Maserati at Monterey Car Week: The Trident Among the World’s Finest Collectors

Every August, Monterey Car Week draws the most coveted automobiles on earth to California’s Central Coast, and Maserati sits firmly among the marques that command the lawn. More than a century of Grand Prix victories, coachbuilt grand tourers, and hand-finished engines have made the Trident a fixture at concours fields and auction tents alike. That same heritage lives on in the cars you can drive today, from the GranTurismo to the track-bred GT2 Stradale, which makes collecting a Maserati as much about the future as the past.

Monterey Car Week is not a single event but a full week of them, spread across the Peninsula: the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, The Quail, historic racing at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, and the marquee collector-car auctions. It is the one week each year when the people who define the top of the automotive world gather in one place, and the cars they choose to show say everything about taste, provenance, and passion.

Maserati has earned its spot in that company the hard way. Founded in Bologna in 1914 and built on motorsport, the marque is one of the few that can put a genuine Grand Prix pedigree, a lineage of Italian coachbuilding, and a modern performance program on the same stage. Collectors who care about rarity and story gravitate toward it precisely because a Maserati is never the obvious choice. It is the connoisseur’s choice.

Walk the auction previews during Car Week and you will find the cars that made the legend. The 250F, the front-engined Grand Prix car in which Juan Manuel Fangio clinched his final World Championship in 1957, remains one of the most revered racing Maseratis ever built. Road cars from the golden era carry their own gravity: the A6GCS, the 3500 GT that launched Maserati as a serious grand-touring brand, and the 5000 GT, built for royalty and industrialists.

The late 1960s and 1970s brought the coachbuilt icons that still stop traffic on the concours lawn, including the original Ghibli penned by Giorgetto Giugiaro, the Bora, the Khamsin, and the Mistral. These are the cars serious collectors track across decades, and when a well-documented example crosses the block at Monterey, the room pays attention. Their value comes from a rare combination: Italian design at its most confident, low production numbers, and a racing bloodline that few rivals can match.

What makes the Trident compelling to modern collectors is that the story never stopped. The current lineup is engineered to stand shoulder to shoulder with the classics on display each August.

The GranTurismo continues a long Maserati tradition of the four-seat grand tourer, a car built to devour a coastal drive from Carmel to Big Sur in comfort and style. Drop the roof, and the GranCabrio delivers the same experience with open air overhead, exactly the kind of car that belongs on the 17-Mile Drive. For collectors focused on the most driver-oriented machines, the MCPura mid-engine supercar and the track-derived GT2 Stradale represent the sharpest expression of Maserati engineering today.

Maserati has also brought the Trident into the electric era with its Folgore models. The GranTurismo Folgore is a battery-electric grand tourer, while the Grecale Folgore applies the same all-electric approach to the Maserati SUV. For buyers who want luxury and everyday usability without giving up the badge, the Grecale has become the entry point into the modern range. Cars like these are tomorrow’s classics, and the collectors who recognize that early are the ones on the podium at Monterey twenty years from now.

You do not have to fly to the Peninsula to begin. Newport Beach and the surrounding Orange County coast offer some of the finest driving roads in the country, and the local Maserati community is one of the strongest on the West Coast. Whether you are adding your first Trident or your fifth, the process of acquiring and caring for one deserves the same care you would expect at a concours.

For buyers who want the reassurance of a rigorous inspection process, the Certified Pre-Owned program is a smart way to enter Maserati ownership with confidence. If you already own a special car and are considering its next chapter, the consignment program is built to present an exotic to the right audience. And because acquiring a collectible often involves structuring the purchase thoughtfully, the finance team at Maserati of Newport Beach works to make the exceptional achievable.

A note for owners of the classics: the coastal air that makes Newport Beach beautiful is hard on a fine automobile, and preserving a collector-grade Maserati means keeping it mechanically and cosmetically flawless. Trusting that work to a team that knows the marque is part of protecting your investment.

Monterey Car Week is a celebration of what Maserati has always represented: rare design, real racing heritage, and cars worth keeping for generations. If that story speaks to you, the next chapter can start close to home. Explore the new Maserati lineup at Maserati of Newport Beach, 4040 Campus Drive, and find the Trident that belongs in your collection.