Italy’s blustery northern breezes are the stuff of legend. The weather feature is evocative enough to have inspired Maserati’s Bora model name back in the 1970s, not to mention enough local folklore to fill a storybook. Winds of change have become a leitmotif for the hundred-year-old Italian brand’s scrappy beginnings, sweeping motorsports successes, and mercurial road car fortunes. The origin story is so epic it inspired an upcoming feature film starring Al Pacino, Anthony Hopkins, and Jessica Alba.
Though loaded with lore, Maserati has struggled of late in the fight for luxury car supremacy, flapping like a rag in those proverbial gusts. There’s no better time than now, and no place more fitting than windy Trieste, to sample Maserati’s newly updated GranTurismo ($154,090), GranCabrio ($158,000) and Grecale ($78,250, below).
“The expression of Maserati is the manifestation of a multisensory experience,” marketing boss Cristiano Fiorio explained ahead of the drive. The woo-woo statement is, in fact, on the nose, pun intended: the brand has long been focused more on a circle of intangibles – engine sounds, leather smells, the lilt of a fender, than left-brain considerations like engineering or residual value. Why compromise those qualities now?
Design, of course, is one of the brand’s core values. But design head Klaus Busse says Maserati’s curvy forms have much more function than you might think. “Our proportions are created by performance,” he explains. “The reason the MC20 has no wing is because the car itself is a wing.” That said, a bit of modernity has indeed infused the new 2027 model lineup, its facelift introducing cleaner surfaces and more purposeful sheet metal.
Climbing inside the latest GranTurismo reveals Maserati’s familiar leather smell, though traditionalists will notice the digital gauge cluster, new push-button PRND shift buttons, and stacked 12.3-inch central touchscreens, which dedicate a lower screen to HVAC controls.
Busse describes a “balance of opposites” that necessitates the screen functionality. “We need screens; otherwise you’d have a 747 cockpit with all the [button] functions.” Fair enough. There’s also a new centrally positioned clock display with customizable content (including a compass, below) and an horologically-inspired, polished aluminum-edged bezel.
Under the hood, the 3.0-liter Nettuno twin-turbo V6 gets improvements in top Trofeo trim, yielding 582 horsepower (40 more than before) and 479 lb-ft of torque, while the next level down makes 483 hp. The Grecale Trofeo ($115,830) packs 523 hp and can run 0 to 60 mph in 3.6 seconds; the next rung down is a 385 hp V6 found in the Base and Modena models.
There’s a bit of a tradeoff here. The turbocharged V6s, which were introduced for the 2024 model year, were lighter and torquier than the naturally aspirated V8s they replaced. However, they lacked the crispness and haunting exhaust notes of the V8s. They also lost a piece of history, as the V8 engine block was sourced from their Ferrari neighbors, which is never a bad thing. On the positive side, production of GranTurismo and GranCabrio has moved from Turin to Modena, returning to the spiritual heart of the brand.
And speaking of spirit, there’s a lot to like when it comes to miles spent piloting the GranTurismo. We headed out from Trieste and quickly crossed into idyllic Slovakia, where the mountain roads call like a siren song to Odysseus. The GranTurismo won’t win a drag race with a Ferrari or a handling challenge with a Porsche, but holds its own with an engaging grasp of the road and enough power to launch it to 60 mph in only 3.6 seconds. Need even more grunt? Maserati’s Folgore, the fully electric version of the GranCabrio, does the deed in a scant 2.7 seconds.
The Grecale Trofeo’s leather-lined cabin is more of an outlier in its class than the cushy GranTurismo is in its; don’t even think about comparing the Porsche Macan or BMW X4’s Teutonicness against Maserati’s dolce vita. There’s also a surprising amount of waftiness to Grecale’s driving demeanor, a light sportiness and graceful suspension damping that makes it a pleasure to push through these hairpin corners.
While I fully expected to enjoy driving the GranTurismo – just look at it! – the Grecale Trofeo turned out to be the dark horse, delivering a sporty surprise and delight despite its utilitarian five-passenger layout. While the Trofeo’s most aggressive suspension settings might be a bit stiff for some, the more approachable versions deliver a well-rounded balance between compliance and crispness that make them eminently livable.
The next morning I’m treated to a taste of an outlier in the Maserati lineup: the $313,995 GT2 Stradale, a race-inspired, limited production take on the MC20 (and its relatively recently refreshed successor, MCPura). The scissor-doored, carbon chassis two-seater is a 201-mph love letter to racing, and mine was finished in a stunning matte metallic bronze hue as a demonstration of what can be accomplished with Maserati’s Fuoriserie customization program. The recently introduced atelier offers bespoke paint colors, unique trims, and the sorts of personalized details that elevate a manufacturer beyond the realm of standard-issue luxury.
Sure, the GT2 Stradale was buttoned-down and seriously quick, but what distinguished it was its panache. Whereas the GranTurismo and Grecale are able to slip into traffic and blend, there is no hiding the GT2. It pops, it slaps, it bangs, which has long been Maserati’s secret weapon for those seeking a dash of flash. The Italian challenger brand will never compete with the big boys when it comes to outright engineering. And they’re pushing for technology to trickle down from racing, as they compete in GT2 and debut their new GT4 efforts over the summer in Goodwood.
But Maserati’s most ardent selling point is as emotionally unexpected as inscrutable as a wind that blows suddenly and strongly across an Adriatic city. The force is a definitively Italian one, a vibe so specific it took a non-Italian – Klause Busse, a German – to describe it so astutely. “The Italians,” he said, “are on the right side of arrogance. There are other countries on the wrong side of arrogance. But Italy? They’re just cool.”
IMAGES BY MASERATI S.P.A & BASEM WASEF
