The Maserati Karif from 1988 isn’t exactly the prettiest car ever sold, and its performance more than 35 years later is nothing to write home about. Despite this, only 221 examples were produced Is very rare. Just ignore the whole thing Maserati reportedly planned to build 250 of them and couldn’t find enough buyers. This is a rare and special car, built to only the highest standards for the most demanding luxury athletes. Because if it’s in the sales brochure, it must be true, right?
As our friend the Car Brochure Addict recently shared on Twitter, the official sales brochure for the 1988 Karif says: “It is a car with a strong personality and an innate calling to make driving a pleasure, an expression of Sensuality, strong emotions are guaranteed.” for anyone who knows how to experience them.” Later the text says: “From its creation there was no doubt that the Maserati KARIF would become a collector’s item: a two-seater with an aggressive designed front section that hides an extremely generous engine under the hood.”
Sure, it only made 250 horsepower and 284 pound-feet of torque, but remember, this was the late 1980s. A world where you could buy a Toyota Camry with 300 horsepower didn’t yet exist, so we won’t attack Maserati too much for appealing to the Karif. What we’ll get into in depth is how creepy and weird things get in another paragraph:
The Maserati KARIF: an exceptional “road animal”, an exhilarating driving experience, an invitation to feel like a racing driver again or for the first time; the subtle pleasure of feeling the throb of so many stampeding horses and knowing you can control them. Although the car looks modern overall, it exudes the classic style that has so captivated us while keeping up with the state of the art that modern technology has accustomed us to.
It was a different time, but come on. Someone must have read this and at least thought, “You know, maybe we should leave out the part about ‘feeling the pounding’ and hitting horses,” right? At least one person? NO? No one? They literally read “the subtle pleasure of feeling the throb of so many stamping horses and knowing you can control them” and thought to themselves, “That’s completely normal, putting our company’s name on it,” until it was actually published. In the official UK sales brochure.
Now, to be fair, it’s entirely possible that it was simply poorly translated into English, especially since the rest of the text is a bit wonky. Perhaps words like “throb” and “hammer” do not have such sexual connotations in the original Italian. On the other hand, we’re talking about Maserati in the 1980s. If you told us that this line was written while the marketing director was on a short break from snorting heavy cocaine and sexually harassing his teenage secretaries, we’d probably believe you. After all, it was a different time.