► We drive Maserati’s hottest new GT car
► It’s certainly fast – and brilliant to drive
► But is it worth the money Maser wants for it?
There’s nothing quite like a Maserati. The Italian brand has a rich motorsport history, a back catalogue of utterly gorgeous classics and a reputation for putting wonderful engines (sourced from the likes of Ferrari and Alfa Romeo) in rather conventionally shaped cars.
Maserati has also suffered its fair share of controversy but, even though it’s been battling build quality dramas and constant ownership changes since the 1970s, the firm has never compromised on its principles. It’s always had a grand tourer in its range.
The brand built its passenger car reputation on grand tourers way back in the 1950s and 1960s with models like the A6, the Mistral and the achingly pretty 3500 GT (have a Google – you’ll see what I’m on about). They’ve all had long bonnets, powerful engines, swoopy styling and suspension that’s compliant enough to let you spend all day on the autostrada.
Now, Maserati has passed the GT torch on to this. The all-new, somewhat Ronseal-badged, second-generation GranTurismo. The question is, can it uphold the reputation of its great, great grandfathers? Or is it little more than an also-ran in an already packed luxury GT class? Scroll down to find out what I made of it.
At a glance
Pros: wonderful engine, surprisingly nimble handling, comfortable on the motorway
Cons: build quality is lacking, slightly unsettled on British B-roads, perhaps too muted
What’s new?
Compared to the previous Maserati GranTurismo? Everything. Saying that, Maserati did leverage the synergies it enjoys by being part of Stellantis by pinching the car’s platform, gearbox and V6 engine from the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio.
Maserati won’t admit this, of course, because Alfa Romeo sits beneath it in the Stellantis pecking order. But the GranTurismo engine’s V-angle, displacement and hot-vee turbocharger setup are all the same as the Giulia’s. All Maserati has done is bolt on some new cylinder heads and increased the boost to punch power up to 542bhp for the top-spec Trofeo model.
Thankfully, you won’t find any shared components with the old GranTurismo – and that’s a good thing because the previous car looked positively ancient inside by the time it was pulled from the showrooms in 2019. Maserati has certainly matured as a brand.
What are the specs?
There are three versions of the GranTurismo to choose from. Two are fuelled by exploding dinosaurs, one is powered by electrical witchcraft. We explore Maserati’s voltaic voodoo in our dedicated GranTurismo Folgore review, so we’ll stick to the petrol versions here.
There are two versions of the petrol-powered car to choose from – the ‘basic’ car has 483bhp, a 0–62mph time of 3.9 seconds and a top speed of 188mph. To put things into perspective, those performance stats are roughly the same as a BMW M4 Competition. So, it isn’t exactly what you’d call slow.
But who doesn’t want more power? I certainly do, which is why I spent my time with the flagship Trofeo model. It has 542bhp, a stonking 479lb ft of torque, a 0–62mph time of 3.5 seconds and a top speed of 199mph. Trust me, that extra poke makes a big difference.
How does it drive?
Like a bigger, heavier, two-door Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio, which shouldn’t really come as a surprise now I’ve revealed what goes on behind the curtain at Maserati’s R&D centre. Don’t misunderstand me, though. This is by no means a bad thing.
Because the engine is basically the same as Alfa’s V6, it shares the same characteristics. It has the same intoxicating wave of torque in the mid-range, and it sends the same comically obnoxious bark down the exhaust when you leave your foot in the carpet on upshifts. Sadly, the redline also remains the same at a rather underwhelming 6,500rpm. Boo.
For such a big car, though, it isn’t half nimble. Stick the chassis in Sport mode and the car changes from a relaxed motorway muncher to a far sharper B-road carver. No amount of chassis trickery can circumvent its weight – it tips the scales at almost 1900kg, for Christ’s sake – but it’d give a BMW M3 a good run for its money on the right road.
I say ‘on the right road’ because you really need to pick your battles carefully. The petrol-powered GranTurismo doesn’t cope well with the sort of rutted, off-camber B-roads that pepper Britain’s rural north. I tried it on some battered roads on the outskirts of Ripon and the suspension simply couldn’t deal with the car’s bulk crashing down on top of it as I lurched over potholes. I spent most of the day crawling around at 30mph in fear of tearing the rear diffuser off or losing a wheel.
But – and this is a big but – when I did eventually find a properly surfaced back road with good sightlines, it was utterly glorious. The GranTurismo’s steering is immensely communicative, and, when it isn’t expected to suddenly prop up two tonnes over a crater, the suspension does a sterling job of controlling body roll. What makes it even more impressive is that B-roads aren’t even the car’s natural habitat.
The GranTurismo is at its best on motorways and long, sweeping A-roads. In other words – places where you can use the engine’s power without worrying about the road suddenly return to the quality of a medieval farm track when you pass over the next crest.
Here, the GranTurismo is lord of all it surveys. It doesn’t waft down the road with the same spooky isolation as Bentley Continental GT, but I think it’s all the better for it. It breathes with the road surface just enough to let you know when’s safe to use the power you have under your right foot. It’s a comfortable, yet involving experience – and one you won’t really find in any other GT car apart from the more expensive Ferrari Roma.
And if the conditions are right, you can use all the engine’s power with ease. It isn’t a scary car to drive quickly all. In fact, it’s an awful lot of fun. You don’t need to scream the engine out the redline to access the performance like you would in a Ferrari, and it’s nowhere near as boisterous as the Continental GT Speed. That means you’ll use more of the power, more of the time – which is the whole reason for buying a car like this in the first place. Right?
What about the interior?
It’s an interesting mixture of Alfa Romeo and Fiat components, with a few unique Maserati items chucked in for good measure. Some of this parts sharing has worked perfectly. The metal gearshift paddles, for example, have been pinched from the Giulia – and they’re wonderful. They’ve heavy, mechanical and immensely satisfying to use.
Maserati could have done better with the GranTurismo’s gear selector, though. It’s the same sort of push-button unit found in the Fiat 500e, adapted for use in the GranTurismo’s cabin – and it feels far too cheap for its surroundings. The buttons are flimsy, thin and they wobble around on their mounts. That’d be disappointing in a £60,000 car, never mind one with a starting price of more than £125,000.
At least the seats feel worth the money. They’re wider and more accommodating than the Porsche 911’s seats, which makes them more comfortable on a long journey – and that fits the GranTurismo’s brief down to the ground. There’s loads of adjustment in them, too, including a tilt function that offers more thigh support for long-legged drivers.
We’re not stuck on the infotainment setup, either. The 12.3-inch touchscreen and 8.8-inch climate control screen look impressive when you first step into the car, but they soon lose their appeal once you’ve covered half the dashboard in fingerprints. I’d have preferred dials and buttons for the climate controls, even if they were lifted from an Alfa.
The wheel is similarly hit and miss. It’s a great size and shape – and it pokes out of the dashboard at the ideal angle for your wrists. I didn’t need to balance the wheel on the heel of my palms like I did in the Nissan Qashqai I drove down to Maserati’s event in. But the wobbly, shiny plastic buttons on the GranTurismo’s wheel feel every bit as cheap as those used for the gear selector. It just ruins the atmosphere.
Verdict
This is a tricky one to call for me because I’m the world’s biggest Italian car tragic. But I’ll set my personal sympathies aside for the time being and concentrate on the facts.
The new GranTurismo is a massive step forward over the old car. It’s more comfortable. It’s more usable. It’s more approachable. But I’m not sure whether it really has what it takes to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Ferrari and Bentley. It’s just feels too cheap for the money.
Yes, it’s very, very, very good to drive, but the cabin quality simply isn’t up to scratch. If I was spending six figures on a grand tourer, I’d expect every single button in there to feel like it’d been set in concrete. And I certainly wouldn’t want any loose trims preventing me from using the controls properly, as I found in the Folgore.
I’d also like to return to the point I made earlier about the BMW M4. It’s every bit as quick as the top-spec Maserati GranTurismo Trofeo, but it costs around a third less. Yes, the GranTurismo is a bit more comfortable, but I can’t see a trip to south of France being any more difficult in the Beemer as it would be in this Maser.
In short, I don’t think I’d be happy if I paid more than £150,000 for a grand tourer that had been hastily pieced together using second hand parts that are already a decade old. Granted, they’re very good second-hand parts – but they’re not good enough to go up against Crewe, Munich or Stuttgart.
It pains me to say the Trident on the GranTurismo’s nose is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, simply because I’m a such big fan of this car. I might have to wait for the depreciation to hit and take a gamble on a dog-eared one.