My first introduction to Maserati was via a Citroen SM the dealership some of my mates worked at had one in for some reason, not sale, must have been service.
Would be very early 80's? Haven't googled SM's so no idea when they were produced. Was a leftie, with a V6, we popped the bonnet just to look at it.
This is ingrained very deeply in my memory cos one of my mates there, Jimmy (a twin) was also fawning over it. A few days later in the pub he said he'd bumped a car at work, and one of the lads asked what he was gonna do. He said he was gonna kill himself. We all laughed but he did it, that night. 18 years old.
Went to his funeral, I would be 21/22, burial, pissing down like in the movies, his twin sister totally distraught, awful, floods of tears, hardly able to stand, I thought she was going to throw herself on the coffin as it was lowered, and as the ground was so slippy it would have been a distinct possibility one way or another.
I used to cry every night for months, to be honest he wasn't a best mate, but it was the whole tragedy of the total chain of events.
Still have the burial scene in my minds eye, rain, rain, mud, umbrellas, black garb, stumbling sibling hardly able to stand needing helping up - very sort of Victorian.
Who started this!!??
