Remembering Aga Khan IV, Imam and Car Guy

Earlier this week, Aga Khan IV died at the age of 88 at his home in Lisbon. Born Prince Karim Al-Hussaini in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1936, he inherited from his grandfather the mantle of spiritual leader to the world’s 15 million Shia Ismaili Muslims when he was a 20-year-old undergraduate at Harvard. From 1957 until his death, he served the role faithfully, using his immense wealth and considerable connections to create the Aga Khan Development Network, a non-profit operating in dozens of countries that serves the most vulnerable populations, regardless of religious affiliation.

He took his role seriously from the outset, stating in a 2013 Vanity Fair profile, “I was an undergraduate who knew what his work for the rest of his life was going to be.” As a result he sought to bring positive change to millions of people around the world; notably, he was pivotal in ending the five-year civil war that ravaged Tajikistan following the fall of the Soviet Union. 

But the Aga Khan was also a billionaire, with a billionaire’s taste for expensive hobbies, chief among them breeding thoroughbred racehorses (something about which he knew nothing but took on after his father’s death in 1960; ultimately, he proved very successful at it).

He also loved cars, a passion he came by honestly, as many of the men and women of his family enjoyed exotic and luxury cars from the likes of Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, and Aston Martin. His stepmother, Rita Hayworth, was a Lincoln woman. Aga Khan’s automotive passions weren’t exactly overt or ostentatious, however, and three of his cars are especially noteworthy. 

The 5000GT

The car most associated with Aga Khan IV was his Maserati 5000GT. The Italian carmaker built just 34 of the potent coupes over five years of production, and their genesis is owed to a special request from the Shah of Iran, a certified car nut who was on the hunt for something bespoke, something even Ferrari couldn’t give him. After receiving brochures for both the Maserati 3500GT and the 450S, he contacted managing director Omer Orsi to ask if the two could somehow be combined: gentleman’s coupe + race car. 

The car Orsi would ship to Tehran, “The Scia di Persia” 5000GT, was the marriage of a re-engineered 3500 chassis minus its 3.5-liter straight-six and replaced by the only-slightly detuned 4.5-liter V-8 from the 450S—bored out to 4937cc and making 325 horsepower. And it was clothed in custom aluminum sheetmetal courtesy of Carrozzeria Touring. It was the fastest road car in the world at the time, with a top speed of around 175 mph.

Touring promptly built a second car, which Maserati debuted at the 1959 Turin motor show, and it did well to attract the wealthy clientele Orsi was hoping it would: South African construction magnate Basil Read; Mexican President Adolfo López Mateos; industrialist and Lambretta scooter builder Ferdinando Innocenti; Fiat honcho Gianni Agnelli; and American sportsman Briggs Cunningham. (Curiously, Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh wouldn’t get his own 5000GT until well after he’d declared his Maserati does 185.) 

Over the next five years, Touring built another two cars, while Carrozzeria Allemano bodied 22 of them using an elegant Giovanni Michelotti design. The rest were left to Bertone (one), Ghia (one), Frua (three), Monterosa (two), Pininfarina (one), and Vignale (one), whose 1965 design would eventually become the Maserati Mexico.

It was a 1962 Frua-bodied 5000GT that struck the Aga Khan’s fancy. 

Enamored by the charms of the 1962 Geneva show car, which he’d driven as a loaner, in May of that year Aga Khan commissioned his own, s/n 103.060, which cost $21,500 (twice as much as a contemporary Ferrari 250 GT SWB) and was finished in shimmering Penombra Metalizzato (metallic blue twilight) over beige Connolly leather. The 300 km/h centrally mounted speedometer and in-dash Philips 45-rpm record player put it over the top. Over the next four years Aga Khan covered nearly 14,000 miles in it, and then, according to auction house Bonhams, the car “disappeared from sight until, in the mid 1990s, it was tracked down and purchased by a well-known North American collector.”

That collector, Alfredo Brener of Texas, commissioned a full restoration, after which the car appeared at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in 1999, where it finished second in class. Four years later, Brener consigned 10 Maseratis to RM Sotheby’s Monterey auction, the Aga Khan 5000GT among them, where it sold for $319,000, against an estimate of $350K–$450K. 

The car appeared at auction again a year later, at Bonhams’ annual Goodwood Revival sale. With a presale estimate of £160K–£200K ($287K–$358K), it failed to sell at £149,850 ($268,336). We saw it again in 2007, back on the Monterey Peninsula, this time at Gooding & Co., where it soared past the $650K–$850K presale estimate to sell for $1.1 million. Hagerty auction reporter Rick Carey analyzed the car that weekend and was in the room when the hammer fell. His conclusion: “This 5000GT has been to England and back since it was sold by RM here in Monterey in 2003 for $319,000, yet it has accumulated only another 31km on its odometer. There is no reason in the world—other than an excess of acquisitive exuberance—why it should have sold for much more than half this price. This is one of the most egregiously excessive transaction amounts seen on the Monterey Peninsula this weekend, a huge price for a non-huge car.” 

In the summer of 2007, Hagerty valued #1 (concours) condition Frua-bodied 5000GTs at $550,000, so the result was indeed eye-opening. The cars have only climbed in value since, and today that same #1 car would set you back $2.9 million. 

The Quattroporte II

Just as the Vignale-styled 5000GT led Maserati to the Mexico, the lines of Pietro Frua’s 5000GT had a strong influence on Maserati’s first four-door, the aptly named Quattroporte of 1963. Though we can’t say for certain that Aga Khan took delivery of one, he did own a second Frua-bodied Maserati that was even rarer than the first. 

As the 1960s drew to a close, so too did much of the bespoke coachwork that had graced so many exotics of the era. To that end, Maserati’s final dalliance with one-offs would be the Quattroporte II. And here we must clarify we’re not talking about the Bertone-bodied, Citroën SM–based, V-6–powered, front-wheel-drive QP II, either, of which just 13 were built before that entire disastrous Franco-Italian partnership went pear-shaped. 

Rather, the Frua-bodied QP II was an elegant saloon with underpinnings from the four-place Indy, including that car’s potent 4.9-liter V-8 and five-speed ZF gearbox. The prototype QP II, s/n AM121002, debuted in October 1971 at the Paris Salon de l’Automobile, with Juan Manuel Fangio at its side. Over the next three years, it made the rounds, appearing at Geneva and the Monaco Grand Prix in 1972, Paris again in 1973, as well as at the Barcelona auto show in 1973 and ’74, then was rumored to have sold to the King of Spain. It was at Geneva in ’72 that Aga Khan laid eyes on the car and commissioned one for himself, reportedly with Citroën hydraulics. He would take delivery of AM121004 in September 1974. 

It’s unclear how often he drove the car, but by the late 1970s he no longer owned it, and after a succession of European owners, including the Musée International de l’Automobile Genève, 004 made its way into the collection of the very same Alfredo Brener who owned the 5000GT. And like the 5000GT, he displayed it at concours around the country, before consigning it at the very same 2003 RM Sotheby’s auction in Monterey. With a presale estimate of $60,000–$90,000, it sold for $53,900. Eventually, it sold again to another American collector, Bruce Milner, who also owned 002. Aga Khan’s 1974 Quattroporte II last changed hands publicly in London in 2018, where RM Sotheby’s sold it for £178,250 ($236,700).

The Sport Quattro

Finally, we arrive at Audi. Aga Khan had a long association with the German marque and owned several, from the mundane to the Sport Quattro. Audi introduced the car at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September 1983, with production beginning the following February. The company built 214 of them for Group B rally homologation, and Aga Khan’s is reported to be the very first of 164 customer cars delivered. Like its counterparts, s/n 905083 was a short-wheelbase car with a lightweight Kevlar and aluminum body and steel doors and A-pillars sourced from the Audi 80. It featured long-travel independent suspension, all-wheel-drive, driver-selectable antilock brakes, and a 306-horsepower turbocharged 2.1-liter inline-five. His was one of 21 finished in Copenhagen Blue. 

German magazine Schaltkulisse (Shift Gate) profiled the car a few years ago and reports that in 1998, Aga Khan shipped it back to Germany and commissioned Audi to do a complete rebuild from the ground up, a restoration that took five years to complete. During the process the engine was upgraded with stronger internals to produce more power, bigger brakes were fitted, 16-inch wheels replaced the standard 15-inchers, and air conditioning was installed. Aga Khan continued to enjoy the little Audi rocketship until he sold it in 2022. 

Following the death of Aga Khan IV, his 53-year-old son, Prince Rahim Al-Hussaini, has been named successor as Aga Khan V, the 50^th hereditary imam of Ismaili Muslims.