It had a top speed of 273 km/h. 564 Boras were assembled in eight years, about half of them in the 4.9-litre version. Among the Bora’s first customers were Maserati loyalist Karim Aga Khan and film producer Carlo Ponti, Sophia Loren’s husband. French importer Thepenier had commissioned a racing model of the Bora to compete in category 4. Developed in 1973, it was rated at 430 bhp! But at the time, Maserati was unable to meet the production threshold of 500 cars required to obtain homologation. The oil crisis and new tax restrictions imposed by the Italian government had significantly weakened the market for such high-performance cars.