Also known as: nettuno, f161, 3.0 twin-turbo v6 maserati, mc20 engine
Maserati's 3.0 twin-turbo V6 — the Nettuno — in the MC20, GranTurismo and Grecale Trofeo.
⚑ It is Maserati's first engine of its own in twenty years, which is the framing that matters here: the F136, F154 and F160 beside it in this catalogue are Ferrari engines, and the assumption that a Maserati V6 is a Ferrari one stops being true with this.
Its distinguishing feature is pre-chamber combustion, taken from Formula One: a small chamber above the main one, with its own spark plug, fires a jet of flame into the cylinder. There are two spark plugs per cylinder and one of them is not where anybody expects it, and a misfire diagnosis that assumes a conventional head is working from the wrong parts list.
It is a very high specific output engine — over 200 horsepower per litre — and the ordinary consequences follow sharply: oil grade and interval are not routine advice, and the turbochargers' life tracks oil condition rather than mileage.
Independent experience is essentially nonexistent and the factory procedure is the only reliable reference.
Cars fitted with this engine
2 generations, across 1 make. From the authored catalogue — an absent car means the catalogue has not reached it, not that the engine was never fitted.
Information, not instruction
CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.
Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
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- The car — make, model, year and engine. The same fault behaves differently on each.
- What you measured, not only what you replaced.
- What actually fixed it — or that nothing did, which is worth knowing too.
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