New MC20 Cabrio inbound for summer 2022, with suspected folding hard-top

Hello, welcome to 2022. New to supercars, are you? Well here’s a truism to get you started: manufacturers spend countless hours and squillions of R&D pennies making their supercars as light and stiff as they can profitably get away with… then buyers insist all of that maths is compromised so they can get a 200mph suntan. Convertible supercars never go out of fashion. 

Here’s one of your new sunseekers for 2022: the Maserati MC20 Cabrio. These official ‘spy shots’ preview the new drop-top Maserati flagship, which is expected to feature a folding hard-top roof similar in operation to the likes of the Ferrari F8 Spider and various roofless McLarens. 

Because the MC20 is based on a carbon fibre tub, though, it ought not to need half an orchard of tree trunks bolting underneath it to keep it stiff when the roof comes off. Ferrari's aluminium F8 Spider puts on 70kg when it’s de-topped, but a McLaren 720S Spider is only 40kg heavier than the coupe, thanks to the carbon chassis. 

For now, the only MC20 powertrain option is the diminutive 2.9-litre bi-turbo V6 good for 621bhp. Driving the rear wheels via a seven-speed twin-clutch gearbox, it already punts the hard-top to 62mph in about three seconds and tops out at 203mph, which sounds like plenty for the hairstyle-erasing version here. 

Maserati is still plotting an all-electric version of the MC20 too, if you’d like to be closer to nature without drowning it out with V6 noise.

Price? Unless you found £200,000 (around RM1.1 million) in one of your Christmas cards, we might hold fire on the order form.