Athroaty-sounding, hyper-fast coupe with a turbo-charged V8 engine that costs upwards of £67,000, the new limited-edition version of the Maserati 3200 GT is God's way of telling you that you're a footballer. But a stylish one. Probably Italian, or possibly French. Someone who is often said to be a little too demure for the hurly-burly of the English game, where, after all, the compulsory yob purchase is a Ferrari.
Maserati celebrates its 75th anniversary this year, and the Assetto Corsa is its idea of a birthday cake. It's a version of the already proven 3200 GT (itself a modern retake on the classic 3500 GT from 1957) with additional knobs on, and is available in Britain in a strictly limited run of - appropriately enough - 75. That gives Elton John a reasonable chance of collecting the set. Most of us will settle for just the one.
Maranello Concessionaires Ltd, which handles the sales of Maseratis in Britain since the company's incorporation into Fiat's Ferrari department in 1999, agreed to loan me one of this special number for a week - though only after the completion of probing paperwork and (I suspect) a covert intelligence operation which involved the company seeking character references from friends, family, former employers and my old woodwork teacher, Mr Wyatt.
And fair enough. It's true that there have been limited editions that were more limited than this. One should note that, in the first five months of this year, Maserati sold 154 regular GT coupes in the UK, so even the unlimited version is a fairly exclusive item.
Nevertheless, this is a precious object we're talking about. Clearly, wiping one out against a bus stop would be not only expensive, but poignantly regrettable in a way that one doesn't automatically feel about, say, a Ford Focus. It's not often that you get to be responsible for 1.3% of a car's entire population, and it concentrates the mind wonderfully. I drove the car as if it were made of glass. Of course, what it's actually made of is gorgeously moulded metal and sitting room-friendly leather (black with wonderfully vulgar red piping).
What the Assetto Corsa has over the - as it were - "bog standard" versions of the car (which are some £5,000 cheaper) is, in Maserati's words, "numerous steering, handling and braking enhancements". The best place to appreciate these would doubtless be in a manual version of the car, and not in the automatic that I was sent, but even then you would probably need to be Damon Hill. Whatever, the steering response has been tightened up. There are stiffer springs and lower suspension, to increase one's terror at cornering.
The pedals are bored metal, for that official grand-prix feeling. And the brakes are "racing formula", so if you're lucky, you can brake like a grand-prix driver as well.
It might be an exaggeration to say that only footballers and members of Jamiroquai can afford the car. But only footballers and members of Jamiroquai can afford the insurance. And not even they - if they were being honest about it - could afford the petrol. The 3200 gulps down a gallon of BP's finest unleaded every 17 miles or so. In strictly urban conditions, it drinks even harder. In south London, it can cost you three quid just to go out for the papers.
A city is exactly the right place to exercise the 3200 and exactly the wrong place. It's the right place because people get to see you in it, which is part of the point of owning a Maserati. At any rate, it would seem slightly eccentric to spend £65,000 on a lump of luxury Italian motoring and then use it exclusively in the highlands, observed only by sheep.
In the city, the car gratifyingly turns heads - many attracted by the noise as much as the sight. And it's clear that some spectators are trying to work out what the thing actually is, since the Maserati doesn't vulgarly announce itself in the way that Ferraris, Jaguars and Porsches tend to. (It might seem a slightly absurd claim to make of something as beautifully shaped as the 3200, but the car is actually rather coolly anonymous-looking - at least when considered among its own kind.)
What's wrong about the city is that the car groans audibly to be there. Under compulsion to trickle slowly through traffic, the 3200 seems to grow restless and irritated beneath one's feet. It grumbles and lurches, as if it can't quite believe you're doing this to it. This wasn't what it was made for, any more than a dog was made to be shut in a kennel. It begs to be unleashed in the open, which is where you see it for what it is: firm, fast and fabulously noisy.
Sixty-eight grand? That's little more than a week's wages. If I was Robbie Fowler, I'd be down the garage this afternoon. But I'd ask about the chances of picking up one of the original 1957 3500s while I was there. You're going to need something for the weekend.
