Maserati Quattroporte GTS 2016 Review

Maserati Quattroporte GTS
Road Test

Maserati’s flagship the Quattroporte GTS doesn’t have the safety or convenience features you’d expect but still manages to blend sedan practicality with raw power and style. Priced from $331,000 (plus on-road costs), it will enter the garages of a select few in this country, but that’s half the appeal…

The Italians don’t do boring high-performance cars — the Maserati Quattroporte GTS is a perfect example. It has the presence, speed and style that you expect from an iconic Italian manufacturer with a reputation for building exciting cars.

Take a look at that wide-mouth grille. It only allows the radiator to gulp the large volumes of air it needs, but is also a key and very bold design signature that identifies this car as belonging to the Trident brand (in case you missed the huge Trident emblem on the grill and smaller one on the nose cone just above it).

The long, curvy body is a shapely counterpoint to the crisply ironed lines of some of its big German rivals. Or the ‘melted in an oven’ look of the S-class ‘Benz.

The heart and soul of this top-shelf Maserati sedan is a 3.8-litre, twin-turbo V8 engine. With 390kW and 650Nm (which can be overboosted to 710 Nm from 2250 rpm to 3500 rpm), it has the potential to zoom from rest to 100km/h in 4.7sec.

Despite the large outputs and short acceleration times, the Ferrari-derived V8 is docile and pliable in slow urban driving, albeit a bit too eager to launch on initial throttle application. You get used to it, but there’s also the ICE (In-creased Control Efficiency) feature, which at a press of a button turns the GTS into a Corolla auto. Well, not quite, but this mode makes throttle response less aggressive and the transmission more eager to shift up a gear, for slippery roads and improved fuel economy.

If you’re in a hurry though, you’ll ignore ICE, deselect Normal mode and go for Sport mode. The GTS undergoes a metamorphosis. The bi-modal exhaust valves are opened up, making the exhaust timbre change from a tenor to a baritone. The transmission is also put on notice, ready for the engine to do its best work by holding gears for longer and downshifting when it has sensed hard braking or trailing throttle downhill situations.

Aside from that initial turbo-lag burp, the alloy V8 lump is the provider of considerable grunt and sounds just sensational while delivering them. You’ll want to drop the windows just to hear the exhaust note in Sport mode, with its menacing bellow past 4000rpm. Not to mention its mad cackle when the transmission rev matches on downshifts.

Launching the GTS onto a freeway when its tyres already have some heat in them is a hoot. Its engine does its visceral howl thing, the eight speed transmission flicks though the gears and the big sedan palms you in the back like a bouncer kicking you out of a nightclub. Not that I have any idea what that’s like…

The big Maser turns in really well, although there’s some steering kick on rough roads that comes with it. Not like it wrenches the wheel from your hands, and boy is it worth it for the sublime steering feel.

Hustling the big GTS through corners, the 21in Pirellis grip really well and the large dollop of power available to yank it out of corners  makes it a very satisfying tool for reeling in the twisties. The Skyhook variable damping helps keep movement contained and the Quattroporte stays flat through the G-forces.

Get back to civilisation and forget to resume Normal mode and the GTS’s exhaust doesn’t burble but sounds like it’s passing wind; if you’re unfortunate to let it upshift at around 3500rpm.

You’ll also want to put the suspension into Comfort mode, where it will suppress the worst of lumpy and cratered road surfaces the GTS rolls over from coming through into the cabin.

If you’re in the city and in a bit of a hurry — but not looking to extract the most from the GTS — you’ll find the tyres just can’t get all that power to the ground. Soon after turbo boost kicks in, the engine stutters, the TC light blinks rapidly and your forward progress suddenly becomes a rather jerky one. At least traction control stops the drama before it unfolds.

You’d be either very brave or very stupid to disable TC on public roads. If you were on a private track and inclined to creating a lot of tyre smoke and lurid power slides, the GTS would be an excellent smoke machine.

So getting out of Sport and into ICE mode looks like the best choice for around-town driving: No embarrassing stuttering or flatulence.

We achieved 15.4L/100km in our time with the GTS, much of which was on the freeway. That’s a fair way off the official 10.7L/100km combined figure, but then if you’re buying a car like this you’re probably not scouring the glovebox for small change every time you fill up.

The 2016 Quattroporte range has been updated with blind-spot alert and rear cross-traffic alert and a boot lid that now opens and shuts with gesture control. That last bit, in case you hadn’t heard of it, is so that with hands full you can flick your foot under the back of the car and the boot opens (or shuts). You have to do it a certain way for it to work, or you’ll be there for a while executing a very poor dance routine.

The shame is that the GTS needs updating elsewhere and won’t get it in this generation. For a car that costs $331,000, you might hope that it would have keyless entry and start, and safety features such as lane departure warning, blind-spot monitoring or radar cruise control. Some of these will be resolved in next year’s face-lifted Quattroporte.

Get inside the GTS and you’ve got a leathered-up, wooded and chromed space that looks sumptuous, inviting and is well executed. The controls are all quite straight-forward and if you're of a generation where a wireless meant something else entirely, Maserati has retained those quaint things called knobs for audio volume/power and radio station tuning. The rest of the infotainment set-up is none other than Fiat Chrysler Australia’s Uconnect system.

So it all goes swimmingly inside until you notice that the front seats don’t offer much lateral support, the FCA parts-bin gear lever is frustrating to use (go to change a climate control setting and you’ve bumped the lever into Sport mode).

There’s ample storage up front for your soy decaf lattes and if you can’t see life without one, your Filofax will find a home in one of the ample door pockets too.

The back seat is all executive cosseting stuff, with a rear bench sculpted for two (just don’t be the fifth bod sitting on the high, hard centre seat) and there’s a heap of leg room and pretty good headroom. Although why you’d want to sit back there and get someone else to drive the GTS is beyond me.

The boot has decent 530-litre capacity, that can be increased for that Bunnings supplies run by dropping the 60/40-split rear seat. The 18-in temporary spare lives under the boot floor, and the boot aperture is wide and long enough so you won’t have to wedge gear into the boot as if it were a post box.

The Quattroporte GTS combines Italian style, comfortable accommodation and a rather large bucket load of performance and for the most part is a satisfying drive. More safety/convenience gear and more resolved traction in some instances would make it even better.

2016 Make Model Type pricing and specifications:
Price: $331,000 (plus on-road costs)
Engine: 3.8-litre V8 twin turbo-petrol
Output: 390kW/650Nm
Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Fuel: 10.7L/100km (NEDC Combined)
CO2: 250g/km (NEDC Combined)
Safety Rating: N/A

Also consider:
>> Audi S8 TFSI quattro (from $280,610 plus ORCs)
>> Jaguar XJR (from $300,275 plus ORCs)
>> Porsche Panamera GTS (from $319,700 plus ORCs)