Maserati GranTurismo Trofeo Review: Worth Saving The Company For

The day before we drove the new Maserati GranTurismo Trofeo, news broke that parent company Stellantis had cancelled around £1.2 billion worth of funding earmarked for the brand. A couple of days before that, we found out that its sales in 2024 had fallen by more than half compared to 2023.

The perennially beleaguered company, it seems, is in another one of its major pickles. And that’s a shame, because its cars are, frankly, the best they’ve been in years. The MC20, while perhaps lacking some drama, is one of the sweetest-driving supercars around, and the Grecale is more charismatic and better to drive than most of its rivals.

Then we come to the GranTurismo, a replacement for a car that stayed on sale for some 12 years. After a few years off, it’s back, and though the bloodline is clear, the second-gen is pretty much all new.

You can get it as a Folgore EV, a product of Maserati’s now-scrapped ambition to go all-electric by 2030 (a plan that’s probably causing the company plenty of headaches now). Be honest, though: that’s not really the one you’re interested in.

This is, though: the Trofeo. It has the same snorty 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6 as the MC20, albeit turned down to 542bhp and 479lb ft, from 621bhp and 538lb ft. Unlike the old one, it’s all-wheel drive, with power sent through an eight-speed automatic gearbox.

Peel away its classically handsome bodywork, and you’ll find a reworked version of the platform that underpins the Alfa Romeo Giulia. Humble origins, perhaps, for a car that’s supposed to take the fight to Bentley and Aston, but then you won’t find many people complaining about the way the Giulia handles.

You won’t find us complaining about the GranTurismo’s handling, either. There’s a real alertness to the way it goes down a road, with quick, sharp steering and a pointy front end. All-wheel drive it may be, but it feels properly rear-biased, the fronts just working to give you that extra confidence to keep the power on when the back starts to slip.

There’s a cheeky boisterousness to the way it drives, a similar feeling to the one you get in the similarly-engined Grecale Trofeo, but amplified by the GT’s lower weight and centre of gravity. Body control is good, damping is pliant, and there’s just enough pitch and roll to remind you that you’re in a grand tourer, not some hunkered-down track monster. It’s fast and effective without taking itself too seriously, and that’s an endearing trait in a car. All-in-all, it’s more outright fun, if not quite as composed and balanced, as the new hybrid Bentley Continental GT.

It brings strong numbers to the table, too. An Aston Martin DB12 may have 119bhp more, but the Maser very nearly matches its top speed – 199mph plays 202 – and, thanks to that all-wheel drive, is a tenth quicker to 62mph: 3.5 seconds compared to 3.6.

Floor it and there’s a sense of all the wheels hooking up to send you scrabbling off very quickly indeed, scored by a rich, raspy and rev-hungry V6. It’s nowhere near as soul-stirring as the old car’s Ferrari-based V8, but frankly, neither is Pavarotti hitting the final strains of Nessun Dorma. By the standards of modern engines, though, the V6 is still a peach, and being up front allows its best aural traits to shine through without the flat, industrial whistles and chunters you get from behind your ear in the MC20.

The GT is also good at being, well, a GT. In the softer modes, the adaptive suspension irons out the worst the road can throw at you. The ride isn’t as anywhere near as buttery as in, say, a Bentley, nor is there as much of an eerie silence in the cabin, but it feels like it’d be perfectly amenable to the sort of long-distance lope that everyone who buys a grand tourer pictures themselves doing but probably never does.

One thing that might get annoying, though, is the slight intrusion into the footwell right where you want to rest your left leg, which gives us a neat segue into the GranTurismo’s interior. It’s basically fine – the materials are all lovely, there’s loads of room, even in the back, and everything feels largely solid.

‘Fine’ isn’t really enough, though, in a car that costs around £130k for the entry-level Modena, £160k for a basic Trofeo, and almost £200k as tested. It’s pretty much all shared with the Grecale, and if you were spending that kind of money on an elegant grand tourer, you’d be rightfully miffed that the interior was near-identical to a four-cylinder crossover’s.

The gear selection buttons on the dash feel particularly out of place, although Maserati’s got the business of actually changing gears right: you get the gorgeous, tactile aluminium paddles used across the Maserati and Alfa ranges, which are done better than pretty much any other manufacturer these days.

Like in the Grecale, there’s way too much being handled by the car’s dual central screens, although you won’t have too much cause to use them. The really annoying ADAS systems like lane keep assist can be turned down to be barely noticeable, and they’ll maintain these unintrusive settings on each start.

That the inside perhaps doesn’t quite befit a car like this is the only real disappointment. The GranTurismo is probably the best, most roundly talented thing Maserati makes right now, and has for some time. In petrol guise, anyway. The Folgore is a different story, but that’s for another time.

It has something else, too: that badge. More effortlessly cool than Ferrari or Porsche, less stuffy than Bentley, less cliched than Aston – who doesn’t, deep down, want to tell people they drive a Maserati? There’s a reason the company’s still around today, despite having teetered on the brink more times than we can remember.

The GranTurismo Trofeo is proof that, at least based on an afternoon’s driving, the reality can mostly live up to the myth. It makes us hope even more that Stellantis can pull Maserati out of the latest rut it finds itself in, or find another custodian that can, because, at long last, it’s a car really worth saving the company for.