2008-06-20 06:17:07
This just in: studio shots of the 2009 Quattroporte:
The first time I’d ever heard of a Maserati was when I was a boy going to the sports car races with my dad, and there was a colorful character (still a colorful character, and now a friend) named Oscar Kovaleski, who raced a red Maserati that was #54, and on the side of the car he had painted, “Car 54 Where Are You?” after a popular comedy TV show of the time, about two hilarious cops, one real tall and one real short. The short one was named Gunther Toody, whose expression was “ooh-ooh,” and one time—just one time—when I was 15, I said “ooh-ooh” upon being dealt a good hand in a poker game with my buddies, who called me “Toody,” and it stuck, all through high school.
But we were talking about Maseratis. In all my years of road-testing cars, I had never driven one until recently, when Ron Tonkin GT in Portland provided me with a Maserati Quattroporte for a week, to test for www.newcartestdrive.com, where my extensive review is posted.
PHOTOS BY JEFFREY ZURSCMEIDE
EXTERIOR
Its gorgeous, it’s sexy, it’s Italian. Lines created by the legendary Pininfarina. And the best part is, it’s not a Ferrari. Not that Ferraris are bad, just that everyone knows what Ferraris are.
Quattroporte means “four door,” but you have to count the door handles to tell, which is too easy to do because they’re chrome, at least on the model I tested. God, I hate that. Chrome. It’s so Fifties. Maserati blew a chance to be even more beautiful, although the Quattroporte GTS model does it right with body-colored handles.
Chrome or not, the QP (as it’s known around the Tonkin showroom) is about the sexiest sedan you’ll ever see, and its Italian craftsmanship reflects passion.
With the striking lines, Pininfarina shows them all how it should be done, without tricks (except for three little portholes, touches that work, and I’d never say they were copied from a 1955 Buick Roadmaster, but …. come to think of it, does anyone know the origin of the porthole?).
It’s long, with a wheelbase of 120.6 inches, but when you look at the car, all you see is the beautiful long hood. However from the driver’s seat, the hood doesn’t look long at all, and that’s quite a great trick. Through the windshield, the car actually has a cab-forwardish feel.
That open oval grille is puckered out like Sophia Loren offering a kiss, and it’s stunning whether with the chrome bars or black mesh in the GTS. I go for the racy black mesh, of course. And in the center of the grille there is the Maserati Trident, the best-looking emblem in cardom, even cooler than Jaguar’s leaping cat.
Unlike a BMW, which feels the need to sculpt swoops and scallops in its search for eternal beauty, the Maserati is smooth. And it works. There’s nothing plain about the Quattroporte, but nothing gratuitous; and don’t call me on those ports. The QP is simply the cleanest sedan with style that I can think of.
Even the tail is totally clean, no lip or spoiler, which makes you wonder if it’s all true what they say about lips and spoilers being necessary to keep a car planted to the pavement at high speed, as the Quattroporte can do 170 mph, and will certainly be running at 130 or more on motorways in Europe, a lot.
INTERIOR
The interior is roomy for a car this low and stylish, but it’s really all about the quality of its leather and wood, with nine shades of leather and six types of wood to choose from. Mine had Tanganyka wood and Poltrona Frau leather, which I mention not because it means anything but just because the names are juicy. Even though one might say that cows are cows, leather isn’t always necessarily just leather. The Italians do a good job there, too. Shoes, anyone?
The steering wheel has controls, but they’re as confusing as an Italian election, at least to me. I did like the mute button located there. There’s another button on the steering wheel that says INFO, but despite repeated pressing no information appeared in any little windows on the instrument panel. I’m sure that somewhere, deep in the manual, is the info required to learn how to operate the INFO button.
Too many knobs require too many moves resulting in too much distraction to get where you want to go with the radio, even after you learn the drill. I should save that sentence, to insert in too many car reviews. I just encountered the same issue with a Saturn Astra. A simple Saturn!
My Quattroporte had a navigation system but no disc, so I couldn’t test it, which was maybe just as well. See my "Navigation Nightmares" blog.
The gas mileage computer is crazy, as it calculates the range based on your mileage in the previous mile or so. This results in readings like this: after some hot driving, the distance to empty was 98 miles. I then drove 26 miles at an easy pace, and the distance to empty magically grew to 277 miles. The overall mileage will be somewhere around 15 mpg, which doesn’t seem that low, but low enough that the QP gets hit with a $2600 gas guzzler tax.
The gauges are nice, having a blue background with white notches around the rim of the speedo on the left and tach (redline 7500!) on the right, both with that Trident sign again, just to remind you of your Maserati-ness, as if you could forget. There are also oil and water temp gauges, with red needles, same as the speedo and tach. White notches within the gauges turn lime green at night. Now write your own sentence in this space. I’m kind of at a loss, unable to say “lime green” and “Maserati” in the same sentence.
ON THE ROAD
The engine is a new 4.2-liter V8 that revs to 7500 rpm. It's silky, sweet and sensual, while still being visceral. Silky and visceral is a combination that’s so very rare. Italian passion pulls it off. It will be nice when Alfa Romeo returns to the U.S., and we can feel more of that.
The 90-degree V8 motor uses double overhead cams and aluminum block and heads. It makes 400 horsepower at 7000 rpm, and 339 pound-feet of torque at 4250 rpm. Those are strong numbers, although the QP isn’t trying to be a BMW M5 or Mercedes C43 AMG, which have more power. However, the QP beats the horsepower of the BMW 750 (367 hp), Mercedes S500 (388 hp) and Audi A8 (335 hp). In torque, it’s Mercedes, BMW, Maserati and Audi, in that order.
The GTS has a racing dry sump oiling system, clearly overkill for the street, unless your street has 30-degree banking.
The suspension is active, meaning that sensors make infinite adjustments in the shock absorbers and other dynamics, depending on the movements of the wheels and chassis. The resulting ride is flawless, neither too soft nor too firm, at any time. There’s a Normal and Sport mode that respond appropriately, during casual driving, and I did a 100-mile run over some of my favorite curves through a remote forest here in the Pacific Northwest.
The cornering is exciting because it’s so precise, thanks mostly to a double wishbone suspension front and rear, and excellent 51/49 weight distribution. Even with its long wheelbase of 120 inches, the Quattroporte is nimble.
The 6-speed manual automatic transmission with optional paddle shifters is responsive, and, for those who want their Italian sedan to be more like a Formula One car, there is another transmission, called the DuoSelect, an electrically actuated 6-speed manual. But there’s one thing: the DuoSelect has been discontinued in 2008, I suspect because there were problems. These transmissions aren’t easy. But some dealers still have 2007 models with the DuoSelect, if you must have one.
Around town, the Quattroporte is as easy to drive as a Toyota. It comes into its element at high speeds, and inspires confidence when driven at those speeds. This reflects the high engineering quality of the car. Too bad we live in a world where it’s illegal to use such technology to its capability.
Only one thing. The brakes aren’t up to the capabilities of the engine and transmission. I discovered this when I flew down a steep freeway offramp, and was startled when the Maserati resisted a sharp halt at the stop sign. Subsequent stabs of the brakes confirmed that they’re not up to the task demanded by a car like this. Owners will indeed be running well over 100 mph with the QP, in Europe if not over here.
The impressive specs of the brakes make their weakness a mystery. They’re Brembos, the best, with big 13-inch ventilated rotors and four-piston calipers.
Interestingly, Road & Track magazine tested the Quattroporte Sport GT, and it stopped from 60 mph in a mere 116 feet. The Sport GT rotors are cross-drilled (for cooling) and the brake lines are braided steel. The brake lines on the plain Quattroporte, like our test model, are rubber. Steel lines reduce stopping distances, by preventing the expansion that occurs in rubber lines, thus increasing pressure on the calipers, felt in a firmer pedal. Tonkin GT confirmed that the QP’s rubber brake lines could be changed to steel braided lines. Just do it.
The engine loves to rev, and it sings at higher rpm. It doesn’t rev particularly quickly, but it’s so incredibly sweet up at 6000 or so. And unlike some V8s (the AMG Mercedes for example), it doesn’t sound under-stressed, as if the redline is set too low; no, the Maserati screams like 7500 rpm is indeed the limit. This is a good thing. It makes you feel like you’re using all your car, and leaves you fulfilled.
Three hundred and thirty-nine pound-feet of torque is certainly healthy, but because it comes at 4250 rpm, you need to use the transmission more. Maserati says that 75 percent of that torque is available at 2500 rpm, but, climbing a hill at 70 mph and 2100 rpm in 6th gear, I put my foot down without downshifting, it didn’t exactly zoom. The QP can manage such lazy acceleration, it’s just that the sweet engine deserves a downshift.
The electronically controlled twin wishbone suspension, which Maserati calls Skyhook, is excellent. Sensors monitor wheel and chassis movement and make shock absorber adjustments, 10 times faster than some other systems, claims Maserati. It uses anti-dive and anti-squat geometry, to keep the nose and tail level under braking and acceleration. There’s a Normal and Sport mode, and they responded appropriately, during casual driving and when I did my 100-mile run through the forest.
I drove the QP over a lot of different surfaces, and found no harsh spots nor soft spots, and that’s saying a lot. I drove it hard over twisty bumpy roads, and on the freeway over familiar bumps that jar other cars, for example the Mercedes C43 AMG. The precision of the chassis in those corners gives you the same kind of satisfaction that the engine gives you at 6000 rpm.
The QP is a mostly a driver’s car, but, unlike some other good driver’s cars, it won’t get you in trouble unless you mess up, not merely when you make a small error, like some good driver’s cars.
The steering is quick and precise, although with a car this size, it’s never going to feel like a go-kart. Still, you have to pay attention, or else you might find the car wandering. The balance is exceptional, with a weight distribution of 49/51, mostly because the engine is located behind the front axle—a touch farther back than the BMW 750, a few inches farther back than the Mercedes S500, and way farther back than the Audi A8,with its 56/44 weight distribution.
The six-speed manual automatic transmission is great. It’s programmed to allow the driver to make his own decisions. It will short shift, for example, allowing an upshift under hard throttle at rpm’s well under redline.
In automatic mode, in fact, when you’re accelerating and you lift off the throttle, it will upshift. That’s the total opposite of many such transmissions, and sort of proves a point I often make: there is no right or wrong technique, there’s only what the driver wants.
You can make some aggressive downshifts with the paddle shifters, more aggressive than most transmissions will allow. Into second, for example, which is a good thing because the brakes can use that engine compression to help slow the car. The QP transmission will even take a downshift into first, to help slow the car to a stop, and that’s fairly rare. The engine growls nicely during the downshift into 2nd, but it’s not programmed to rev-match by an automatic blip of the throttle. In some other cars, that’s fun, and contributes to smoother downshifts.
End
Sam Moses
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