Driving Impression
Maserati Quattroporte Sport GT
My grateful thanks to Gavin Conway, Editor of 4car, and www.channel4.com/4car/ for granting the club permission to publish this article by John Simister.
Just a prettier face?
 For a worrying moment at the Maserati Quattroporte Sport GT's unveiling to the press, I thought I had come to the Modena Military Academy for nothing more than a black chrome mesh radiator grille and a set of giant 20in wheels.
Uniformed chaps from past (dressed dummies in the museum) and present (our military hosts) looked on with reverence and the wisdom of many military and Modenese years, but was I not just looking upon a visual hot-up job?
There were films of old Maseratis and Fangio being heroic, there was a kind of chat-show thing hosted by Ivan Capelli and dominated by John Surtees (F1 Cooper-Maserati in the 1960s being the connection), with Johnny Herbert getting the odd word in edgeways.
I feared it might all be a smokescreen: the Sport GT costs £80,550, which is £6,000 more than the base-model Quattroporte with its rubber mats and vinyl trim (only joking), but all that was different was merely in the eyes of the visual tuner-upper.
Heart and Soul
 But I was wrong. The Sport GT gets a longer name, but it also gets a new soul. The transformation isn't as dramatic as that which makes a Coupé (flawed) into a GranSport (delicious), but then the Quattroporte was pretty fine to begin with - give or take the odd, mainly transmission-related, enigma. Here, though, we have, more than ever before in the company's turbulent history, the apogee of what a Maserati saloon should be. Think of it as a BMW M5 with Pavarotti on the stereo and a palazzo to keep it in.
The whole, then, is greater than the sum of the new parts. First, though, let's list these parts. The wheels carry 245/35 tyres at the front, 285/30 at the rear: it's a wonder there's room for any air at all behind those shallow sidewalls. These Pirelli P Zero Rosso Corsas have a compound and construction specially created for the Quattroporte Sport GT, in the same way as the GranSport is transformed by its bespoke tyres. The sizes are different for the Quattroporte, though: finding exactly correct replacements in a few years' time for both cars may be quite a challenge.
 The Skyhook adaptive damping has revised software to control the suspension better 'when used in more press-on situations', as Maserati's description puts it. The brakes get cross-drilled discs, plus braided hoses for a firmer pedal action, and the transmission can shift its gears 35% quicker when set to Sport mode.
This transmission is still the six-speed, sequential-shift clutchless manual beloved of Maserati and its now more-distant (since Maserati was realigned with Alfa Romeo within the Fiat empire) Ferrari cousin. It's called Cambiocorsa ('race change') in the Coupé cars, because it starts off in manual mode and you have to opt for the automatic setting if you want it: in the Quattroporte, even this hardcore version, it's called DuoSelect and defaults to automatic. Pressing a button renders it manual.
"A slight weight advantage"
 Inside, the leather is dark (with red stitching) and there's absolutely no wood. Carbonfibre, and plenty of it, takes the wood's place - and the cabin looks all the racier for it. The GT gets drilled aluminium pedals, too - 'There is a slight weight advantage,' says engineering chief Paul Fickers.
Finally, the engine has a revised exhaust system which - like the GranSport's - bypasses a silencer when in Sport mode and revving under load between 4,500rpm and the 7,000rpm peak-power speed.
 That peak power is 400bhp, backed by 333lb-ft of torque at a fairly high 4,500rpm. This Quattroporte weighs nearly two tonnes, so you can see that 4,244cc of Ferrari-built V8 is still going to have to be worked hard to deliver the promised pace. The good news is that in its latest Euro IV version, the V8's urban-cycle fuel consumption is 16% better, with no power loss. Official CO2 emissions of 370g/km mean it's still well and truly a gas-guzzler under Britain's new car-tax regime, though. Not that this will worry those who can afford an £80K car...
Arms-dealer fantasies
Now, about this soul. For a start, this car looks fantastic. It has the low snout of a 1950s sports-racer, three crazy portholes in each front wing, those giant wheels on rubber-band tyres and a complete lack of bodykit and bling. It's clean, focused, menacing and best in a dark colour for acting out those arms-dealer fantasies. (I met an arms dealer once, for the purpose of trying out one of his classic cars for a magazine feature. I was quite shocked, actually.)
 One of the ways the GranSport is so massively better than the regular Coupé is in its gearshifts. Its extra shift speed in Sport mode paradoxically makes for a smoother drive, because there's less interruption of engine torque and it's easier to smooth the upshifts with a quick lift of the throttle without waiting in a no-man's land of neutrality. It's true of the Quattroporte Sport GT, too. Sport mode is the regime of choice, although regular mode is OK if you're feeling laid back: it's possible to be perfectly smooth with both and, during my stint as a passenger, I was aware of hardly any surges and jerks as my co-driver proved she was a match for Jodie Kidd (who races a Maserati MC12 when not being professionally beautiful).
If you're feeling even more laid back, you could use the automatic mode that Maserati still insists is good enough for a luxury saloon - but it isn't unless you are a) stuck in traffic and b) in no hurry at all. Otherwise it's too discontinuous in its torque delivery and you end up feeling queasy. What this car really needs is a ZF six-speed auto with Jaguar's XK programming.
The machine-gun-fire V8
 So Sport manual it is, then. And that means sharper sinews in the Skyhook. We're crackling along some cracking roads south of Modena now, twists and turns and short straights reverberating to the hard-edged, machine-gun-fire V8 (it's that arms-dealer thing again) and the two-tonne Maserati seems to have left its mass back at the factory. It flicks into corners like a BMW M3, its front wheels biting hard, its rear wheels ready to edge outwards as the post-apex power pours forth. The ESP system - or MSP, as Maserati calls it - reins in any tail-out excess, but even on these damp roads it allows plenty of freedom.
It's truly astonishing just how agile, how flickable this car is. The steering may be too light and a touch short of true feel, but it's quick and utterly accurate. You feel at one with this car, helped by suspension of near-miraculous absorbency, given how little those adhesive tyres must contribute to soaking up the bumps. The ride is firm, of course, but never jarring. And if you revert to non-Sport mode, the ride becomes almost cosseting, yet much of the agility remains. All you really lose is the steering's razor edge: the Sport GT still feels much more connected and together than the first Quattroporte I drove.
This is a great chassis, helped by its slightly rearward-biased (53%) weight distribution brought about by mounting the gearbox in unit with the differential. It's joined to the engine by a rigid torque tube, so the whole powertrain moves as one.
The Quattroporte in its true colours
 So, what about the engine, the heart of the car? This four-cam, 32-valve Maserati V8 has always been a fabulous unit, right down to its crackle-red cam covers, and is based on the same cylinder block as Ferrari uses in the F430. It has variable timing for the inlet cams, but still the torque peaks at a high speed.
Which means you have to rev it hard to get it to fly. It's surprising how often you press the short-travel accelerator pedal to the floor, but when the reward is the hard-edged, throbbily-undertoned howl of a free-breathing V8 as it approaches max revs, then you really don't mind. The Sport GT will amble along at low revs in high gears quite happily, but it's always tempting to flick the downshift paddle a couple of times and let rip. Do that to the maximum possible extent and you'll hit 62mph in 5.2 seconds from standstill and hurtle onwards to 171mph. Average fuel consumption is claimed to be 17.9mpg; not great, but it could have been worse.
To drive, then, the Sport GT is unexpectedly fine: the Quattroporte in its true colours, as it was meant to be. It's also beautifully built and finished, with everything in our test car working as it should. The sat-nav graphics are a bit my-first-computer and reverse can be slow to engage, but that's the limit of the snags.
So, better than an M5, a Mercedes E55 AMG or an Audi RS6? More expensive, clearly, but also more bespoke, more exclusive and oozing non-Teutonic personality.
You look at this car, you drive it, you want it. There's a Deadly Sin in there somewhere.
by John Simister - www.channel4.com/4car/ |
