I attended the annual Best of France and Italy car show held in Van Nuys, California over the weekend. It’s always one of Los Angeles’ best automotive events of the year since French cars are the best ones and the Italians are second. While chatting with my dear friend and Jalopnik contributor Derek Powell about my favorites from the show, he told me a great trivia fact about the Maserati Quattroporte III from the 1980s: It got truly horrific gas mileage.
Like, not only worse than any car currently on sale, including the Bugatti Chiron that holds the crown for the worst EPA-rated gas mileage in 2024 , but worse than pretty much all of its contemporaries, Ferrari Testarossa. The Quattroporte III was sold between 1979 and 1990, and it was initially offered with either a 4.1-liter V8 or a 4.
9-liter V8, though the former was discontinued after 1981. In the U.S.
, the only transmission option was a three-speed automatic, which likely contributed to the awful fuel economy. The EPA’s website only has results for the 1984 to 1986 model years of the Quattroporte, but they were all rated the same: 8 mpg combined, 7 mpg city and 10 mpg highway. That is absurd.
In Car And Driver ’s 1982 test , they observed 9 mpg overall. The Bugatti Chiron Super Sport is the worst-rated car by the EPA for 2024 at 9 mpg combined, 8 mpg city and 11 mpg highway. Yes, the Bugatti has four more gears in its automatic transmission, it also has an 8.
0-liter W16 engine with four turbochargers. The EPA do.
