Maserati 26M

Maserati 26M

Maserati

MarqueMaserati
Production1930-32
Engine2.5 L Straight-eight engine / I8 / 2.8 L I8

This is the catalogue record of the Maserati 26M, one of 117 models Maserati has placed in the historical record and one of more than seventeen thousand cars the MotorJury library tracks. The record places its introduction in 1930. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.

The era it was born into

To read the Maserati 26M properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1930s were the streamline decade, when aerodynamics entered body design, independent suspension spread, and grand-prix engineering began flowing into road cars even as the Depression thinned the industry. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Cadillac Cadillac V-16, the Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz 770, the Rolls-Royce Rolls-Royce Phantom II limousine — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.

The numbers, read closely

On paper, the Maserati 26M reads like this: the record lists its engine as 2.5 L Straight-eight engine / I8 / 2.8 L I8; kerb weight is recorded at 800 kg (1764 lb); drive goes through 4 speed manual transmission; the layout is FR layout. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.

Its place in the Maserati story

Within Maserati's own catalogue the Maserati 26M sits alongside the Maserati 150S, the Maserati 200S, the Maserati 300S, the Maserati 3200 GT. The record names the Maserati Tipo 26B as its predecessor and the Maserati 8C as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Design is credited to Alfieri Maserati. Assembly is recorded at Bologna, Italy.

How this catalogue works

This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.

Why concepts and prototypes are in the library

Most car databases stop at series production. This one deliberately does not, because concept cars, racing specials and cancelled prototypes are where the industry thinks out loud — the ideas tested in public years before they reach a showroom. Holding them beside the production cars they inspired makes the lineage legible: nearly every landmark road car in this library has a concept ancestor somewhere in the catalogue, and the connections run through the era links on every page.

From catalogue to ownership

The catalogue records what the Maserati 26M was; the ownership database records what it is like to own. MotorJury computes a verdict for every model year the United States federal record covers — complaints, recalls, real economy — refreshed nightly, with no opinions involved. If this car reached the American market, its verdicts are in there.

Specifications

Transmission4 speed manual transmission
LayoutFR layout
Kerb weight800 kg (1764 lb)
Wheelbase2640 mm (103.9 in)
AssemblyBologna, Italy
DesignerAlfieri Maserati
SuccessorMaserati 8C
Catalogue IDQ15141119

Specifications come from the Wikipedia infobox for this model (CC BY-SA) and the open Wikidata record, and are shown only where a source actually carries them — nothing here is estimated. Figures are manufacturer specifications, not measured results.

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What it costs to run

Ownership verdicts are computed from NHTSA complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, re-priced for your country. Verdicts are published per model year as the data is ingested — browse them live, or open the true-cost calculator to price any year yourself.

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