Picture this: you are walking down the sidewalk in Manhattan, no real destination in mind, sipping your coffee (because obviously, it’s New York, our blood is 90 percent black coffee), and suddenly out of the corner of your eye, whats this? Could it be? Yes! It is a bright yellow Maserati Quattroporte, a true Italian luxury sedan, in the flesh. (Welcome back to Carspotting! We’re back with The Worst Walking Tour of New York City, headed by my colleague Raphael Orlove, a hack who is barely qualified to tell you how to get to the Empire State Building from here. We’re out to find the best cars of the Big Apple.) Sitting in a parking garage somewhere in the grid of Manhattan that is the Lower East Side, it was hard to miss this bright yellow spot of joy. A Maserati Quattroporte, a “first and a half” generation of the high-volume Quattroportes, (although truthfully fifth generation, as the first model came out in the 60's), as Raph keenly points out. Fun pub fact: an easy way to tell it is gen 1.5- the grill’s bars point vertically rather than horizontally. This generation Quattroporte was particularly exciting because it came with a Ferrari-built V8 engine, unusual for a traditional, wood-grained dash “luxury sedan”. (To be clear, the current generation Quattroporte can also come with a V8, but is also available as a twin-turbo V6, which I drove earlier this year.) As this generation debuted its face lift in 2008, it got me reflecting on the iconic moments of the late 2000s and early 2010s (especially as we are reaching the end of the decade). Everyone wore “Livestrong” bracelets, there were numerous debates over whether you were Team Edward or Team Jacob, and Flo Rida was loving on some apple-bottom jeans. Unlike some of the iconic or notorious, depending on your mindset, moments of the early 2010s, this face-lifted, Ferrari-powered Quattroporte has aged extremely well and is proving to be a timeless, desirable car. Check out our video to see what other insights Raph has to offer.
