial instrument. That gamble didn’t quite pay off.

The dealer tossed it onto Bring a Trailer, where bidding topped out at $905,000—well shy of their reserve. Soon after, a private deal closed at $965,000, locking in a $185,000 loss for the seller. Whether that means the dealer overpaid or the new buyer scored a bargain is something the next resale will reveal. But either way, it’s a reminder that even seven-figure Porsches don’t always go up.

Fortunately, if you’re going to lose six figures on a car, it might as well be one that looks like this.

Gunther Werks doesn’t restore 911s so much as re-engineer them. Each Speedster begins as a donor 993 that’s stripped to its steel skeleton before being reborn with a full carbon-fiber body. Every panel is lighter, stiffer, and shaped with modern aerodynamic intent, even if the silhouette still screams late-’90s Stuttgart.

This one’s custom green paint is offset by matte green stripes and yellow Porsche script, a subtle nod to motorsport heritage wrapped in boutique-level craftsmanship. It’s less “classic 911” and more “what Porsche would build if it ignored accounting.”

Underneath the carbon lies a 4.0-liter air-cooled flat-six that’s about as far from stock as a Mezger can get. With Mahle pistons, forged rods, and a billet crankshaft, it produces 430 horsepower and 330 pound-feet of torque—numbers that would’ve sounded absurd in a 1990s 911 but now feel perfectly at home in a carbon-skinned Speedster.

Power goes through a six-speed manual, because of course it does, and the chassis is handled by adaptive coilovers with Brembo brakes big enough to stop a small aircraft. Six-piston calipers up front, four in the rear, and more grip than a tax audit.

Inside, the same no-expense-spared philosophy continues. Gunther Werks cabins are more private jet than vintage Porsche, blending bespoke materials with modern hardware while still preserving the basic 911 layout.

So yes, someone lost nearly $200,000 on this Speedster in record time. But the person who bought it for $965,000 may have just landed one of the most exquisite air-cooled Porsches ever built for what passes as a bargain in this rarefied world.

In the restomod market, timing is everything. And sometimes, even a million-dollar Porsche has a bad day on Wall Street.

Source: Bring a Trailer

News

Toyota’s Mystery Three-Row EV Is Almost Here

Toyota’s slow-burn teaser campaign just took a sharp turn toward the real world. The company has finally dropped its first official photo and video of its upcoming SUV—and confirmed that the full reveal lands February 10. After months of speculation, patent sleuthing, and corporate breadcrumbs, we now have something resembling a shape. And that shape is unmistakably large.

Everything we’re seeing points to a three-row electric SUV, a long-promised piece of Toyota’s EV puzzle that now appears to be ready for primetime. The interior shots give the game away: a second row with captain’s chairs suggests either a six- or seven-seat layout, and the sheer amount of glass—thanks to a panoramic sunroof—makes this thing feel more family road-trip than futuristic pod.

Toyota’s designers haven’t been asleep at the wheel, either. A full digital gauge cluster sits ahead of the driver, while a big tablet-style infotainment screen dominates the center stack. USB ports tucked into the bases of the C-pillars hint at a vehicle that expects rear-seat passengers to be as plugged in as the powertrain. In other words, this is a modern, tech-forward hauler designed for people who actually use the third row.

But the real story is what this SUV is, not just what it looks like.

Back in 2021, Toyota showed off the bZ Large SUV concept—then called the bZ5X—a three-row EV that was supposed to be part of a massive 15-vehicle electric blitz. Since then, Toyota has quietly stepped back from the awkward “bZ” branding while reshuffling its EV strategy, but one thing has remained consistent: a big, U.S.-built, three-row electric SUV was always coming.

And this sure looks like it.

Patent images we uncovered earlier, especially of the concept’s rear end, line up eerily well with what Toyota just teased. The proportions, the body creases, and that wide rear light bar all match. Even the window shape—with its distinctive triangular base at the front—lines up with the filings. If this isn’t the production version of the bZ Large SUV, then Toyota has pulled off one of the most convincing misdirects in recent memory.

What Toyota hasn’t told us yet is the name—and that’s where things get spicy.

While industry insiders have been calling this thing the bZ5X for years, Toyota’s growing discomfort with the “bZ” label suggests something more familiar might be in the works. Enter Highlander.

Toyota already builds a wildly successful three-row crossover in the Grand Highlander, which absolutely crushed its shorter sibling last year. The standard Highlander’s sales fell more than 37 percent to just over 56,000 units, while the Grand Highlander surged nearly 91 percent to almost 137,000. That kind of split practically begs for a rethink—and electrifying the regular Highlander would be one way to do it.

An electric Highlander—or even something like a “bZ Highlander”—would make a lot of sense. Ford proved with the Mustang Mach-E that familiar nameplates can smooth the transition to electric, even when the vehicle underneath is something entirely new. Customers trust the Highlander name, and Toyota would be wise to lean on that goodwill as it tries to get conservative buyers comfortable with plugging in.

We already know this SUV will be built in Kentucky with batteries sourced from Toyota’s North Carolina facility, and production is expected to begin in the first half of 2026. The reveal next week in California should finally lock in the name, the specs, and just how serious Toyota is about re-entering the EV race it once helped invent—and then strangely abandoned.

So call it the bZ5X, the Grand Crown, or the Electric Highlander. What matters is that Toyota’s long-teased three-row EV is real, it’s coming, and it’s about to become one of the most important vehicles the company has launched in a decade.

And in a market where big electric family haulers are still thin on the ground, Toyota just showed up to the fight with something that actually looks ready to sell.

Source: Toyota