If you are minded to tell us that there’s a better example of a Maserati Quattroporte GTS out there, we’ll assume you’re talking about a car that went straight from the factory to a hermetically-sealed display case in a museum.

Otherwise, we’re putting our money on this one – which is by some margin the best we’ve ever seen.

And we’ve seen a few.

This was bought new by the vendor in September 2015.

In the near decade that’s elapsed since then, the car has averaged a little more than 900 miles per year.

Quite a few of those miles will have been expended on visits to and from Meridien Modena, the Maserati main dealer to whom all servicing, maintenance and repair work has been entrusted since the car’s first service, which came courtesy of Ridgeway Maserati.

Full disclosure – the vendor is well-known to us here at our Oxfordshire HQ.

We’re sure he won’t mind if we tell you that he is a man who does things properly .

He doesn’t cut corners, entertain compromises or otherwise deviat...