OBJECT OF DESIRE

Sean O’Grady falls in love with the Maserati GranCabrio a car etna orn to mind the golden age of automotive e styling

- Sean O’Grady

Isn't she lovely? Isn't she wonderful? Isn't she precious? I hope that's not too sexist, but if such eloquent sentiments are good enough for Stevie Wonder, then they're good enough for me to purloin - all the better to introduce you to the Maserati GranCabrio, the latest in a line of exquisite sports coupes and convertibles that dates back to the A6 in 1950. (That, funnily enough, was also the year when Little Stevie Wonder came into the world. It’s a rather lovely, wonderful and precious thing that both are still going strong.)

I probably go on about the looks of a car far too much, but I like to keep in mind what that great French philosopher and semiotician Roland Barthes said, again back in the golden age of automative styling, the 1950s: “I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals; I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population, which appropriates them as a purely magical object.”

Once again, I couldn’t have put it better myself, and I very strongly suspect that, aside from the strange human tendency to conspicuous consumption, this is the main reason those wealthy enough to indulge themselves thus will opt for a Maserati. The GranCabrio’s proportions are as near perfect as you’ll see, even for something that is as long as a Mercedes-Benz S-Class limousine. It has curves that swell and flow and carry the eye irresistibly.