Automatically amazing

The automatic version of the Maserati Quattroporte combines the awesome acceleration, handling and top speed of a serious sports car with the convenience of a four-door saloon.

There is always something slightly strange about driving an automatic version of an already highly-successful manual car.

Will it be in any way diluted? Will it lose performance in “power losses” due to the necessary torque converter? Or will the manufacturer manage to disguise its shortcomings in a new package?

As far as the new Quattroporte Automatic is concerned, none of the above is true – or even relevant. It is without doubt an amazing motor car: a sports car with all the amenities and convenience of a luxury saloon.

Make no mistake, the Quattroporte is a big car, along the lines of an S-Class or an Audi, but its sporting instincts place it in a class of its own. The gearbox is a ZF automatic – not the F1-style Magneti Marelli unit found in the Ferrari 430 or the 360 – but a fully automatic unit. It does, however, have steering wheel manual control paddles if desired.

When using the paddles with the system in sport mode, the performance is simply outstanding. With a top speed approaching 270kmh and a benchmark sprint time from standstill to 100kmh of under six seconds, there are few four-door saloons that can match the Quattroporte Automatic.

To rein in this performance, massive ventilated discs are fitted, resulting in a stopping distance from a speed of 100kmh of just 35 meters.

The power plant is Maserati’s lightweight 4,244cc, 32-valve V8, delivering a healthy 400bhp (294kW) with a strong torque output of 460Nm produced at the relatively low engine speed of 4,250rpm. More significantly, around 75% of the available torque is produced at 2,500rpm.

The new six-speed ZF transmission is mated to the rear of the V8 engine, unlike the standard Quattroporte on which it is part of the rear transaxle. The result is a subtle alteration in the front-to-rear weight distribution, which is now an almost perfect 49:51, still offering the slight rear bias necessary on a large rear-drive car.

The interior of the new model is typical Maserati: luxury and style combined with classic lines and functionality. The dashboard centerpiece is the familiar trident oval clock, while the tachometer and speedometer are tastefully finished and of a sensible size; no massive tachometer as if to draw attention to the engine speed.

There are nine interior color options and five choices of wood veneer, including rosewood, walnut, mahogany, black piano and an obscure option called Tanganyika. The roof lining is a supple Alcantara, while the seats are sumptuous leather.

A complement of air bags is fitted, including side bags, while there are five headrests and a full set of lap-and-diagonal seat belts. Rear-seat passengers have their own climate controls, while the automatic air conditioning can be individually set for each front-seat occupant.

The styling of the Quattroporte by the legendary Turin-based Pininfarina design house has attracted a great deal of critical acclaim and it is rare for such a large car to feature such classic yet sporting lines.

Large alloy wheels and low-profile tires add to the overall impression, while the traditional Maserati grille topped by the trident emphasizes the long tradition of the marque. The trident logo, borrowed from their home town of Bologna, was adopted by the Maserati brothers when the company was formed in 1926.

The latest Quattroporte Automatic is the ultimate in luxury, but with its superb performance it can be rightly described as a sports model with the convenience of a sedan. A high-performance machine with all the amenities and an outstanding example of automotive brilliance from Maserati.

Maserati in Thailand is available only from Ferma Motor Thailand, which has a showroom at 262 Moo 4 Wibhawadi Rd, Bang Khen, Bangkok (Tel. 02-9005353, Email: ferma@ferma.co.th) and another showroom on the 2nd floor in the South zone of the Siam Paragon shopping complex (Tel. 02-6109444).

The Quattroporte Automatic will set you back about 11.5 million baht.

Jeff Heselwood can be contacted at jhc@netvigator.com

The Cold War proved hog heaven for a German-speaking British MI6 spy. His masterpiece, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, set in the Berlin Wall era, proved the benchmark for all spy thrillers to follow. The author, of course, was John LeCarr?, who went on to pen the Smiley trilogy that encapsulated all the moral ambiguities of the Cold War.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, Le-Carr? was set adrift and floundered for a while, though The Little Drummer Girl was a masterful exposition of the Arab-Israeli conflict at the time of the Lebanese invasion. The Tailor of Panama started off great, but fizzled in the end. But now Le Carr? has discovered the miseries of Africa and his well-researched The Constant Gardener took on the big pharmaceutical companies in Aids-stricken Kenya. He has followed up with The Mission Song (Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2006, 339pp). This is his 20th novel, and at age 75 he remains at the very top of his form.

This time he takes on the big mining companies lusting after the riches of the war-torn eastern Congo region of Kivu. Bruno Salvador, known as Salvo, grew up as a mission kid, son of an Irish missionary and a beautiful Congolese woman. In his youth he mastered the plethora of languages in the region: Swahili, English, French, Kanyarwanda, Lingala, Bemb and Shi. Dispatched to a Catholic boarding school in England, where he was groomed by the aristocratic Brother Michael to become a professional interpreter, he was soon recruited by the MI6 as a listener of phone conversation among various African terrorists.

While working for the intelligence bureau he becomes in awe of his spymaster boss, Mr Anderson, who resembles his mentor Brother Michael:

“Like Michael, he is a man complete, at once tall and bearish, the features as permanent as lava stone, every movement an event. Like Michael, he is a father to his men. He is somewhere in his late fifties, you assume, yet you have no sense that he was yesterday a dashing lad, or tomorrow will be on the shelf. He is rectitude personified, he is constabular, he is the oak of England. Just crossing a room he takes the moral justification for his actions with him. You can wait an eternity for his smile, but when it comes you’re closer to God.”

Salvo is 29, married to a famous tabloid journalist, Penelope, who is on the make in every sense of the word. He has no moral problems betraying her with a beautiful Congolese nurse named Hannah from “the region of Goma in North Kivu, by tribe a Nande”. Two nights into their torrid romance, he is summoned by Mr Anderson for a secret mission to a mansion on an island in the North Sea.

Hannah regards an elderly Congolese intellectual, Mwangaza (“The Enlightened One”) as the potential savior for Kivu, which has been wracked by a civil war that has cost two million lives. Mwangaza arrives on the island to meet with three local warlords to get together to seize the government of Kivu, throw out the Rwandan invaders and open the country for mining by an unnamed syndicate that will, in turn, provide arms and mercenaries. Salvo’s job is to listen in to their taped conversations and report back to his handlers.

Warlord One is the noble Dieudonne, of the Munyamulenge, a pastoral tribe related to the hated Tutsi of Rwanda. Warlord Two is Honore mour-Joyeuse, a rich French-educated dandy and millionaire of the Shi tribe who will lead the urban insurrection that will spark the coup. Warlord Three is a very nasty character named Colonel Franco, an old Bembe warrior of the fanatical Mai Mai sect who believes his magic rituals will turn his enemies’ bullets into water.

“And we should not be fooled by ‘Colonel,’” Salvo notes. “We’re not talking cleaned-and-pressed uniforms, salute-your officers, red flashes, medal ribbons and the like. We’re talking feathered head-dresses, baseball caps, monkey-skin waistcoats, football shorts, tracksuits and eye make-up … We are also talking random, feckless murder, rape galore, and a full range of atrocities under the influence of everything from leading-edge witchcraft to a gallon or two of Primus beer laced with palm wine.”

Salvo soon learns that the plot to liberate Kivu is a sham, concocted by a greedy consortium of mining interests. Back in England, reunited with Hannah, he desperately tries to alert the government and press to the impending catastrophe. This is the plot of the last third of the novel and it races to a surprising conclusion. At this point, there is no way you can put the book down.

The Mission Song is much more than a thriller. It is is a dense, vibrant, panoramic drama about some of the most passionate and complex moral issues of our times: the thin forces of civilization against the overwhelming powers of greed, chaos and barbarism.