The Wall Street Journal - 07.09.2019 - 08.09.2019

D12| Saturday/Sunday, September 7 - 8, 2019 ** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.**

GEAR & GADGETS

MY TECH ESSENTIALS

RUMBLE SEAT / DAN NEIL

Maserati Quattroporte: On an

‘Old Town Road’ to Nowhere

IN FORMER DAYS of newspapers,

we called feel-good stories “brites.”

The assignment would come from

the city desk editor: Write some-

thing uplifting or you’re fired. So

gather close, all those who need

cheering, and revel in the glorious

humanity that is “Old Town Road.”

Claiming the record for most

consecutive weeks (19) at No. 1 on

Billboard’s Hot 100, “OTR” is the

work of Lil Naz X, a 20-year-old

from Georgia exploring the formerly

terra incognita of country rap. A

year ago, this singularly cool cat,

with a penchant for rhinestone cow-

boy suits and diamond earrings—a

funky Porter Wagoner, if you can

wrap your head around that—was

sleeping at his sister’s apartment.

Then, using an instrumental

track he bought off the internet

(sampling a Nine Inch Nails piece),

Lil Naz X wrote this all-conquering

immortal colossus of a pop song,

which has now been streamed

nearly two billion times according

to Nielsen Music. That. Is. Crazy. In

December he put the track on Twit-

ter, where it went globally pan-

demic. By March, he had signed

with Columbia Records. In April, Lil

Naz X issued a remix featuring the

formerly-washed-up, now-insanely-

relevant Billy Ray Cyrus.

That track ate the world all over

again. By Memorial Day, “OTR” was

an inescapable megahit and a coun-

try bar line-dance phenomenon, this

year’s “Achy Breaky Heart.” Talk

about bringing people together.

The lyrics are utterly charming,

sly and subversive:

My life is a movie/Bull ridin’ and

boobies/Cowboy hat from Gucci/

Wrangler on my booty

And then this deathless couplet,

sung by Billy Ray Cyrus:

Baby’s got a habit: diamond rings

and Fendi sports bras/Riding down

Rodeo in my Maserati sports car

Those lines are brilliant: 14 beats

each, an improbable near-rhyme

with dipodic stresses at the end, a la

Renaissance poet John Skelton and

every limerick you ever heard. The

correct critical response is, “Haww.”

But why Maserati? What was

fired in Lil Naz X’s imagination by

those syllables that seem to promise

the quintessence of rarity, of Euro-

pean exoticism, of automotive flex?

Because the cars are, um, not good.

Inspired by “OTR” and encour-

aged by my 11-year-old daughters, I

took delivery of a 2019 Maserati

Quattroporte GTS GranSport last

week, which turned out to be very

much like the one delivered in 2015,

except where it was worse. This de-

sign generation of the large execu-

tive sedan is on a long coast-down;

Fiat-Chrysler won’t replace this car

until late 2020, as part of a prom-

ised new-product offensive of 10

new or revised vehicles by 2023.

Meanwhile, Mazzer’s sales are in

free fall. Second-quarter sales were

down 17% (7,200 units) and that

was the smallest drop in 10 quar-

ters! Maserati lost $132 million in

Q2 alone. Obviously, to manage-

ment, 2023 looks a long way off.

Students of business history, ob-

serve the power, and the limits, of

brand: The name Maserati has al-

ways had special linguistic electric-

ity. Never mind the oft-bankrupted

past. To American ears it’s a bunch

of oversexed Latin syllables racing

to take their clothes off. Maserati

has overscaled in recognition in the

U.S. market for decades, a likely

No. 1 or No. 2 answer to the “Family

Feud” question, “Name an expen-

sive sports car.” That includes de-

cades when they sold no cars here.

I think that answers the question

of how Lil Naz X came to invoke

Maserati in the first place. It just

sounds legendarily chic and cool.

Yet, despite the brand’s historic

goodwill, all the sexy sheet metal

and this year’s tsunami of free

publicity and global pop culture

awareness thanks to “OTR,” Maser-

ati sales still cratered. You might

conclude they are some terrible

cars, or those are some messed up

retail operations, right? Yes, yes

RUNNING ON EMPTY
Maseratis may look good
and move rather fast, but the
unspectacular driving experience
doesn’t justify a $150k price tag.
MASERATI

2019 MASERATI QUATTROPORTE

GTS GRANSPORT

Base Price $138,980

Price, as Tested $150,410

Powertrain Twin-turbocharged 3.8-liter DOHC

V8; eight-speed automatic transmission with

manual-shift mode; rear-wheel drive with lim-

ited-slip differential

Power/Torque 523 hp at 7,000 rpm/524

pound-feet at 2,000-4,000 rpm

Length/Width/Height/Wheelbase

207.2/76.7/58.3/124.8 inches

Curb Weight 4,189 pounds

0-60 mph 4.6 seconds

Top Speed 193 mph

EPA Fuel Economy 15/22/17 mpg

During downtime, if you’re not watching movies, then

you’re playing video games. I tend to come out for the

classics. We had a Nintendo 64 last time we were out,

so we played games like “Mario Kart,” where I always

drive as Toad, and “Super Smash Bros.,” where I always

fight as Kirby. I know, I know. I’m totally basic. But Toad

feels the most maneuverable, and it’s fun to immobilize

your opponents by eating them as Kirby.

We manage vessels

out on the water

around us, because if

the Navy hits some-

thing, it’s a bad day.

Hopefully it’s on the

radar and you can fig-

ure out what it is and

where it’s going. We

also use night vision

goggles (similar

model shown) to

scan the horizon and

reach out via radio.

I’ve talked to fishing

boats, beer brigades,

Disney Cruise ships.

you would.

The Quattroporte—built near Tu-

rin in the same factory that builds

the Ghibli, from many of the same

parts—is a lovely sedan, for sure. In

the age of emojis, I thought the egg-

plant paint job on our test car was a

bit risqué. Of course, much of our

car’s stanciness and louche curb ap-

peal derived from its bold 21-inch

wheels on low-profile tires. But

these very cool rims derange the

mid-speed ride comfort and refine-

ment, which never dropped below

jittery. Yes, it had Mazzer’s stiff-

legged adaptive suspension. No, it

can’t keep up or damp out the un-

sprung velocities of these wheels. So

the car is a bit of a fashion victim.

The Quattroporte can still be

had, like ours, with a twin-turbo-

charged, 3.8-liter, 90-degree V8

(523 hp) built by Ferrari, and it’s a

proper piece, no question about it,

capable of returning an observed

nine miles per gallon. The engine

does get stingy with the air-condi-

tioning during stop-start cycling;

but raw power is there when you

need it, if you ever do, transferred

to the ground through an eight-

speed automatic and limited-slip

rear differential. Driven hard and

fast, the apparatus performs hap-

pily and its synapses are tight.

Driven at anything less, and car’s

demand-and-drive connections get

a lot looser and less coordinated.

I wasn’t surprised to find it a

jazzy place to do some driving. The

stitched-leather upholstery was so

soft it was like the cows wanted to

be there. The Italians do get leather.

Other things were just under-

baked. The car’s (optional) Driver’s

Assistance Package lane-keeping

system—which is surprisingly hard

to turn off—would often rudely

shove the car to the center of the

lane, to the point where the inputs

were unsettling the car. Hmm. I hate

that. And if I held the steering wheel

with one hand, on either of the

lower two quarters, the car would

issue a stern rebuke, an alert sound,

to put both hands on the wheel. If

you ignore the first warning, an

even louder sounds. Hmm. I really

hate that. This old horse should be

headed for the glue factory.

Maseratis promise the

quintessence of rarity, of

European exoticism, of

automotive flex. But the

cars are, um, not good.

Lt. Katelyn Davidson

You can try to watch Netflix when

you’re under way, but because inter-

net is inconsistent, people have TV

shows and movies downloaded onto

hard drives, and DVDs that we trade

with each other. Last time we were

out, I brought every season of “Ani-

maniacs.” My roommate had a lot of

rom-coms, which I don’t normally

watch. But on deployment, it’s a great

time to watch the most random stuff

and have nobody judge you for it.

The food on the carrier is alright—

but it’s not great. So, I always bring

a massive bottle of Cholula Hot

Sauce. The biggest one I can find in

the store. I love it for Taco Tuesdays,

but I use it to kind of make any

meal a little more tolerable.

—Edited from an interview

with Chris Kornelis

I always wear an Apple

Watch Series 3 while on

the bridge, which is a

new development for me

on the carrier. I used to

work in some top-

secret spaces

where you

couldn’t

wear any-

thing that

emitted a

signal or

used Bluetooth,

so I wore a crappy Casio

G-Shock. I like the Apple

Watch’s heart monitor

and breathing function.

From time to time it’ll go

off, letting me know to do

a minute of deep breath-

ing. Being on the bridge

is pretty high-stress.

As a surface warfare officer, I actually

drive the ship. So to figure out a contact’s

distance, course and speed, I use a

compass and maneuvering board

paper a lot. We still employ this method

because there’s a ton of research to sug-

gest that relying only on our electronic and

radar equipment isn’t necessarily the best

way to be precise. So it behooves us to

have that redundancy. And, also, in the

event that there’s a warfare environment

where signals are degraded, you need to be

able to do it the analogway—just in case.

You’re not a good surface warfare officer if you don’t have a

good pen on you. So I carry a Zebra Z-Grip Retractable

Ballpoint Pen. But it can’t be blue—only the captain can use

blue ink. And I’m only allowed to use black.

Stationed aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl

Vinson, this surface warfare officer can go months

without internet, but never forgets her Cholula

F. MARTIN RAMIN/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (PEN, CHOLULA, COMPASS); ALAMY (GOGGLES, MARIO KART); APPLE (WATCH)