Michael Mainetti, My Lucid Air Sapphire Experience

Hello, Lucid fans! I am delighted to welcome Michael Mainetti as my guest on this week’s Lucid Driver podcast. Michael, an attorney in New York about an hour and a half north of the city, took delivery of the first Lucid Air Sapphire in the Northeast in February of last year—number 34 of a limited run of 250. Without hesitation Michael notes the Sapphire is the best car he has ever owned (and he’s had a pretty impressive stable of cars to compare it to.)

I've always been into cars. Growing up, my father always had the big S class Mercedes, and then when AMG got absorbed by Mercedes it was always an S class AMG.  I think that was the beginning of my love of fast sedans, which also must have had an effect on my brother, because we have both owned several. I gravitated toward Audi and my brother toward BMW.  In 2016 I got my first RS7 and then got a new model in 2021, while my brother just got the new M5 after owning the two previous gen M5 competitions. 

I also had a 2006 300c SRT-8 which I bought new and slowly built over the years, culminating in a forged short block engine swap and twin turbo kit amongst other things, yielding just 750whp [wheel horsepower] and 780rwtq [rear wheel torque].  I sold her to make room in the garage for the Sapphire. I had never heard of Lucid until 2021 when my father mentioned them to me and told me he was going to order an Air Grand Touring, My only experience with electric cars at that point was Tesla. I had considered an S Plaid when it came out, but after seeing the build quality and feel of the car they were asking $140k after options for, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I did a cursory look into Lucid but honestly wrote it off as just another electric car startup.    

Clearly, something changed for Michael…

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