Owner Profile: Dan Hammond - Love at First Drive

"Love at first drive" - doesn't it sounds like one of the worst clichés around? Nobody ever gets in a car and just falls in love with it - do they? This month we bring you a Maserati owner who is the exception to the rule. Dan Hammond grew tired of driving the same car as everyone else, so he went looking for something different - and within minutes of getting into the 2005 Maserati GranSport, he knew he had found it: "you start to drive it and feel the g-forces, even accelerating from 0 to 40 - all of a sudden I feel like I'm driving something besides a car, it feels like a race car."

A quiet and thoughtful man, Dan lives in Dallas, Texas. He is recently retired at the age of 53 from his position as founder, Chairman, and CEO of Intervoice, the leader and an originator in voice recognition telephony systems. Dan's passions include Italy, fine design, and usable technology. The house he is completing is as real a Tuscan villa as one could find outside Italy, and his home sound system is a beautifully restored 19th Century concert grand player piano, now electronically controlled and capable of filling the house with melodious sound. Good aesthetics, especially sounds, are important to Dan; in a sense, he built a business on them. To make the most of his hard work and good fortune, Dan wanted something more from his car, something far beyond mere transport.

"I was looking for a change from my Mercedes 500SL, although I didn't really know what it was that I wanted," Dan explained. "So I went down to my local dealer, Park Place, and saw the Bentleys and Rolls Royce, which were to me really huge, and not particularly attractive. I looked at the Maserati Quattroporte, and I liked the body style, and felt that it was nice looking and it was okay. So the sales guy said, let's drive one more car. We got into the black GranSport, which eventually became mine; within 100 yards of leaving the dealership, I just had to have the car. It was a nice day in spring, so we had the windows down, and when he cranked it up, I heard that rumble."

Indeed, the wonderful noises that can be wrung from a GranSport proved to be a major theme of our discussion with Dan. He is clearly a fan of the Sport mode, as one of the effects is to make the mufflers less restrictive - and thus more resonant. When asked his favorite things about the car, one of them was putting it in Sport mode, using the Manual shift facility of the Cambiocorsa gearbox and hitting the curves - but Dan makes sure he has the windows down, to hear the music coming from the 4.2-liter V8.

All this came as something of a revelation to Dan. "I always liked looking at cars, and I've been driving Mercedes SL cars for fifteen years, because I liked the look of them," he told us. "They're a luxury sporty car, but they're not really a sports car, they're mainly built for comfort. I had a 1994 600SL, the V12... but I had some problems with the electronics... after I had my latest one, for three years, I went looking for something different; I became a car enthusiast when I got into the Maserati GranSport!

"Of course, the exclusivity is important, too - It seems like there's a Mercedes SL on every driveway around here," he continued. "In the Maserati, you don't see yourself coming and going. I like having something that's a little bit more exclusive, unique - that's an important aspect. You make a statement when you drive up in one of those; you definitely turn heads, people who like cars come over and want to talk about it. I like that it sounds different and looks different."

It certainly is different to his previous cars; Dan's list wouldn't look out of place in a manual on conformity, including a Lexus LS400 - "a very nice car, but you don't feel or hear anything," was Dan's verdict. Of his BMW 645Ci Dan says "it's more fun to drive than a Mercedes or a Lexus, but it's not in the same class as the Maserati."

In a way, the GranSport has given Dan a problem: When asked if his Maserati had spoiled him for other cars, he replied "I probably wouldn't buy another Mercedes SL. It's spoiled me so much that I've started to think, this one is so much fun, what might be more fun? It's definitely given me a new perspective on cars and how much fun they can be, as opposed to just looking good."

Dan's favorite thing about the GranSport? "The performance is my favorite thing; also that I can use it in Auto mode and still feel I'm driving something special. And yet if I really want to have some fun I can roll the windows down, put it in Manual and really have fun driving it; the performance, accelerating, cornering, downshifting, it's really fun... about all I would like is if it was a little louder!"

When asked why he bought a Maserati, Dan thought for a while before talking about the heritage of the marque. "I always thought of it as a premium name in sports cars. It had positive brand recognition for me; in addition, Joe Walsh had one, and I had dinner with him in Paris a few years ago," he told us. "In my mind, the name brought positive thoughts, I'd heard about it over the years. Then when I looked at the car, I liked the looks and the style, then I got in it and I fell in love with it. But I do think the brand name got me in the car. I expected a performance vehicle and that's exactly what it is."

When we spoke, Dan had owned his GranSport for eight months, covering about 4,000 miles - he uses it several times each week. So the honeymoon period was over - yet Dan's enthusiasm for the car shone through. "It lifts my spirits when I get in it, which is definitely good - any time you're going somewhere, it's good to be happy when you get there," he said. "It makes me feel excited, as opposed to other cars where you don't even think about the cars, you just get in and drive them. Just hearing the engine starts the adrenaline going; I'd say that it gets me excited about driving, and for me that's a new experience."

Dan Hammond

His Favorite Drink: Diet Coke
His Favorite Meal: Thai
His Favorite Movie: Back to School
His Favorite Book: Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You're 80 and Beyond by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge
His Favorite Musicians: The Eagles
His Favorite Man Made Wonder: The Microprocessor
His Favorite Natural Wonder: The Grand Canyon
His favorite holiday spot: Wailea, Maui
Place to which he most likes returning: London
People he most admires: His parents
Historical figure he'd most like to meet: Thomas Edison
What he still intends to accomplish: A single-digit golf handicap

His Maserati: 2005 GranSport.