Maserati Levante 2016 Review

Maserati Levante
International Launch Review
Tabiano Castello, Italy

Does Maserati’s first SUV have to be better than everything from Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Range Rover, or just does it just have to be good enough to be credible? If it’s the latter, then Maserati has done more than enough with the very good Levante. If it’s the former, then they at least need a flagship petrol engine with more power, if only to remind you that the Levante comes from one of the world’s great sports car brands.

It’s inevitable, given the sort of luxury SUVs people buy here, that Maserati would prioritise developing a turbo-diesel V6 for its very first SUV.

What’s a bit inexplicable for Australians who have loyally stayed with the brand through its ups and downs that they won’t even have the chance to try the five-metre SUV with a petrol engine.

It’s not for want of access to the right engines, either. Maserati already builds the Levante with the Ferrari-built 257kW and 316kW versions of the 3.0-litre V6 biturbo petrol motors from the Ghibli, but only in left-hand drive.

A business case for RHD V6 petrol models is under study, but even if it's successful, the more powerful version won't arrive here from the launch of the Levante diesel late this year.

There’s also the cracking twin-turbocharged V8 that sits inside a very select, and expensive, few Quattroporte bonnets, but Maserati never thought to engineer it for all-wheel drive work and isn’t even available in the Ghibli, much less the Levante.

So into a world of 700Nm and 800Nm turbo-diesel opponents, Maserati will drop the Levante into Australia with 202kW of power and 600Nm. Maserati insists it’s not going to join in an SUV power race and that it didn’t build the Levante with to be the fastest SUV in the market, but it’s a significant shortfall when so many of its rivals will offer more – even if diesels are 88 per cent of the large luxury SUV market.

It’s also a little too quiet (they’re working on it), which is odd from a brand that has always found a way to turn technical shortcomings into sheer emotion and charming, heart-rending, feel-good engine notes.

Other than that, the Levante turns out to be a surprisingly charming and comfortable bit of gear.

It handles with such aplomb, even on horridly broken pavement, that it’s difficult to imagine which of the aforementioned brands could live with it when the roads turn from power- to handling-dependent. Even Porsche.

Its front-end is supported by a double-wishbone suspension, while the rear-end is a five-link system developed off the Ghibli’s layout. It uses an adaption of the Ghibli’s Q4 all-wheel drive system that is, effectively, full-time rear-wheel drive and switches up to half its torque to the front diff in 100 milliseconds when it needs to. And the thing handles.

It hasn’t followed the trendline towards electro-hydraulic steering, preferring to stick with hydraulic steering, and it pays dividends, especially on the first part of the turn, where the Levante displays a steering delicacy its rivals would struggle to match.

It also deals with shocking road surfaces with disdain, keeping the body admirably flat and delivering almost none of the lateral head toss that plagues SUVs like the Mercedes-Benz GLE and GLS.

It might not go like you expect from a Maserati in a straight line, or sound like one, but it sure handles like one. There are times when you can feel the weight, like when it’s changing direction quickly, but most of the time it’s happy to whip through corners, fast or slow.

It’s incredibly stable when it’s being pushed hard, and it’s willing to change direction at a rate that’s scarcely credible at this weight. Its grip levels are extremely high (though Australia’s cars will have 265/50 ZR19 front tyres and 295/45 ZR19 rears, rather than the 20-inch tyres on the test car) and it’s easy to manage up to and beyond its limits.

The normal fall-back position is a slight understeering stance that’s easy to correct, and it’s helped by some torque vectoring via the brakes. Its ability to cover ground on winding mountain roads is, frankly, well beyond what’s necessary in the class. You could pull people out of AMGs and M5s and the Levante’s willingness to be flung from apex to apex would astound even them.

It’s just as comfortable if you dial the driving intensity back, too. It’s quiet and comfortable when it’s cruising, with little wind noise even at 140km/h and little road noise. The appalling road conditions magnified what little suspension and road noise the cars generated beyond all real-world levels and we expect this to be a non-factor in Australia.

It cruises with a genteel, quiet elasticity to the engine and a calm air in the cabin, helped inordinately by the suspension’s success at keeping the body flat and stable, whatever the road conditions.

It’s not light, but then none of them are up in the rarefied air at or above the Levante’s $150,000 entry ticket. The Australian Levante will be 2205kg, before anybody sits in it or gives it a drink, much less puts options on it, and it’s only a five-seater.

The VM-built diesel motor is honest and smooth, but it’s not the most sophisticated big diesel going around right now; not in a world with a tri-turbo BMW straight six diesel out there.

While you shouldn’t expect it to be the fastest or the most economical big diesel SUV out there, it’s quick enough for most jobs, climbing to 100km/h in 6.9 seconds and on to a 230km/h top speed.

Maserati has done an excellent job of keeping the engine both quiet and smooth, and it fires up gently and easily into a near-silent hum. In its default setting the engine is calm and unflustered, and it’s been very well isolated from the cabin.

Its torque peak arrives at 2000rpm and sticks around at the same level for another 600 revs, while the power peak hits at 4000rpm. It’s flexible most of the time and, when it isn’t, the ZF eight-speed automatic shuffles the gears around until the tacho needle drops into its strongest zones again.

It runs two different Sports modes, which you get at by pushing the Sport button either once or twice. The second version of Sport tightens everything up, but the first of them keeps the air suspension and active damping controls in their softer settings but puts only the powertrain into a Sports setting that includes opening the bypass flap to push the exhaust gases through an amplifying chamber.

The trouble with that is Maserati eschews the German ideas of amplifying the engine note via the car’s speakers, but the Levante’s sound insulation is so impressive that not enough of the amplified exhaust note makes it back into cabin, even when you want it to.

In Sport, its engine note sounds nothing like a diesel. It sounds nothing like a petrol engine, either. It sounds more like an offshore powerboat, with a smooth, deep rumbling that’s actually endearingly sweet to hear, if only you didn’t have to listen so hard for it.

It’s especially good on the downshifts, when you use the beautifully crafted aluminium paddles Maserati fixes to the steering column. It’s every bit as good left to its own devices in Sport mode, but the feel of the paddles is addictive and almost sensual.

That’s no accident, with Maserati employing similar ability to charm through design around the cabin. The top of the dashboard features two curved wings, clad in leather and stitched together with warm precision and the seats look beautiful and feel comfortable, even when the big machine is being hurled around Italian mountainsides.

There’s a centrally-mounted 8.4-inch multimedia display screen in the dash, controlled by a two-tier scroller on the centre console, plus it has another smaller screen between the tacho and speedo dials in the instrument cluster. It will also mate up to both Android and Apple phones.

The Australian cars will differ significantly from the stock Levante spec, scoring standard equipment like full electric seats, the reversing camera, 19-inch wheels and tyres and a mix that tends more to luxury than sport.

It puts the local arm in something of a quandary as it decides how to deliver the optional Luxury and Sport packs, because the standard car has a bit of each already, so there’ll be more news closer to the late December launch date.

What it doesn’t get as standard is the Zegna silk central seat trim, which is silk so heavily treated for longevity that, new at least, it feels like cotton. But, you know, silk. So there.

The Levante makes the most of its enormous 3004mm wheelbase to deliver generous front and rear legroom, and there is plenty of shoulder and foot space in the well-shaped, supportive rear seats as well.

Belatedly, it brings Maserati into the modern era of electronic assistance systems, including radar cruise control, lane-departure warning, blind-spot assistance, reversing cross-traffic warnings and autonomous braking. There’s even a button- or kick-operated tailgate to get at the 580 litres of standard, flat-floored luggage capacity.

Maserati claims it’s a useful operator off-road, which we tried on a modest unpaved section you could have feasibly driven a Falcon through, except for a couple of climbs and descents, where its hill descent control came into use.

But its optional 20-inch Pirelli P Zeros weren’t made with the Tanami Desert in mind. It’s calm and comfortable off-road, even though it’s hard to imagine that more than 0.0001 percent of all the Levantes Maserati plans to build will end up tackling anything harder than a muddy car park.

The Levante usually runs with 207mm of ride height, but lifts by 25mm in the first step of its off-road mode and by 40mm for low-speed, harder off-road work. It can also drop by 20mm in its 'aero 1' mode for speeds over 90km/h and by 35mm for higher speeds. It also drops by 45mm to let people climb in and out a bit easier.

Doing things easier seems to be a thing for the Levante. It oozes its 2.2 tonnes through tortuous mountain passes with a handling verve you might expect from something half its weight. It turns highways into a chance for a calm chat and it eats broken countryside with little more to intrude than some suspension bump thump.

It gains some more modern assistance systems that aren’t quite cutting edge, but now bring Maserati into a credible place in the class.

It’s big, capable of tremendous feats of handling, it’s comfortable inside and distinctive outside, and it has a wonderful sense of calm about it.

The Levante is a proper SUV, with proper comfort and a properly thought-through cabin. It has all the handling hot points of a proper Maserati, but it lacks straight-line speed and Maserati noise.

Sometime soon, Maserati needs to give it some more engine, especially for right-hand drive markets like Australia. After all, any number of SUV makers can do calm.

2016 Maserati Levante pricing and specifications:
Price: $150,000 (estimated)
On sale: December
Engine: 3.0-litre V6 turbo-diesel
Output: 202kW/600Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Fuel: 7.2L/100km
CO2: 189g/km
Safety rating: TBC