The Details

The Interior

I have been told that a black interior is unusual in a 228, although I would have preferred a cream/white interior. You can also see that the seats are a bit more 'luxurious' than the seats on the 430 or the Spyder of similar vintage. The car is a step up from the Biturbo in terms of comfort, interior space, and finish.

The interior is in great shape. There are no tears, stains, burns, or anything on the leather. Well, OK, the previous owner had a piece of velcro glued to the dash to hold the CD changer control. I almost have all the glue off now.

The original carpets were not bad in the back, but in the front were dirty and badly worn. Since the carpet is a one piece unit, the whole thing had to be replaced. The Carpathian Elm burl veneer trim is good, with some small stress fractures where the trim curves at the front of the doors, but from what I have seen of others, this car is typical.

The trunk is also clean, although the carpeting had been removed so many times that it didn't fit 100% any more. It also smelled really bad when it got wet. So I wound up replacing the trunk carpet as well. 

One of the most annoying features of this car has always been that the trunk can only be opened by the button on the dash. There is no trunk key. So I installed an Autoloc trunk remote and remote keyless for the doors. It was cheap, and well worth it.

Even though the interior of the car is black, a lot of the plastic trim pieces were brown. I heard that Maserati just used up what was in their bins on the factory floor regardless of the colour of the interior! Eventually this drove me crazy, and I ordered replacement pieces in black from MIE. I noticed as I was installing these that there are a number of shades of black.  Still, better than brown.

Similarly, I replaced the ugly brown steering wheel with a wood one, I found one on eBay  I am not sure if I like it or not yet, it is smaller and obscures the speedo a bit.

I also need new floor mats. There were some rings in the original carpets that suggest there were some OEM mats with it originally. Since the 228 is so unique, there are no standard aftermarket mats available for it. MIE has told me to make up a template and send it to them, and I think I will probably take them up on it when I get to it. Or I might just get some coco mats.

 When the car was taken apart prior to going to the paint shop, I moved all of the interior trim pieces into a spare bedroom in the basement of the house. There I swapped many of the brown plastic trim pieces for the black ones I had ordered. I also applied a coat of Autoglym leather cleaner to all the leather surfaces.

The Engine Compartment

 I had the engine compartment detailed and cleaned at various points along the way.  It was eventually painted at the same time as the rest of the car. Even though the lighting is a bit different in these pictures, you can still see the improvement over time.  After it was painted, the engine compartment was quite a bit brighter as it was originally black and I had it redone in the body colour. 

The first three pictures are all of the original dual cam engine, the last two pictures are of the quad cam engine. I didn't do any real cleaning of the original engine itself, but I did polish up the engine compartment quite a bit. The fourth picture is just before I took it to Monterey in 2002. The last picture is after the whole car had been repainted.