MC12 & MC20 Successor Is A Mid-Engined Italian Mountain Goat
One of the perks of working inside duPont REGISTRY’s global headquarters is seeing a Maserati MC12 in our office every day. Thanks to a previous role, at a famous British motorsports magazine, I also got to witness many FIA GT Championship races firsthand, where the MC12 GT1 often ruled supreme from 2005-’10. You know a car is truly successful when the organizers attempt to ban it – which is why the second batch of 25 production cars are 150mm shorter than the originals!
In 2020, Maserati revisited the two-seater, mid-engined layout with the MC20, and this time opted to mass produce it, rather than the MC12’s limited run of 50 road cars and 12 racers. But it did bring that ‘62’ number back for the wild, track-only MCXtrema, while the road-legal GT2 Stradale also offers further extra power/less weight thrills.
For the 2026 model year the MC20 is rebranded as the MCPura, with a front-to-back design refresh, including its open-topped ‘Cielo’ (Italian for ‘sky’) variant for $281,000 alongside its $246,000 Coupe. The Cielo’s glass roof retracts in 12s when travelling at under 30 mph, far removed, if you’ll pardon the pun, from the MC12’s detachable hardtop that couldn’t be stowed within the car – so you had to pray that it didn’t suddenly rain on your journey!
The Cielo is 12 kg (26.5 lbs) heavier than the Coupe, due to reinforcements to the carbon fiber monocoque (the tub is a collaboration between Maserati and Dallara) to ensure its structural rigidity, but your payback is that the chassis is ever so slightly stiffer. Maserati bills this car as the “essence of performance and joy”, and the ‘Pura’ stems from a trident, if you will, of “pure speed, pure luxury, and pure Italian passion”. Underpinned by Maserati’s clever little Nettuno 3.0-liter twin-turbo V6, producing 621 horsepower and 730 Nm (538 lb-ft) of torque, it can achieve 0-60 mph in 2.9 seconds.
Design-wise, the big exterior changes come at the front bumper and fascia, with a much more aggressive and angular ‘shark nose’ grille, plus reshaping of the lower fascia at the rear end. The side skirts have also been revised to reflect the design language, which includes a glossy black finish as opposed to the matte of the MC20. Inside, a new steering wheel, with a flattened top, is now covered in Alcantara, material which also runs throughout the seats, dash and door panels, which feels like an elevation from its forebear.
New performance pages have been added to its centrally mounted 10.25-inch touchscreen, which is where you control the roof retraction and opacity – as it features polymer-dispersed liquid crystals (PDLC) that switches from transparent to opaque at the touch of the screen. The change occurs within a second, and it’s genuinely quite freaky when you first see it!
Underneath the car, aerodynamic performance has been improved at the front end. The floor now features a 5% increase in vertical load, and the diffuser at the rear has been refined to maintain the balance. “The MCXtrema served as a design laboratory for this car,” explained chief designer Klaus Busse. “It introduced the Trident-shaped taillight and a more horizontal, assertive front design. We’ve carried this forward into the MCPura, giving it a more confident presence.”
It sure does look purposeful, and I’m told it spent more than 2,000 man-hours in the wind tunnel. The car I’m driving along the Tuscan coast of Italy is an MCPura Cielo in Devil Orange, a color that’s a tribute to the feisty Italian female F1 pioneer of the 1950s, Maria Teresa de Filippis, who was known as “Diazoles’” – the “she devil”. This is one of three signature colors offered, alongside the radiant blue AI Aqua Rainbow, and classic white Bianco Audace. Maserati’s Fuoriserie program opens a virtually limitless palette of color choices for exterior and interior options.
My first impression comes as a passenger; as luck would have it my drive buddy for the day is regular duPont REGISTRY car tester Michael Teo Van Runkle. Charged with espresso, and running second on the road behind Maserati’s lead test driver for the program, Filippo Pensotti, Michael spends his stint hustling behind Filippo’s 2025 Maserati GranTurismo Trofeo coupe along a sinuous mountain road. From my shotgun vantage point, I rest assured that the MCPura is as lithe and responsive as you’d expect from a mid-engined, carbon-tubbed halo car.
After a break for taking photos and videos, and more espresso, we swap places and it’s my turn to open the driver’s side butterfly door and slide behind that flat-topped steering wheel to find out for myself. I luck into an even more steep and twisting route, and with Filippo waving us to go ahead, I can set my own pace.
The MCPura’s 621 hp doesn’t all come at once, but with only 1,500 kg (3,306 lbs) to motivate and a neat patented-for-the-road, F1-style pre-chamber combustion system, the first burst of acceleration is enough to light up the rears – something we also achieve later when testing its launch system (a button on the right of the steering wheel, across from the starter on the left). As the revs rise, the twin-turbos join the party, giving the car a second wind, and on this amazing road I’m barely grabbing third gear before the next downshift is required.
“I believe our powertrain truly differentiates us,” explains Leonardo Rimini, the MCPura’s product planner, when I ask him later about how he feels MCPura stacks up to segment rivals. “We don’t use a hybrid system; we’ve stayed pure to the internal combustion engine. The twin-turbo V6 Nettuno engine is now part of Maserati’s DNA and is really the beating heart of the company. That’s a very compelling value proposition.
“The engine delivers incredible results, and the technology is truly cutting-edge. But if you asked me my favorite aspect of the car, it would be the carbon fiber tub – it contributes so much to the stiffness and torsional rigidity of the chassis. You can really feel that when you drive it.”
Agreed! Once back on the Autostrada, we get another seal of approval from a guy on a high-powered Kawasaki motorcycle, who comes roaring up to us, slows down, and begs us to rev the engine as we go through a tunnel. He gives the Italian hand gesture for “Bellissimo” before charging off at a million miles an hour on his commute. It’s something that’s not lost on its stylist, Herr Busse: “Our customers tell us they love Maserati because it’s not shouting at you – it’s a rolling sculpture. In Europe, supercars can draw negative attention, but our customers get thumbs up, not the wrong finger.”
Back into the hills we go for some more mountainside fun. Flooring the throttle, and redlining through the low gears, before stamping on the left pedal to feel the bite of its carbon-ceramic brakes, and downshifting for the next switchback, and the Nettuno produces some wonderous chirrups and flutter from the turbos. This sounds best in Corsa mode (pro tip: go into Sport mode and then hold for a couple of seconds and it magically engages with a snazzy flash – GT and Wet modes are also available). The gearchange response from the paddles in manual mode is sharp, and the MCPura devours these mountain roads with poise.
The steering is a touch on the light side but feels perfectly connected to the front wheels on turn-in, and the feedback when on throttle exit was sound, which helps as its traction control is not as, let’s say ‘intrusive’, as other 600+ hp cars I’ve experienced recently. But you wouldn’t want a boring supercar, would you? Driving this car in a spirited fashion means you need all your wits about you – which is how it should be.
It’s certainly a car that allows you to find a rhythm to the point of it almost becoming mesmeric, with a ride quality that soaked up the bumps but its firm enough to deliver a pointy front end. Blasting along downhill stretches oddly reminded me of riding your fastest skateboard as a kid, carving down the biggest gradient you could find, where smooth inputs meant you could zig zag at high speed, and carry your momentum right to the bottom, and you’d only feel disappointed when the thrill ride was over!
But with the MCPura, there’s always another mountain to climb, and that’s pretty much how we spent the rest of the day, tackling corner after corner, up and down the dramatic hillsides of Tuscany, only pausing to get some photos of this beautiful car against the stunning vistas. Our drive concludes on a steep downhill stretch, where Michael – fueled by a double espresso over lunch in Sestri Levante – catches and hounds a local hero in mid-sized European Ford, who clearly knows every inch of the road and is taking a racing line around each bend.
Riding shotgun once more, and ignoring the huge drops outside my window, I’m thoroughly entertained as much by how on-the-edge the car in front is, while the MCPura is rapidly gobbling up the same apexes with sublime ease just a few yards behind. It’s fair to say, after a couple of hours of enthusiastic driving, we got through a fair percentage of the fuel tank over 200 miles of hustling around the region…
A total of 130 examples (32% of the 2026 run) is destined for the North American market, with the first set to land in December. On the supercar smattered streets of Miami, I’ve only ever seen a handful of MC20s compared its mid-engined rivals – although I do see many Levante and Grecale SUVs daily, and it’s hardly surprising to learn that nearby Maserati of Fort Lauderdale is its biggest US dealer.
So, if you’re looking for a 200-mph supercar that can turn heads – yet delivers performance similar to a Ferrari 296 GTB, avoids the fuss of hybrids, and comes with refined elegance – then the MCPura should certainly be on your radar.
Images: Charles Bradley, Maserati
