Many car enthusiasts must be surprised by how much Maserati has been under the spotlights in the past few months, whether due to its participation in motorsports or its urban vehicles line. The answer to that, in fact, couldn’t be other than “that’s not a coincidence”. Fiat Group’s efforts into optimizing its marques’ operations has decided that Alfa Romeo, hopefully along with Lancia, will take care of the “entry-luxury” markets. Such attitude leaves Maserati focused on the high-end customers… with bigger power than ever.
Quattroporte has defending Maserati among the limousine-like sedans for decades without flinching, along with all the generations of coupés and cabriolets whose latest goes by the respective names of GranTurismo and GranCabrio. The problem with that strategy is that neither of those are best-seller categories. The reputation built by the automaker over the decades is much bigger than “enough” to take customers used to buy a BMW or a Mercedes-Benz, but the reason why it’s never achieved that was simply not having models in line to compete with theirs. After identifying coupes, the Ghibli nameplate was ressurrected this time on a mid-size luxury sedan, composing Maserati’s debut on an extremely competitive market. After all, this article’s sedan won’t compete only with the traditional A6, 5-Series and E-Class, but also with Jaguar XF and, theoretically, with Cadillac CTS and Lexus ES – there must be very few markets where the latter two will be sold along with Ghibli. Maserati’s intention is to become a full-size luxury brand, which will also imply the arrival of its very first crossover soon. The new sedan’s potential to attract that mentioned public comes not only from being cheaper than the bigger brother, but mostly for being a much more casual vehicle than it.
The first looks might give the overall impression of a reduced-scale Quattroporte, but it doesn’t take more than a good look at the details to understand that this is Maserati’s impressive design language. There are the same bulky volumes with smooth transitions, indeed, but Ghibli’s shorter length was on make it sportier, starting at an aggressive lower front grille which highlights Maserati’s traditional upper grille design, creating a three-dimensional effect that shares just the right attention with the headlights – they’re not too big and not too small. They lead two strong creases into a compact central portion with round windows and other strong creases, these starting at the back doors to compose a rear area which earns great merit for escaping from the cliché of using a big chrome bar connecting the tail lights. Besides of an attractive two-tone scheme, the gorgeous interior makes sure Ghibli will match its rivals in comfort, luxury, technology, safety and space. When it comes to the powertrain, both engines are turbocharged V6 3.0L, one using diesel and the other gasoline. There will be an automatic eight-speed transmission and rear-wheel-drive, with optional AWD.
