Passion for Maserati Engineering Makes
Expert Repeat Owner

Did you ever have a conversation that lasted hours, but seemed to be over in five minutes? One where it seemed like every topic under the sun got mentioned, where one subject linked seamlessly and logically into another, but afterwards you could never quite pin down how you got from A to B? That is pretty much the perfect description of our lunch at Coral Gables' famed Biltmore hotel with Dan Shypula discussing his 2005 Maserati GranSport and his extraordinary enthusiasm for the Trident, - two hours of eclecticism and digression, politics and discussion, which seemed to simply fly past.

Dan's background is, quite literally, colorful. How else to describe someone who has demonstrated foresight and innovation in developing the fresh cut flower industry, who studied Mechanical Engineering in college, and was all set to work in the car world until the Vietnam War, and military service, intervened. That led to a switch to industrial engineering, which in turn led to a couple of years living in Colombia. While there, Dan experienced everything from a distinctively Latin American approach to timekeeping through to dealing with Communist labor unions, and he learned about South American culture and flowers. One Harvard MBA later, Dan was rewriting the book on flower importation and sales. Like Maserati, Dan has a profound sense of aesthetics and business.

You may be wondering what this has to do with cars; the answer is that whilst Dan's career has taken one or two unexpected turns, he has never lost his enthusiasm for the automobile. "I would describe myself as having been a car enthusiast since I was about twelve or thirteen years old," Dan explained. "My dad let my brother and I take a lawnmower engine to disassemble and try to modify it. Of course, I blew it up in about a week, but I think that's a familiar experience for people who like to play around with engines."

Given that observation, perhaps it's as well that Dan never went into automotive engineering, as he had originally intended; instead, he is now content to have his Maserati GranSport to satisfy his passion for cars. And passion it certainly is; Dan is insistent that his Maseratis have personalities, insists that they be referred to as she', describes his relationships with them in terms just as colorful and emotional as most people would apply to close friends.

One of the recurring themes of our conversation was how a car should make him feel - when asked why a Maserati, Dan said: "Maserati offers the opportunity for me to experience a very high-performance Italian car that is purely Italian, that has not been neutered through globalization; it's very exclusive, and it's a personal thing. I feel other companies concentrate on the numbers - the 0-60, the score on the skid-pad, the quarter-mile time. They reduce everything to a quantitative formula, and then the exhaust note is whatever it turns out to be. To hell with that - I want an exhaust note that talks to me, and makes my heart beat quicker. Maserati does that, it gives me pleasure, and I think that's consistent with Maserati design over the years."

"I'm glad there's a company like Maserati that you can be passionate about. You know the coolest thing that ever happened to me in a Maserati? Well, before I had the GranSport, I had a Coupe with a Tubi exhaust," Dan explained. "One day I was over at my dealership, The Collection; my salesman, Mimmo, had walked me out to my car and we were chatting. When I started her up, a Porsche Turbo owner was walking by - he stopped dead, looked round and immediately started asking my salesman what it was. I think that within a few days, he'd traded his 911 Turbo in for a Maserati - I think that Porsches are very well-engineered, but it's not just about the engineering. For the Italians it's also about the passion, and how the car expresses and shares it."

While much of our conversation is centered on emotional responses and feelings, as you might expect his engineering qualifications mean that Dan has a deep appreciation for the technology that underpins his Maserati. "I got the publicity material when the Coupe was introduced, and it had a cross-section of the motor. I took a magnifying glass and started looking at it, and I thought: These guys really know what they're doing, that motor is top-drawer."

While Dan is fully conversant with Maserati history - for instance, when talking about the current Quattroporte, he knew that some details are deliberate echoes of similar features on the original design - he firmly believes that "the good old days are right now," to use his words. "I'm just ecstatic that Maserati took the Coupe and turned it into the GranSport; I'm proud that they were able to pull off the Quattroporte, it's no surprise to me that it's the runaway hit that it is. I tell my kids that, by the time they're my age, there won't be cars that are hand made, and there probably won't be cars which have such a distinctive character or personality."

One thing which Dan said resonated with us, and it bears repeating: "I drive my GranSport every day. The way I look at it, if a day goes by that I don't drive the car, it's a lost opportunity, and I've pledged myself not to have remorse for lost opportunities." A simple sentiment, but it's one we heartily endorse.

When asked what the most important aspects of his Maserati are, at first he talked about performance and styling - but it didn't take long for Dan to turn the question around, away from the qualities of the car and back on to his own responses to it. "Performance is very important, however styling is also very important. The fact that Maserati has been able to combine aggressive performance with understated styling is just the perfect balance for me. The reason I'm driving this car is that I get a kick out of it; I know what the motor is doing, I know what she's telling me when she talks to me, I understand the vocabulary. I don't even turn on the radio, I just want to listen to the motor and exhaust and the wind, I just want to become one with the machine. That, to me, is such a rush.

"There's one other factor that sums everything up: Maserati is the only car manufacturing company on the planet that has maximizing the driver's emotions as a criterion," he continued. "One could speculate that if you were a German manufacturer, and you went to your engineering staff and told them that they had to maximize the driver's emotions, they wouldn't have a clue. To the Italians, not only do they understand it, but they do it.

Dan's final comments summed up much of our conversation: "I think that Porsches are very well-engineered, but it's not just about the engineering. There's this certain intangible thing that the Italians have figured out how to do, and the Germans haven't." It's the intangibles that have made Dan's relationship with his GranSport special - everything from the way the styling of the hind-quarters suggest massive performance without ever being vulgarly in-your-face, to the way his own pulse is quickened by the seductive pulse of the V8. Without a trace of hyperbole, Dan is truly smitten with his GranSport.

His drink: cappuccino
On his plate: wild salmon (not farm raised)
On his TV: Lost
His movie: Goldfinger
His books: Ernest Hemmingway's 'The Sun Also Rises' and 'The Old Man & the Sea'
His hobby: landscape design, gardening
His vacation spot: Mackinac Island, MI
His favorite man-made wonder: internal combustion engine
His favorite natural wonder: orchid flower
The job he'd most like, aside from his own: CEO, Maserati SpA
His Car: A black 2006 Maserati GranSport answering to "La Carnale"