Have you driven a modern-day Ferrari? Because it doesn’t matter what you drive
now, you would stumble from the experience reeling in slack-jawed, wide-eyed
astonishment at just how good it had been.
In a current Ferrari you have a oneness with the machine that you simply don’t
get from any other car. You feel connected, you feel assimilated. The
steering, the brakes and throttle don’t feel like a collection of metal and
wires and carbon fibre. They feel like they’re organic extensions of your
fingers and your toes.
This means you have no sense of man handling the beast, of taming the monster.
And because everything you do feels as natural and as instinctive as
breathing, you can go much, much faster than you dreamt possible.
I was, at this point, going to liken Ferrari to Manchester United. But the
simile doesn’t quite work because in the world of football there are Chelsea
and Arsenal who, on the day, are capable of beating the big boy. But in the
world of cars no one even gets close.
When you climb out of an Aston Martin Vanquish and into a 575, it is like
climbing out of the 11th century and onto the bridge of the Starship
Enterprise. Emotionally, both cars tug your heartstrings with equal force,
but mechanically the Ferrari is hundreds of years ahead.
We see the same sort of thing higher up the scale, too. Porsche was
undoubtedly proud of its Carrera GT, and no doubt Mercedes had a warm gooey
sense of contentment when its McLaren SLR went on sale. I drove both and
they were magical. And then I drove Ferrari’s rival, the Enzo, which, as a
speed machine, was just miles better.
From this we can draw a sad but inescapable conclusion. Having the money to
buy a Ferrari and then buying something else means you are going home with
second best. You are buying south of the river, a Henman, a Bolton Wanderer.
So why do we do it? Why have I ordered a Ford GT when I could have had a
technically superior 430 from Ferrari? Why are we tripping over Bentley
Continentals when their owners could have had a 575 or a 612? Why is the DB9
one of the world’s most sought after cars when on any playing field, against
any Ferrari, it would lose about 6-0?
Well, of course, the problem is very simple. Ferraris are just a little bit
disgusting, with a dash of Beckham and a hint of Ferdinand. A Ferrari just
won’t go with your Fired Earth flooring and your BBC2 viewing habits. A
Ferrari is sculptured vulgarity, which means we must turn our attention now
to its bastard son. The Maserati Quattroporte.
I’m aware, of course, that the comedian Jimmy Carr reviewed this car when I
was away, and I’m aware that he liked it very much. But then what was the
editor expecting? Asking a man who replaced a Rover 75 with another Rover 75
to review a car like the Maserati is a bit like asking a refugee from Chad
to review the Ivy. He’s going to be overwhelmed.
I wasn’t. I’ve been watching Maserati’s endless attempts to crack the nut for
nearly 20 years now and they’ve all been completely hopeless. Everything,
from the wheezing Biturbo through the old Quattroporte to the 3200GT, was
nothing more than a great badge from the Fifties nailed to a car that had
all the grace and aesthetic appeal of Hattie Jacques.
The company was owned by Citroën, the Italian government and then an Argentine
playboy who sold bits of it to Chrysler, which couldn’t manage and offloaded
the whole thing to Fiat, who eventually fobbed it off to Ferrari, who joined
forces with Volkswagen and turned the horrid 3200GT into the 4200, which
wasn’t very nice either.
At this point the powers that be in Italy decided I had it in for their
useless bits of half-arsed engineering and banned me from driving all of
their press demonstrators. So, last year, when they launched the new
Quattroporte I was in Coventry.
No big deal, I figured. Coventry’s exactly the place to be when you have
£70,000 in your pocket and a burning need to buy a large, fast, four-door
saloon car. There was, I convinced myself, no way that the big Maserati
could possibly hold a candle to the supercharged Jag.
I was still thinking along the same lines as the spat with Maserati ended and
they said I could borrow a Quattroporte after the man from the Welsh Pig
Breeder’s Gazette had had a go. And so last week what looked like a swollen
Vauxhall Cresta rumbled up my drive.
I stepped inside, and after a bit of fumbling among a dizzying array of
buttons, found the switch that slides the seat backwards. It didn’t work. At
first I assumed this might be because it was Italian, and therefore broken,
but in fact the seat was as far back as it would go. Which wasn’t far
enough.
That night, however, I wedged myself into the Cresta and set off for dinner
with the local lord. It was dark and sort of drizzling so I constantly
needed to flick the wipers on, and dip the headlights as I met cars coming
the other way.
This was unusually hard because the Cresta has a stupid flappy paddle gearbox
that is operated by levers right next to the headlamp and wiper stalks. So
every time I met a car coming the other way I changed into fourth.
You can solve this by pushing a button that makes the gearbox an automatic.
But then the changes are so hamfisted that you will feel like you’ve moved
back 200 years. And the ride’s pretty sudden as well.
We arrived at the big house and I pressed the central locking button, which
illuminated a light on the underside of the passenger-side door mirror.
Hmmm. Was this some kind of feature, a time delay device to light the path
to the door? Or was it a faulty piece of wiring?
I waited to see if it would go out. And then I waited some more. I was just
about to give up waiting when I thought that most people with Maseratis
would have a long walk to the house so maybe it would stay on a while yet.
So I waited a little longer.
And then, when I was very wet and cold, I unlocked the car, which illuminated
all the lights except the one under the door mirror on the passenger’s side,
which went out. So I locked up again, and it came back on again.
At this point I thought of an expression that rhymes with bucket and went
inside for dinner. Or pudding as it had become by then.
So, the Cresta? It looks like a Vauxhall from the 1970s, it’s cramped, the
gearbox is stupid, the ride is too hard and its wiring is as cockeyed as the
leaning tower of Pisa. And yet, despite all this, I absolutely loved it.
First of all there’s the name. Despite the efforts of everyone who’s owned the
company over the past 30 years, it still has a ring. “Shall we take the
Maserati tonight, darling?” That sounds good. And then there’s the way it
goes. The 4.2 litre V8 develops 400 brake horsepower, which is a hundred
down on the German benchmark these days. But unlike the German rivals
there’s no electronic limiter, so when the AMG Benz is on the buffers at 155
you’ll be able to keep on going. All the way to 170.
Then there’s the noise. Mostly it’s quiet and serene in the super-tasteful
cabin, but when you put your foot down there’s a faraway, dreamy peal of
thunder. It’s great.
What’s more, on a dry, clear day when you don’t have to worry about wipers and
dipping the lights, even the gearbox becomes manageable. Not nice, you
understand, and nowhere near as good as a proper manual. But useable
nevertheless.
The best thing about this car, though, is the “feel”. At no point do you have
a sense that you’re in a large four-seater saloon. It turns and grips and
brakes with a fluidity and a sense of purpose that you just don’t get from
any big Jag, Audi, Mercedes or BMW.
I’ll tell you what it feels like. It feels like a Ferrari, and technically
speaking that’s the highest praise there is. But, of course, the Maserati is
not a Ferrari. And that makes it even better.
It’s less brash than a Ferrari, more refined than a Ferrari, more practical
than a Ferrari and, at £70,000, less expensive than a Ferrari as well.
VITAL STATISTICS
Model Maserati Quattroporte
Engine type V8, 4244cc
Power 400bhp @ 7000rpm
Torque 333 lb ft @ 4500rpm
Acceleration 0-62mph: 5.2sec
Top speed 171mph
Fuel/CO2 15mpg (combined) / 440g/km
Price £74,550
Verdict A Ferrari by another name, but without the image
problem
Rating 4/5
