If you're looking for a something bingeworthy, I can't say enough good things about "Your Friends and Neighbors" streaming currently on Apple TV+. Your Friends and Neighbors stars my spirit animal, Jon Hamm and it hit me with the same sledgehammer Breaking Bad did from the very first minute of the first episode, and it has yet to disappoint my wife and I as we work our way through Season 2.
While we can't help but be drawn to the extravagant homes inhabited by the residents of fictional Westmont Village, a thinly disguised version of exceedingly affluent Westchester County just north of Manhattan, I, naturally, am drawn to the cars cast in the series. Everyone, it seems, drives the same sort of late-model, big-bucks SUV—except Jon Hamm's character, Andrew "Coop" Cooper, who drives a black-on-black Maserati GranTurismo.
Apple identifies Coop's car as a 2022 Maserati GranTurismo. Not to split the atom, but sorry, Apple, that's not a 2022 GranTurismo—not if we're talking about the car that actually appears in the show.
Based on its styling, the car is a first-generation, M145 GranTurismo. That generation was introduced at the 2007 Geneva Motor Show and remained in production through 2019. Maserati itself says the final version was a 2018 model, with production of the outgoing generation continuing into 2019 before the nameplate took a three-year hiatus.
So, while the car in the show could be from the later years of the M145 run, there's no good reason to call it a 2022. In fact, automotive film-and-TV reference site IMCDb identifies the car as an M145 and notes it as a 2008-or-newer example. From what we can see on screen, I'd be reluctant to pin down the exact model year any further.
When introduced in 2007, the Maserati GranTurismo—and its drop-head (convertible) sibling, the GranCabrio, which debuted at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show—didn't exactly reinvent the grand-touring automobile. It perfected the concept.
Here was a large, beautifully designed, naturally aspirated V-8-powered, rear-wheel-drive coupe with a long hood, short deck and room for four. It could stop traffic simply by sitting at a traffic light, then zip through it with an aplomb that no personal-luxury car of the 1970s or '80s could ever quite muster. The GranTurismo was a genuine grand tourer in the old-school sense: luxurious, fast, dramatic and capable of carrying four people in something approaching comfort.
Coop's car isn't cheap. Early in Season 1, he mentions in a voice-over that he was sitting in a "$200,000 car." That's a stretch if he's talking about the car's original sticker price—at least for most GranTurismos of this generation. A 2012 GranTurismo S, for example, carried an original MSRP of about $125,550, while the 2019 GranTurismo Sport started at roughly $150,000 and the MC was about $163,000.
It's not unlike the well-heeled to claim they overpaid for something and then brag about it. It's also not uncommon for those who appear to be well off, like Coop appears to be, living paycheck-to-paycheck like us bottom feeding poor slobs do.
Cars like the Maserati GranTurismo aren't for everyone. With do-everything-well crossovers and sport utilities now dominating the market, the inherent impracticality of a coupe these days—even one that supposedly seats four—makes little rational sense.
Which raises the question: Why would anyone drive a car like a Maserati GranTurismo, or others in its class such as the Aston Martin Vantage, Lexus LC 500 or BMW 8 Series?
Well, it could be simply because they enjoy the car. That's why I would. I'd chafe, though, not so much at the cost of these things these days, for an exotic used car they're fairly affordable, but since they're notoriously fragile, the maintenance and repair costs which could run a buyer upwards of $10,000 to $15,000 a year.
However, Coop doesn't come across as a "car guy." Aside from being a self-centered, egomaniacal womanizer obsessed with money, he doesn't come across as much of anything. In fairness, he might be a better parent than his ex-wife, Mel, portrayed by Amanda Peet, is. He seemingly could afford to drive almost anything, so why a Maserati GranTurismo—and one that's apparently several years old at that?
That's where car casting comes in.
Coop's Maserati helps define who his character is. He's an aging jetsetter whose best days are behind him. He's a "suburban James Bond type" who can still keep up with the Joneses to a certain degree, but it's becoming harder and harder to do so.
And that, friends and neighbors, is precisely why the Maserati is there. It isn't merely a luxury car. It's a character prop and a brilliantly cast metaphor.
The aging GranTurismo says that Coop still wants to be "that guy" even though he's not quite what he used to be; his choices in life leaving him second guessing what made him appear to be what he never was.
Season 3 of Your Friends and Neighbors is currently in production.
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