Exotic Steals at $40,000

Supercars are selling strong--but trouble lies ahead

The ceremony, charged with the kind of sensuality only a true aficionado would appreciate, occurs almost daily. A customer takes delivery of his brand-new Quattroporte (four-door) sedan at the Maserati factory in Modena, Italy. Watched by some of the 600 workers who hand-crafted every centimeter of its swashbuckling lines and muscular engine, he opens the door. The rich aroma of glove leather escapes into the air as he slides into the welcoming embrace of a bucket seat. The moment for which he has spent upwards of $40,000 and waited more than a year has arrived. He switches on the ignition. The engine responds with a distinctive, deep-throated growl. Paradise! Soon the new owner is flashing along the autostrada at an easy 100 m.p.h.

Most car owners fret about how to coax another year out of the heap in the driveway, but there are still customers aplenty for the expensive, high-precision toys known in the automotive trade as exotic cars. Most of the buyers are men in their early 40s who are lured by names like Aston Martin, Maserati, Ferrari and Lamborghini that whisper freedom and promise sybaritic luxury. Oil-rich Arabs are big buyers: a member of the Saudi Arabian royal family this year paid $114,000 for two Lamborghini Countach-Ss lovingly built in Bologna. Sheiks and wealthy Japanese are queuing up to buy Aston Martin's wedge-shaped, futuristic, four-door Lagonda, currently $87,000 and sold out until 1982. After the legendary James Bond, the British company's most famous customer is probably Prince Charles, who tools around London in a 1970 Volante convertible, now worth $78,000. Like all Aston Martins, the car is upholstered with the hides of eight Scottish cattle. West Germany's sleek Porsche 928, priced at $33,220 and voted 1978 Car of the Year by European auto writers, is bought mainly by dentists (the country's highest income group), business advisers, doctors, tax consultants and real estate dealers. (The world's largest Porsche fleet--4,000--is in Los Angeles.)

All the makers of these low-slung models report substantial backlogs, with customers on a waiting list of up to 20 months. Maserati could double its production rate of two cars a day and still not fulfill all its orders. This year Aston Martin will sell 320 models (vs. 287 in 1978) and increase production next June from six cars a week to seven.

Still, there is an amber light flashing caution in the industry. Even with the substantial customer demand and profit margins that average from 8% to 10%, automakers fear that some of these high-strung dream cars may be speeding down the road to extinction. They will hardly be done in by soaring gas prices. A West German dentist earning more than $100,000 is unlikely to quibble over an extra 50c or so a gallon. And in fact the graceful sprinters with the impeccable pedigrees sip gas daintily, considering their performances: a Maserati Quattroporte gets 16 m.p.g.

The problem is rising production costs, a shortage of skilled labor and, most important, the financial and technical burdens of meeting the increasingly stringent pollution and safety requirements in the European companies' important export market, the U.S. The costs of retooling plants to manufacture cars that meet U.S. standards will add about 20% to the sticker price and cut deeply into profit margins. Lamborghini, which makes only eight to ten cars a month, has already written off the U.S. market rather than invest the money required to meet its specifications. Maserati, which sends half of its output to the U.S., is waiting to see if its product has passed a pollution test in California, a state with the most stringent environmental rules in the U.S. Maserati Managing Director Alessandro De Tomaso is confident that his car will be approved because of a costly new engine that reduces pollution and improves gas consumption--but that also cuts Maserati's vaunted vroooom!

The disappearance of the exotic car would hurt the development of automotive technology. Those sweet chariots pioneered, among other things, techniques for maintaining stability at high speeds, and were early users of radial tires and light-weight alloys that later became popular on mass-produced models.

To preserve the species, Porsche hopes to develop a "superauto," which would have the same comfort and performance as the current models, but cost less. Other experts fear that the American requirements, plus the likelihood that European nations will be lowering speed limits to conserve energy, may cause insurmountable problems. Asks Giorgietto Giugiaro, Italy's top freelance car designer: "Is there any sense in buying a car whose prestige depends on its performance and the music of its engine, if these cannot be used after all?"

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