Maserati: a “Kind of Pitiable Narcissism”

Dan Neil has won my fandom for injecting wittiness and precise prose into the narrow intellectual confines of the car reviews he writes for the WSJ. Every time I see his new reviews I snap to reading them, even though I care less about cars than most men.

Here he reviews the lastest offering from Maserati, a company that has lost millions yet still carries on, like a fading starlet.

“Brand wise, Maserati has been drifting into the shoals of mere decadence, a bratty car that appears at all the worst parties and in all the worst hands. Last month, for instance, Maserati’s publicity hits include Mel Gibson auguring his Quaddroporte into a Malibu canyon ditch and Lindsay Lohan–Hollywood’s most indefatigable wench–tooting around Bel-Bev late nights in a Maserati Gran Tourismo S.

Throw in the cars’ product placement appearances on “Entourage,” “The Sopranos,” and “The Real Housewives of New Jersey,” and you paint a picture of a brand that is becoming synonymous with a kind of pitiable narcissism, a gum-smacking Garden State idiocy.”