Information is power. The buyers must do their research because there is very little information available on these cars, they don't appear in the Glass Guide, for instance. The entire model history must be known before an informed purchase can be made.

Sellers cannot be relied on to know anything about the car. Advertisements appear for cars that cannot be correct; '1993 Ghibli Cup' is a common one. Because of this, price is no indicator of specification or condition. How can you competitively price a car if you don't know what it is? To give an example, a friend purchased a Ghibli Cup in Italy recently from a Renault dealer who had taken the car in part exchange. My friend was astonished at the car's condition for the price being asked and promptly bought it. As he got in to drive it away, the dealer asked him what the Cup badge meant.

Once armed with the knowledge, a potential purchaser must check the car thoroughly and, although every buyers' guide may say so, service history is very important. Not only its frequency, but the quality of the outfit that carried out the work. A sheaf of invoices may initially scare you, but ultimately it gives piece of mind that the car has been looked after.

The mind blowing performance and rear-wheel drive handling have caught out a few owners over the years so an HPI check for accident damage is imperative.

There are few places to buy a Ghibli in the UK. Most of the new range of Maserati dealers will have sold one or two but will be less willing to buy and sell the model as the 320OGT becomes more commonplace. That leaves specialist dealers and, most frequently, the magazine classified pages.

At any one time there are only a handful of cars for sale so the buyers must be patient if they are to acquire a car in the most desired specification. All too often a rash purchase will end in tears and big cheques.

If there are any doubts about condition or value for money then talk to one of the Maserati specialists, some of whom offer a pre-purchase inspection service. The Maserati world in the UK is a small one and most cars are known to one or other of these specialists .

The Ghibli was certainly a casualty of Maserati's 1998 renaissance. All official interest in the car effectively ceased at that point and those dealers that had taken cars from Maserati UK to sell discounted them heavily to clear their showrooms in anticipation of the 320OGT. Therefore, a year ago a new Ghibli GT could be bought from an authorised dealer for as little as £28,000. The result for the second-hand market was catastrophic. Owners found that the car they had bought only a year earlier had lost thousands of pounds in value almost overnight.

Even the Cup (see best buy) was affected and as for the earlier Ghiblis, they were reduced to Mondeo money in the blink of an eye. The specialist dealers became shy of buying the cars as the uncertainty of what would happen next became a real problem for their bottom line. A year on, the market has calmed down somewhat but has reached rock bottom. The most expensive cars now will be late, low mileage GTs which still command £30,000 price tags at authorised dealers. The cheapest will be left-hand drive 1992/94 cars which can be bought for as little as £10,000 privately.

Everything else falls somewhere in the middle with condition and mileage being far more important than age and number of owners.

As to the future, the Maserati Ghibli will always have a value as it is treated as the ultimate Biturbo. The earliest Biturbos are changing hands for beer money now, the later ones for more and the last ones more still. In the eyes of most buyers, the Ghibli will - quite rightly - always be worth more than a Biturbo of any age and, therefore, prices cannot fall much more than they have already.

Buy a car now and although it will undoubtedly cost more than average to maintain, it will probably still attract the same money when you come to sell.

The classic of the range in years to come will undoubtedly be the Cup. It offers not only a racing pedigree but also a fantastic driving experience for the enthusiast. It is no more expensive to maintain than any other in the range and due to its rarity will always have a market when you are selling, which you won't want to, of course, because the tactile pleasure of its dynamics makes every trip an occasion and that addiction will be hard to give up. Currently a Cup car is worth £25,000 to £28,000 depending on whether the sale is private or from a dealer. For left-hand drive cars, subtract £8,000.

Buying a second-hand car is usually a case of comparison, yet the Ghibli does hat fall into this category. You just have to want one. And, if you want it badly enough and are prepared to suffer its eccentricities and undoubtedly high maintenance costs, then you are hooked. If none of the above article fazes you and you just look at the photos with an evil, childlike grin on your face, then you are a potential Ghibil owner. Buy with emotion, however, and the dream could end very quickly Instead, buy with your head but on behalf of your heart.