Word: maseratis
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...ceremony, charged with the kind of sensuality only a true aficionado would appreciate, occurs almost daily. A customer takes delivery of his brand-new Quattroporte (four-door) sedan at the Maserati factory in Modena, Italy. Watched by some of the 600 workers who hand-crafted every centimeter of its swashbuckling lines and muscular engine, he opens the door. The rich aroma of glove leather escapes into the air as he slides into the welcoming embrace of a bucket seat. The moment for which he has spent upwards of $40,000 and waited more than a year has arrived. He switches...
...coax another year out of the heap in the driveway, but there are still customers aplenty for the expensive, high-precision toys known in the automotive trade as exotic cars. Most of the buyers are men in their early 40s who are lured by names like Aston Martin, Maserati, Ferrari and Lamborghini that whisper freedom and promise sybaritic luxury. Oil-rich Arabs are big buyers: a member of the Saudi Arabian royal family this year paid $114,000 for two Lamborghini Countach-Ss lovingly built in Bologna. Sheiks and wealthy Japanese are queuing up to buy Aston Martin...
...makers of these low-slung models report substantial backlogs, with customers on a waiting list of up to 20 months. Maserati could double its production rate of two cars a day and still not fulfill all its orders. This year Aston Martin will sell 320 models (vs. 287 in 1978) and increase production next June from six cars a week to seven...
...extinction. They will hardly be done in by soaring gas prices. A West German dentist earning more than $100,000 is unlikely to quibble over an extra 50c or so a gallon. And in fact the graceful sprinters with the impeccable pedigrees sip gas daintily, considering their performances: a Maserati Quattroporte gets 16 m.p.g...
...plants to manufacture cars that meet U.S. standards will add about 20% to the sticker price and cut deeply into profit margins. Lamborghini, which makes only eight to ten cars a month, has already written off the U.S. market rather than invest the money required to meet its specifications. Maserati, which sends half of its output to the U.S., is waiting to see if its product has passed a pollution test in California, a state with the most stringent environmental rules in the U.S. Maserati Managing Director Alessandro De Tomaso is confident that his car will be approved because...