This Wedge-Shaped Maserati Custom feels like the ‘MacBook Air’ of Automotive Design

Close your eyes and imagine a laptop. Chances are, you thought of a sleek metal gadget like a MacBook Air, not a clunky IBM Thinkpad from 2005. Close your eyes and now think of a car, and the chances of you thinking of something sleek and wedge-shaped are close to zero. Sure, you would have imagined something aerodynamic – but nothing like the wedge-shaped Lancia Stratos HF Zero from 1970, or the Peralta S right here. This one-off machine takes the concept of “less is more” and applies it to automotive design in the most extreme way possible, creating an unbroken line from nose to tail that makes every other supercar look cluttered and overthought. Just like Apple’s laptop made everyone else scramble to match its impossible thinness, the Peralta S makes you wonder why every other exotic car needs so many creases, vents, and visual noise when you could just build a perfect geometric statement instead.

The Peralta S is what happens when design royalty gets a blank check and decides to prove that minimalism can be more dramatic than maximalism. Fabrizio Giugiaro, son of the legendary Giorgetto Giugiaro, took up the challenge of updating his father’s 1972 Maserati Boomerang concept, and the result is equal parts art and engineering flex. The original Boomerang looked like a UFO with wheels and made the Geneva Motor Show crowd gawk with its impossibly clean lines and radical geometry. Now, decades later, Fabrizio has taken his dad’s angular fever dream, filtered it through modern manufacturing techniques, and landed on something that manages to be both a respectful homage and a totally new beast. The Peralta S doesn’t hide its roots, but it definitely wears new shoes.

Designer: Fabrizio Giugiaro

Underneath all that shiny hand-formed aluminum and carbon fiber, the Peralta S is built on the bones of a Maserati MC20. That means the power is real, not just for show. A 3.0-liter twin-turbo V6, known as the Nettuno, sits right in the middle, cranking out 621 horsepower and 538 pound-feet of torque. That’s enough muscle to bolt this wedge from zero to 60 in 2.9 seconds, putting it squarely in supercar territory. The eight-speed dual-clutch transmission is basically telepathic, sending all that power to the rear wheels and letting the car howl past 200 mph if you can find a road or runway long enough.

But you won’t find doors here. The Peralta S ditches convention by using a single, huge, front-hinged canopy that makes the MacBook Air’s clamshell opening look pedestrian. It lifts up like the cockpit of a fighter jet, making every entrance and exit an event while maintaining those clean lines that define the entire design philosophy. Even the windows do their own thing, swinging up gullwing-style so you can let the breeze in while looking like you stepped out of a sci-fi comic. The wheels are a modern nod to the old Boomerang’s alloys, slotted and sculpted, and the rear wing pops up automatically at speed, which is both a flex and a nod to the Countach crowd.

Inside, the Peralta S keeps things futuristic without going full spaceship. The dashboard and controls are based on the MC20, but the steering wheel is custom, with turn signal buttons at 1 and 11 o’clock in a configuration that feels both nerdy and weirdly ergonomic. Leather and carbon fiber wrap the entire cabin, and there’s enough tech to make you feel like you’re piloting something special, not just driving another expensive toy. The interior follows the same minimalist philosophy as the exterior, proving that you can strip things down to their essence without losing functionality or luxury.

Carlos Peralta, a collector from Mexico, commissioned the car, turning what could have been a corporate design exercise into a love letter between generations of car nerds. Giugiaro’s family legacy is written all over the bodywork, but it’s also a statement about what custom car design can be when you don’t have to think about mass production, safety regulations, or the taste of the average millionaire. The Peralta S is pure expression, risky and weird and unapologetically cool, like if Jony Ive had designed supercars instead of phones.

The Peralta S is a museum piece that moves like a missile, a future classic that bows to its predecessor while flipping off the idea that all supercars have to look the same. It’s a one-off, so you’ll never see another on the road, but that’s kind of the point. Sometimes, design is about reminding everyone what’s possible when you let artists and engineers run wild with someone else’s wallet and a dream. The Peralta S is proof that the wedge age never really ended; it just needed a new Giugiaro to bring it back in style, one perfect line at a time.

The post This Wedge-Shaped Maserati Custom feels like the ‘MacBook Air’ of Automotive Design first appeared on Yanko Design.

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