There is a silky, breathless silence in the hills above Lianhuachi. Low, winter sun flows around spindly pines, and pierces stands of unfamiliar shrubs, warming patches of tarmac here and there as the road slinks its way to the summit. In a cold corner of shade, where the air is icy in the lungs and dry on the lips, the Maserati GranCabrio squats motionless, deep-blue paintwork almost a camouflage.
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This article was originally published in the Awards issue of Car Evolution magazine
On the key, the GranCabrio's 440bhp 4.7-litre V8 rumbles into life. The depth of the sound, the pitch and timbre is uniquely Italian, seductive and familiar and curiously reassuring in this strange and desolate place. The engine settles into a rhythmic thrum as overhead a magpie wheels and mutters. One for sorrow. The whirr and thump of the ZF gearbox causes a key change from the exhaust note, that gentle, distinctive warble full of potent promise.
Breaking from the tree line and dropping sharply towards the saddle of the hills, the first magpie is joined by another. They chirrup and squeal, falling parallel with the hillside in steep, concentric circles before suddenly soaring out into the thin, still air, high over the valley floor. Two for joy.
The day had begun early. Too early for our first in China after fitful sleep in a wonky time zone. Beijing's morning rush hour is a m�l�e of horns and bells from tuk-tuks and bicycles, vying fearlessly with SUVs, tipper trucks and belching buses for a right of way through the city's choking maze of wide, chaotic highways and by-ways.
Flyover to underpass, turnpike, slipway and intersection, five metres of Maserati is a burden of responsibility better borne by the rested. But an hour in stop-start traffic is a Beijing minute, and even the expressways are a first-gear crawl, as taxis and minibuses dodge and weave their way around and through and back again, towards gridlocked turn-offs to mysterious corners of the capital's sprawling industrial hinterland. This is not a place for the faint-of-heart. Or weak-of-bladder.
Our first petrol station is a curious insight into road trips in the People's Republic. A huge vaulted auditorium, clean enough for open-heart surgery. Outside, two men in grey-blue overalls are fastidiously scrubbing the shop's awning with a sopping brush on a long metal pole. Inside, in spite of the scale, the place is practically empty, with sparsely stocked but meticulously ordered shelves at its centre. Up for grabs is water, local or European. Crisps: Italian Meat Flavour, American Classic, various riffs on chicken. Twenty-packs of toilet roll. Vacuum-packed almonds. Sponge fingers. Glass cleaner.
The toilets next door are a series of slippery holes in the ground. Mouth-breathing only. Go back to the auditorium, and buy some bog roll.
Outside again, the Maserati is caked in a fine layer of dust, an essential part of the Beijing motoring experience. Go back to the auditorium, and buy some glass cleaner.
Munching on sponge fingers as the mechanised suburbs fall away, with the roof now down, the GranCabrio sucks in our first taste of proper rural China. The heavy smog of the city seems not just miles, but generations away from the clean, crisp, autumnal atmosphere of the villages around Huairou, due north of Beijing. Here, small pockets of agricultural housing pepper a vast landscape of fields and reservoirs. In the distance, pale blue and hazy, densely wooded hills create a backdrop so theatrical in its picture-postcard perfection that it might have been glued there for our benefit.
Great drifts of leaves, turned a soft, pale yellow, whip up in rooster tails behind the car as it sweeps through long left- and right-hand bends, that haughty exhaust note lingering in the wake. The six-speed auto works perfectly at this pace, firm but gentle, piling on the revs and then succinctly shifting, building speed without forfeiting any of the Maserati's inherent grace and detachment. This is two tonnes of grand touring al fresco, and it doesn't need to be hurried.
Below the road, something catches our eye that forces the Maserati down to a virtual crawl, something that seems to capture the enigma and beauty of 21st-century China as it launches itself onto the napping Western world. Huge lavender fields, planted in perfect lines that stretch almost to the horizon, are dotted at regular intervals by dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of young and identically turned out wedding couples.
Dressed in full contemporary Western regalia, with sharp suits for him and veils, meringues and corsages for her, brides clutch grooms amid the late purple blooms and chilly autumn air, striking poses for harassed photographers who hack and duck about the undergrowth, capturing their perfect moments for all eternity. The wind whistles through the leaves and dresses, and they laugh and struggle to keep themselves presentable, ranks of newlyweds, row upon row, sharing their special day, a memento en masse for a shared future.
As the hills near, looming out of the high haze, the road begins to climb and tighten, and the �Sport' button beckons. Refined grand tourer this may be, but the GranCabrio is still a Maserati.
The revs build more readily now, shifts feel harder and faster, and the throttle response is more immediate. Out back, the exhaust rises an octave, and the sense of lazy opulence is exchanged for something far more urgent and visceral. The Modenese nobleman has rolled off his kid gloves and cracked his knuckles. Prego.
Slapping at the paddles, the GranCabrio seems to shrug off much of its size and weight, the steering impressively precise and the body immensely stable in tight, fast corners. As the sound of the engine echoes off the blank rock faces - that deep, almost hollow roar that tightens the stomach - it's easy to forget that this car is 5,000 miles from home. The relationship between Italian V8 and mountain switchbacks is universal, and there are few more symbiotic and life-affirming unions in motoring than this one.
The Maserati makes greedy, brilliant progress across the miles of winding blacktop, the only thing able to check its progress now being the setting sun, dropping fast behind the slowly blackening hills.
As the GranCabrio reaches the high point on the pass, we catch a distant glimpse of the Great Wall, miles away on a wooded ridge, an overgrown ruin silhouetted against the receding light. Stopping here in that chilly, shaded hairpin, we're offered a little taster of the sheer scale of China, its vast, untouched emptiness. And, slightly lost in the immensity of it all, past and future are brought curiously close by the locally registered �100k Italian supercar, a European product for which there is a very real demand in this mighty and exploding economy, forming an infinitesimal speck amidst this massive landscape - with its humbling imperial legacy - winding west into the sunset.
The temperature begins to plummet as dusk sets in, and the last few shards of sunlight fire through only the highest outcrops of distant trees. With the Maserati's heaters blasting hot air into sleepy faces, we begin our slow and circuitous descent. Time to put the roof up and the radio on - an unlikely medley of Chinese and highly contemporary British pop; no more strange a reminder of China's bemusing cultural collisions can there be than listening to the debut single of 2009's X Factor winner, Joe McElderry, while weaving TopGear's award-winning Maserati GranCabrio through a remote rural village in northern Hebei Province.
Slowly back then, towards the immaculate petrol stations and suicidal intersections, over, under, across and along four-lane expressways, the agonising and exhausted crawl through miles and miles of arrow-straight, stationary traffic past huge housing developments and brand-new rail links, past KFC and Hooters. It's a dizzying sea of brake-lights, flickering off and on and off and on in a snaking stream towards the dead-stop epicentre of another Beijing rush hour.
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