To boost its image and cash in on selected gentleman racers and collectors, Maserati then introduced its most powerful MC12 yet, the Corse. Following Ferrari’s recipe with the customer racing FXX program based on the Enzo, the MC12 Corse was positioned somewhere between the Stradale and the GT1 cars, offered as a race package not limited by the FIA rulebook. The non-road legal special debuted at the 2006 Bologna Motor Show, and while the official color was Blue Victory, after the naked carbon prototype, the first of the 12 customer cars was black.
MC12 Corse chassis number one went to Munich, where its buyer spent another €200,000 on top of the €1.2 million base price to convert the car for road usage. My friend Peter Orosz stumbled upon “Karl” and his black MC12 Corse in 2009, which came with such upgrades as a four-wheel lifting system, plus a paper saying that due to the polycarbonate greenhouse, the car shouldn’t be driven in the dark, nor in the wet. Quite recently, this special Corse popped up for sale at Joe Mecari of London. Charging a million euros before taxes in the standard Blue Victory, Maserati confirmed that it also produced a Corse in silver, yellow, dark blue, white and orange. Since then, the German tuning firm Edo Competition converted at least three more.
Weighing 2,535 pounds, the MC12 Corse uses a 755-horsepower version of Ferrari’s 6.0-liter 48-valve dry-sump DOHC V12. Interestingly, the 14th Corse was only assembled in 2014, nine years past the Stradale’s production run. Known as the MC12 Centennial edition, this unit was officially homologated for the road using the German TÜV’s single unit process. As such, it borrowed its exhaust silencers, steel brakes, wheels, tires, radiators fans, handbrake and front axle lifter from the normal MC12 Stradale.