The Aston Martin V8 Vantage and the Maserati GranTurismo S are beautiful, irrelevant cars -- an evenly matched set of luxury-performance cuff links.
The brief on them both for 2009 is simple: more horsepower. The V8 Vantage gets a bigger engine (4.7 liters vs. 4.3 liters) and an 11% bump in overall bluster, to 420 hp. The GranTurismo S, the performance variant of the company's grand touring coupe, is fitted with a 4.7-liter, 440-hp version of the Ferrari-built V-8. Both are front-engine, rear-drive coupes with automated six-speed gearboxes. Both travel in excess of 180 mph and cost around $130,000.
It's amazing that they feel so different.
The car from Warwickshire is masculine and none-too-mannered, a royal reprobate. The car from Modena, broad shouldered and curvy, seems vaguely he-she, a machine hermaphrodite. One is English, a cold glass of British gin set on fire and pitched through the window of respectable people's houses. The other is Italian, a lyric of lust and privilege played on purloined lyre.
But first, a word from the zeitgeist: These are good times for super-luxury sports cars. Why? Because as the global economy pounds itself to the flatness Thomas Friedman describes, vast amounts of wealth are being generated in the emerging plutocracies of Brazil, Russia, India and China. In 2007, for example, India minted 23,000 new millionaires and China 70,000, according to Merrill Lynch's most recent report on world wealth. Aston Martin, Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maserati are planting dealerships in places like Moscow, Beijing and Shanghai as fast as the concrete will dry. After all, callow young men with ridiculously large watches must be served.
Things aren't nearly so boom-boom here in the States, and yet six-figure sports car sales remain robust, for obvious reasons. Think about it. Whatever a luxury sports car is supposed to signify -- exclusion, privilege, wealth, power -- is magnified in hard times. If you savor the teeth-gnashing envy of those less fortunate, an audacious touring car like the Mazzer or the Aston will have them falling over in the bread lines. If you wanted to twist the knife in all those whinnying greeniks, you could find no more stylish a blade than these.
Of the two, the Maserati is the greater outrage. Nearly five meters (192 inches) of sinister elegance, this is the most beautiful Maserati of the modern era. The S edition comes with a number of aero and cosmetic mods, including 20-inch wheels, flashier side sills and a more pronounced trunk-lid spoiler. Exotic-car ornithologists can also look for the GT-S' distinctive red mono-bloc calipers inside the front wheels.
