Artists, fashion designers, or even big gaming companies – these are perhaps some of the people you’d think of (or at least makes sense) when a car brand unveils a special one-off model. Never in a million years we’d think of a chef creating a special-edition car, but yet here we are, with the new Maserati Levante Trofeo ‘Fuoriserie Edition’.

What you’re looking at here is the fruit of a collaboration between Maserati and Massimo Botturo, a world-renowned three Michelin-starred chef hailing from Modena, Italy. And as you’d imagine growing up near the Motor Valley of Italy, he quickly grew an affinity towards cars and motorsports, owing to his frequent racetrack visits with his brothers in his adolescence.

The passion for cars was what eventually landed the cuisine connoisseur a partnership with Maserati (also from the Emilia-Romagna region) that dates all the way back to 2005. From the carmaker’s own website, Maserati CEO Reid Bigland said “Massimo has shown true genius in expressing a modern or even futuristic vision of this tradition in every flavour, without ever betraying its origins.

“All this is very close to the Maserati tradition of designing, developing and building cars here in Italy that can excite and delight their drivers all over the world,” which explains their partnership, I guess.

Anyway, enough of the man – time to talk about the car itself. Taking the range-topping Trofeo variant of the Maserati Levante as a “blank canvas”, the chef Massimo’s Fuoriserie Edition is given a coat of Blu Stradale exterior paint, contrasted by huge splats of multi-coloured paint all around the car, something Maserati calls “explosion of creativity”.

Check out the Maserati Levante Trofeo Launch Edition – only three available in the whole of Malaysia!

Massimo was inspired by the splashes of mud plastered on the cars’ bodies every time he went racing through the Emilian countryside in vintage cars with his older brothers – “racing scars”, as he affectionately calls them.

“Life is very similar in that each one of us is the protagonist of an adventure: we are transformed by experiences lived, shaped by encounters, moulded by victories and defeats, and contaminated by the vibrant colours of culture.

“In the end, while still remaining ourselves, we have also become something different,” the press release reads. Apparently, the mud was such a huge influence in Massimo Bottura’s life that he habitually did not wash the mud off his cars for days after his off-road races.

The multi-coloured splashes can also be found on the trim elements on the interior, which is otherwise a pretty standard affair. Also standard – as is usual on a special one-off model – is the powertrain underneath the bonnet, a Ferrari-sourced 3.8-litre Twin Turbocharged V8 that makes 590 hp and 730 Nm of torque.

Here’s another special one-off from the Fuoriserie programme, created in conjunction with the “Godfather of Japanese street culture”

Bottura’s one-off creation is a part of Maserati’s Fuoriserie customisation programme, in which the company offers a wide selection of personalisation options to customers, through three basic collections as starting points: Corse, Unica, and Futura, plus an additional “Sartoria” level which offers even more bespoke treatments for even more tailor-made requirements.

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