At the very top are mementoes of Dickens's impoverished childhood, including a grille from the prison where his father was locked up for running up too many debts, forcing his 12- year-old son to get a job in a squalid shoe-polish factory.
Only a few examples still exist: some lunettes in the Hôtel de Ville of Brussels; a tabernacle grille from the chapel of the counts of Flanders and a window grille from the Cathedral of St. Bavon, both from Ghent (Victoria and Albert Museum); and hinges at the Hôtels de Ville of Bruges and Ypres (Flemish Ieper).
It has a different grille from the 57, plus chrome-trimmed fog lights and rectangular dual exhausts.
While it is hard to fault the DeVille's road manners, the styling seems to have come from the paper-doll school of auto design: Attach grille (a) from an old Mercedes S-Cladd, add roofline and rear quarter panels (b) from the Infiniti Q45, and outline the profile (c) of the Lexus LS 400.
It looked like a piece of shattered radiator grille from the front end of Augie's car.
Among the growing offerings from these specialty businesses: the spider-web grille from Putco Inc. of Story City, Iowa, shown here for a GMC truck.
Mr. Vermeersch said the new car incorporated elements from earlier Maserati designs, like the air outlets on the front fender, which recall the original GranTurismo, and the car's distinctive grille, from which "volume is extruded and expanded through the fenders," in a shape reminiscent of the A6GCS and the 2005 Birdcage concept car.
The undisciplined design is a riot of swoops and lines that go everywhere and nowhere, fronted by the whalelike grille from the bigger QX45.
When the waiter came to take his order, he barked, "For heaven's sake, what's the rumble?" The waiter cocked an attentive ear, not at the ventilator but at the grille from which the Muzak was giving out.
Special mountings separate grille from frame to give the illusion that the grille is floating in mid-air.
