About
Swedish born Frenchman Marc Sonnery had to tackle three languages by the time he was four. He first became curious about Maseratis when his father, a Citroën director in four successive countries, showed him photos of the sports car company they had just bought in 1968.
By his 11th birthday, having added two more languages –but still allergic to numbers- he had his first ride in a Maserati with dad and was thereafter irretrievably hooked on fast cars from Modena. Decades later he treated himself with a Khamsin for his 40th birthday and created the registry for that model.
After some years racing semi professionally in England during the late 1980’s, mixing it with future champions, he soon found a new outlet for his passion, embarking in 1992 on more than twenty years of writing as a freelance journalist for leading classic car magazines in Europe, the US and Japan. His cosmopolitan background, ability to converse in 6 languages, having also learned Italian during a 6 month spell in Modena, and his relentless desire to research matters to the very end have yielded countless articles written with contagious enthusiasm and perceptive insight.
Thanks to his racing background he was able to carry out test drive articles of major Ferrari racing cars such as a 333SP (the only journalist in the US to do so), a 512BBLM, pontoon fendered Testa Rossa, 375MM, 250LM, 512M and thanks to his persistence was the first journalist ever to test the one off Osca 1600SP, the first in 20 years to test a Bizzarrini 1900 Europa GT and one of the two Maserati Bora Group 4.
He currently calls the hills of Burgundy, central France, home. There he enjoys truly serene work surroundings as well as challenging deserted back roads on which to keep his driving fine tuned.
He is also a classic car broker, consultant, VIP tour guide, multilingual event speaker and event organizer. His 2012 KHAMSIN QUARANTA reunion for the 40th anniversary of the Maserati Khamsin drew a world record 27 examples including the prototype, the one off spyder, its designer Marcello Gandini and Maserati Classiche. The event was praised as a complete and perfectly organized success. He is preparing another International Classic Maserati reunion in Burgundy for June 2017.
He is the author of:
REBEL REBEL BREADVAN, the book on the famous one off Ferrari 250GT “Breadvan” published by Parker House Publishing in 2010.
MASERATI THE CITROEN YEARS 1968-1975 Published 2013 by Eau Rouge Publishing, a labor of love he had in mind and stomach for years as he felt there was a huge lack of proper coverage on that era of Maserati. Book of the month in several magazines, finalist at the 2013 IHMA Awards.
A VISION IN THE FOREST, 2013, a medieval romance war novel.
Rewrote, edited the text and chose the photo content of the autobiography of Dr Paul Schouwenburg, FERRARI FEVER, Published 2014 by Eau Rouge Publishing.
Currently working on DE TOMASO MANGUSTA. Several other book projects are being considered thereafter.
