Maserati Quattroporte review - fun read!

Cut-and-paste from January 2, 2005 Sunday Times.
Well written - style only the Brits can do.

*...Maserati Quattroporte
By Jimmy Carr
Call it a Ferrari for persons of taste

Maserati's saloon with a stallion under its bonnet suits comedian Carr down to the ground.

Let’s face facts before we start. The only reason I’m writing this review is because I appeared on Top Gear a few weeks ago and did rather well. In fact, let’s not mess around, I’m the fastest-ever Star in a Reasonably Priced Car — all the more surprising since I drive a second-hand diesel Rover 75 (which is actually worth significantly less than Top Gear’s “reasonably priced” car).
So when I got a call from the good people at The Sunday Times asking if I fancied using my skills behind the wheel to put 75 grand’s worth of Maserati to the test for a week, I had to give it some thought. That microsecond passed without incident and here I am.

Rest assured that regular Clarkson service will resume next week. If, for whatever reason, you can’t wait till then, this should tide you over: the M4 bus lane is a disgrace, everyone with a caravan should be shot and Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a really super-looking bloke and could easily have turned me gay. Right, now that’s out of the way, on to the review.

Wouldn’t it be good if there was a Ferrari that didn’t make you look like you were lacking in the trouser department? Wouldn’t it be good if they built a Ferrari that you could drive every day without needing Valium? Wouldn’t it be good if Ferrari made a four-door family saloon that was exclusive but not ludicrously expensive?

If you’re thinking, “That wouldn’t be good, that would be great”, then you’re in luck, because for the past week I’ve been driving a car that perfectly fits the bill. Okay, it may not have the prancing-horse badge on the front, but the Quattroporte has a 4.2 litre 400bhp V8 engine developed by sister company Ferrari. And a rose by any other name would smell as sweet? You bet your arse it would.

A Ferrari is as flash as a rat with a gold tooth — the preserve of footballers and City boys with bonuses burning holes in their pockets. However, this isn’t a poor man’s Ferrari (at £75,000 nobody on the breadline is buying one), rather it’s a Ferrari for someone with a bit more taste. The Maserati Quattroporte is a grown-up Ferrari for people with responsibilities, mortgages, children and yet still with a need to get from 0-62mph in 5.2sec.

Motoring journalism is like pornography much of the time — it’s about the unattainable. It’s about the Ferrari Enzo for £425,000 that you’ll never afford, just like the centrefold who’ll never look at you twice. Today we’re looking at the motoring equivalent of FHM magazine’s high street honeys. It’s the “not quite so unattainable but still quite filthy” end of the market.

A Ferrari will get you noticed. But it’ll get you noticed by people who know nothing about cars. The Maserati will eliminate the Burberry-wearing chav element — they won’t notice the car and more to the point they definitely won’t buy it. Brilliant! It’s a car that no footballer’s wife will be putting on her shopping list — it’s just not quite crass enough.

Everyone I took out in the car (everyone I’ve ever known) enjoyed its refined looks. Rather like a metrosexual Aston Martin, in my opinion. It’s a muscular, masculine machine that looks like it moisturises daily and is no stranger to a good manicure.

But the Maserati Quattroporte is also a little like the singer Joss Stone — no really, let me finish. It looks very pretty, beautiful even, and you think you know what kind of noise it’s going to make. But, with a similar disconcerting effect to that of a mature and soulful voice emanating from a 17-year-old, you’ve got the familiar sound of a Ferrari engine roaring to life beneath the facade of a four-door saloon. (I’m using artistic licence: I’ve heard Ferrari engines but to call them a “familiar sound” suggests a lifestyle slightly more sumptuous than mine.)

The concept is fairly straightforward: a sports car that’s also a four-door luxury executive saloon. That sounds pretty simple, and you won’t be surprised to hear that other car manufacturers have had similar ideas. Sadly, they just never managed to carry off the project with the style and grace of the current Maserati.

As a basic formula it sounds simple, but as far as I’m concerned you can’t just stick an engine the size of a space shuttle’s on the back of an S-class Merc and call it a sports car. Primarily, the problem with powering up your average luxury executive saloon is that they deliver all the handling of an ocean-going steamer. They’re just no fun to drive. The Maserati is different. Apparently the handling is so good because the gearbox is between the rear wheels, giving a slightly rearward weight bias. Note: “the handling is good” is all you need to take away from that last sentence.

Although the BMW 7-series and Mercedes S-class are nominally the Quattroporte’s competition, they are very different animals. The Quattroporte isn’t the type of car chief executives choose to be driven in, or film stars show up to premieres in. I can’t think of anything worse than being in the back of the Maserati, not because it isn’t well appointed and luxurious (it is) but because all the fun is in the driving seat. This is a sports car that actually makes it feel like you’re driving. You can hear the engine and feel the road. If you’re looking to be transported on air in an 18th-century drawing room, buy something else. When you get it out on narrow country roads (which you’ll find an excuse to do in no time) it really rewards. Unlike its sports-saloon rivals the cabin doesn’t feel like it’s a distant cousin of the engine that writes once in a while and you maybe see at Christmas.

You don’t have to rely on the speedo to tell you how fast you’re going. In sports mode with the traction control turned off you’re fully aware that you’re going too fast — or as I like to think of it, “just fast enough”. Where this car really outshines its competitors is with its gearbox, one that’s capable of transforming with the push of a button from a standard six-speed automatic into the incredible sensory experience of the paddle-shift manual mode — the automotive equivalent of pinball wizardry.

Rather strangely, the Italians have picked the four-door element to concentrate on in naming their car. To be fair, “Quattroporte” does sound very cool, but that’s the Italians for you. I bet even the Italian for “I wonder, could you help me . . . I’ve got amoebic dysentery, genital warts and halitosis” sounds a bit sexy.

When looking for the perfect woman, men often say they would ideally have a whore in the bedroom and a chef in the kitchen. When it comes to cars we want something comfortable for the motorway, exciting for tooling around country lanes. Well, the Maserati Quattroporte is, quite frankly, a gourmet slut. It’s Nigella Lawson with the moral compass of Abi Titmuss.
Most middle-aged men don’t buy sports cars. You can’t afford to run two cars, and the practicalities of life mean you need a four-door for the kids. You made your decision when you got her pregnant and now you have to live with it. Only now you don’t have to live with it. Now you can have an irresponsible sports car (with four doors to appease the wife) so when the kids are in the back screaming, “Are we there yet?”, you can calmly respond, “Course we bloody are, I’ve been doing 171mph”. Although if I ever see anything this beautiful with a “baby on board” sticker in the back there will be trouble.

There are many reasons why one might not buy a Maserati Quattroporte: £75,000 is a lot of money, it’ll depreciate like Third World currency, and it drinks fuel like George Best drinks . . . well, fuel.

But if you watch The Sopranos you’ll know the head of the mob in New York recently bought a Maserati. He literally killed to drive that car. Now usually there’s some moral ambiguity surrounding the whole issue of taking another’s life, but not in this case — no jury with a soul could convict the man.

The fact that a mafia boss chose the Maserati tells us something else: that this is a subtle car, not in the least bit flash — the FBI probably didn’t even notice it in the drive.

Let me sum up in terms the mafia boss would understand. Frank Sinatra was a great singer — no argument there, right? Bob Hope was a funny bloke — right? What if you could have the two in one, wouldn’t that make a great all-round entertainer? The Ferrari you are never going to buy is Frank Sinatra, the foor-door saloon you sensibly should buy is Bob Hope, while the Maserati is Dean Martin.

At the time of going to press, Maserati had yet to comment on what I would get as a trade-in on my old Rover 75...*



Hopefully, I won't get into trouble with the possible copyright laws for "borrowing" the article.
Just in case, here is the link...
http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,12389-1421150,00.html