Monteverdi 375L review
Monteverdi 375L 7.2 Road Test
Test date 25 September 1969
Price as tested £10,450
For Performance, equipment, handling, comfort
Against Build quality, reliability, cost
Obviously there are special reasons why someone pays £10,000 or more for a car. The cars available in this most exclusive of brackets can be counted on your fingers. A new name was added when the Swiss-made Monteverdi became available in the UK. Available here means that an importing organisation now exists, but with an annual quota of only 12 cars, the model is never going to lose its rarity.
The man who spends what to some of us represents several years' salary on a single car is somewhat different and someone special. If he chooses a Rolls-Royce or a Mercedes he is buying advanced engineering, designed regardless of cost and checked out to the last detail, many times over. If he chooses a Maserati or a Lamborghini he is buying million-dollar looks and an exclusiveness like that of an original Dior creation. It is in this latter category that the Monteverdi must be considered, although by using an engine and transmission imported from the USA it loses a lot of prestige in the eyes of the true cognoscenti.
Peter Monteverdi is, relatively speaking, a very young tycoon, but he has a strong background in motor sport and special building. This, his first commercial touring car enterprise, is built at Basle with supplies (in typical Swiss fashion) drawn from all the corners of the world. Thus the body is built and trimmed by Fissore in Italy, the chassis is fabricated in Basle, much of the running gear is British and the power unit comes from Detroit.
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