Colour of money buys options

By ALASTAIR SLOANE

Buy a luxury car these days and you don't just get the keys and a fond farewell.

Chances are that before you get home there will be an invitation to a superstar's concert, or a regular seat at the rugby, perhaps freebie lessons with a golf professional followed by a wine tasting at the yacht club.

You might even be given a wicker picnic basket, made in England and sporting discreetly the name of an old-money marque. A hand-knitted woollen blanket in a muted Sottish tartan would probably come with it.

Weekends at exclusive hideaways in the hills are not uncommon either. Nor is luxury luggage, or driving courses for owners of Porsches or Ferraris, with big-name tutors, of course.

There's no room for your average suburban driving instructor in this company, that's for sure.

Some luxury buyers even get to choose the car's interior colours, which bits will be in leather and where the polished wood strips go.

Now the Italian supercar company Maserati is taking optional items even further.

The Italian stallion has developed a special range of customised goodies known as the Official Alfieri Maserati programme.

It is named after the "Societa Anonima Officine Alfieri Maserati", the carmaker's first corporate trading name when it was founded in 1914.

It allows Maserati buyers to tailor their twin-turbo 3200GT as they would their Italian suit. They can choose from a selection of colours, internal trim details and equipment options.

Paint technology allows buyers to order a model from colour samples provided by themslves.

If you want a special kind of New Zealand black, send Maserati an All Black jersey.

Its technicians analyse the colour to find the formula to reproduce the original All Black black.

A choice of leather has always been available, but now Maserati buyers can tailor the interior by matching various parts of the cockpit trim.

How about blue leather piping around the cream driver's seat? Easy. Or two-tone leather for the passenger's seat and a little pink insert in the seat back?

Maserati will customise the top of the dashboard, the A and C pillar trim panels, the roof lining, the upper and lower section of the door panels, the centre dash console - even the steering wheel. The stitching can be in different colours too.

Cockpit fittings come in briar-wood veneer or carbon fibre. The analogue clock also comes in a range of finishes, including gold chrome and real gold hands.

The only options available on the outside of the 3200GT - apart from the buyers' choice of colour - are painted brake calipers: red, silver or standard black. The 25-spoke alloy wheels have an optional dished design.

The overall options wouldn't be complete without the Connelly leather luggage, which can be matched to the car's interior colour mix. So can the golf bag.