Maserati’s Nettuno V6 Engine Will Only Go Into One Car

The new Maserati MC20 supercar marks a new chapter in the Italian sports car maker’s history. It’s the three-tipped spearhead for a new range of vehicles as the brand seeks to revive its fortunes. Maserati is embracing drivetrain electrification, but MC20’s twin-turbo 3.0-liter V6 is a hand-built engine taking advantage of Formula 1 technology to avoid electrification. Maserati’s chief engineer for high-performance engines, Matteo Valentini, tells Autocar that, “The Nettuno is built only for the MC20, so you will see it only on that car.” However, he assures the UK publication that “the plan is that the technology from it, particularly the twin-combustion system, will be used on many other engines in the future.”

The Nettuno engine, named after the Roman god Neptune whose trident forms the Maserati badge, produces 621 horsepower and 583 lb-ft of torque without the electrical assistance becoming commonplace in supercars. It’s a product of the new Maserati Engine Lab in Modena and could be one of the last non-electrified masterpieces created for a supercar. The key to the engine’s fast response while making so much power was not to use a larger turbo with an electrical boost system. Instead, it uses something called pre-chamber technology, which is, essentially, an extra air-fuel mixture chamber with a second spark plug sitting above the combustion chamber. As the piston is about to fully compress the main fuel charge, the pre-chamber ignites. It allows the air-fuel mixture to be ignited at multiple points rather than at a single point.