Quattroporte perfectly at home in Motor City
Skyhook suspension an ideal match for urban streets

Detroit is a really great place to drive - once you forget about the poor road surfaces and potholes!  And in a Maserati Quattroporte, you do forget about the surface irregularities, while remaining in constant communion with the road.  Yes, Maserati Monthly decided to test a Quattroporte Executive GT’s capabilities around a mid-Western metropolis, and what better place than the home of the automobile industry: Greater Detroit.  While some readers may have been deflected by the mention of Detroit, the more astute will have become even more engaged because they know that the expansion joints and frost-heave-ridden concrete of a genuinely varied and interesting commuter city make for a good examination of a car’s capabilities.  Detroit also has amazingly good roads for the enthusiast, just one of the city’s many secrets.

Detroit’s biggest streets – among which are a number of Interstates – are almost like urban racetracks.  They are wide expanses of concrete - sometimes 12 lanes wide and often arrow straight.  One can almost imagine parts as a modern Avus Circuit, if only the banking were to be found.  These highways are laid out roughly in a grid upon which one can traverse the vast area of Greater Detroit as it hugs Lakes Erie and St Claire along the St Claire River, and fades away in a peppered green belt west of Waterford.  It’s an area whose geography was defined firstly by water, and next by man as a center of industry and commerce.  The masterfully styled Quattroporte is a natural addition to the scenery.

Our tour took in Auburn Hills and Dearborn, home of Chrysler and Ford respectively; Grosse Pointe, home to many auto executives and one Martin Q. Blank; Downtown Detroit, now home to GM; Belle Isle Park preparing for the annual Grand Prix and the almost idyllic area around Orchard Lake.  And we kept finding ourselves on the fabled Woodward Avenue, once the testing ground for finned and chromed American iron and all the original muscle cars and still a summer home to a vibrant and varied car culture which marks its year with the Woodward Dream Cruise. 

Our blue Executive GT was noticed and appreciated by the cognoscenti who lined the avenue of dreams, many leaning on hot rods in better condition than when they left the factory.  Detroit is still a city of car lovers.  We got many requests for burnouts and doughnuts, but satisfied them only with a bit of engine revving, getting the thoroughbred Ferrari-designed 4.2 liter V8 well into its 400bhp power band and enjoying its sonorous music. 

Occasionally we took part in a brief stoplight Grand Prix, exercising the power plant and our shifter paddles, and once surprising the appreciative driver of a Hemi ‘Cuda before using the superb Brembo-derived brakes to stay within the speed limit.  It’s rare that we get to cruise in a QP, but could there be a better opportunity?  Once again we found that a Maserati makes people smile appreciatively, not least ourselves and the other gearheads along Woodward. 

In Dearborn we stopped at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, one of the great cultural and educational sites on the planet.  Like so many things Henry Ford created, this enormous attraction was done in the best possible way and with the general public in mind.  The museum itself contains a staggering collection of artifacts from violins to washing machines, and includes a wealth of iconic transportation devices including planes, trains and automobiles, some of them unique.  Our Quattroporte, equipped and hued in one of over four million possible combinations would fit right in! Far from being a museum piece, however, it is an icon of high performance and design.  This was demonstrated in the parking lot outside the museum when we returned to find people exiting Greenfield Village and almost drooling over the QP.  The usual questions were asked, and compliments exchanged before we left to have a look at Henry Ford’s estate, Fair Lane.

Fair Lane is a Detroit landmark, and an example of everything a house could be in 1916 when it was completed and the family took up residence.  Completely self contained and admirably unassuming, the home is a subtle expression of craftsmanship and design underwritten by great power.  This is an apt description of our Executive GT which looked well in front of the mansion, and seemed as spacious and comfortable as we drove on to another Ford project, the great plant on the Rouge River. 

It was said that iron ore and rubber went in one end and cars came out the other.  This was a slight exaggeration, but the enormous factory was designed to be almost entirely self-contained, and its sheer size never fails to impress.  Parked in front of the blast furnaces of this early 20th Century edifice on a blisteringly hot day, the Quattroporte’s 21st Century shape and amenities provided a warm contrast.  We reflected on the world of difference between the stark lines of mass production inside the building and the skilled hand assembly and personal craftsmanship represented by our automotive jewel outside.  It is a potent metaphor of disposable mass production eclipsed by exclusivity and idealism.

Maserati designers accomplished an incredible feat by endowing the sport sedan with astonishing handling and road manners and noticeable quietude.  This is particularly remarkable on roads like the I-94 with its occasionally harsh surface and debris which necessitates rapid but impeccably controlled avoidance maneuvers of which the Quattroporte is uniquely capable.  Within the Executive GT we were completely relaxed and aurally isolated, eventually prompting us to turn on the bespoke Bose audio system to enjoy – what else – some classic Motown.  Passing through downtown, by the historic Fox Theater and the Renaissance Center, it was time to throw the car some twisties, so we headed for Belle Isle. 

This island in the middle of the St Claire has been one of America’s great urban parks.  Vast meadows and wetlands provide entertainment for thousands of families on a weekend afternoon, while its roads entice others to a different form of sport.  One weekend each year these streets echo to the roar of racing engines, but that part of the circuit was crowded.  At the other end of the park we were able to unleash the Quattroporte’s power once again, holding to low gears and tossing the car through the corners with real verve.  The Skyhook suspension and thoroughly heated tires assured that the Maserati Stability Program was never activated as the car provided a pure driving experience of the sort a Maserati owner craves frequently, and which their car can always provide.  This is what Sunday in the park should be all about, but discretion is the better part of valor and we pressed on with our tour after only a few laps.

Up Jefferson Avenue lay Grosse Pointe and on Lakeshore Road we found many fine automobiles being driven con brio between the blue lake and the beautiful mansions.  As on Woodward, the Maserati stood out and was admired.  Its deep blue paint and swooping bodywork contrasted favorably with the inevitably dull silver German sedans popping in and out of yacht and golf clubs, their owners always yielding to the Modenese masterpiece and looking vaguely excited.  Had we stopped at a club for dinner, we would have been able to find our car in the parking lot…although that probably wouldn’t be necessary, as the valets would doubtless have kept it right beside the front door. 

That is one of the many advantages of owning a Maserati: everyone appreciates the style and class it effortlessly exudes – but with the Quattroporte, it is more of a quietly confident statement than a yell of bravado.  Where the denizens of Woodward still revel in the beauty of personalized, beautifully styled automobiles, those in their German luxocruisers have temporarily lost their automotive soul.  Considering the brash but brilliant creations of men like Harley Earl and Virgil Exner for whose dreams the great roads of Detroit were built and who once defined global fashion, it is difficult to imagine that Detroit would not be inspired and renewed by a few more Maseratis on its streets.  Our time on Detroit’s streets was certainly inspired by the Quattroporte Executive GT. 

You don’t need to make a trip to Motown to discover how good the Quattroporte is; visit your local authorized Maserati dealer for some driving inspiration in your own town.

With thanks to Cauley Maserati of West Bloomfield.