Italian is a wonderful language, with rich, mellifluous syllables that roll around the tongue like vintage wine, making the mundane sound magical, the descriptive delightful. Maserati Quattroporte sounds like someone spent a lot of time finding a cool name for a hugely charismatic luxury sedan. Actually, they named it for what it is: a four-door. Same goes for the new Maserati GranTurismo. It is, literally, a grand tourer. It is not a sports car.

That much is clear the moment you hurl the GranTurismo up a mountain pass. The 4.2-liter V-8 bellows with a tenor growl that gets a metallic edge to it above 5500 rpm, and fanning the paddle shifters ensures quick, crisp shifts from the six-speed automatic transmission in manual mode. Pressing the sport button on the dash increases throttle response 20 percent, stiffens the dampers noticeably, and keeps the torque converter locked during shifts that are 40 percent faster than normal. But the big Maserati coupe does not like to be hurried. It feels...languid. In every way.

There might be 400 horsepower under that sculpted hood, but it doesn't arrive until a dizzy 7100 rpm, and the torque peak of 339 pound-feet doesn't occur until 4750 rpm. It's a screamer, this engine, but it has to haul around 4362 pounds of luxury-laden coupe through an automatic transmission. Although based on a cut-down Quattroporte platform -- 4.8 inches have been taken out of the wheelbase, 2.6 aft of the rear axle -- this is still a big car, about the size of a CL Benz.

The test numbers tell the story. The 0-60-mph sprint takes 4.9 seconds, respectable, but by no means outstanding these days. The quarter mile is over in 13.5 seconds with a trap speed of 104 mph. The figure eight takes 25 seconds, with an average lateral acceleration of 0.74 g. A regular Pontiac G8 GT, which costs a quarter the price, will run within 10 percent of any of those numbers.

But the track data don't reveal the whole picture. Out on the mountain roads, the combination of peaky engine and automatic trans means you can't modulate the throttle to get enough weight transfer to the outside rear tire through the turns. Hard cornering is therefore a fairly one-dimensional affair, almost entirely dependent on how well you judge your braking and initial turn-in, and then reliant on the grip from the big Pirelli PZero tires (our tester was fitted with $2900 worth of optional 20-inch wheels).

Problem is, the brake pedal feels like you're stomping through foam rubber onto a block of wood. Oddly, on the track, these stoppers (with calipers painted titanium for $600), proved amazing, generating five 101-foot stops from 60 mph in quick succession. But you have to grenade the pedal, and that's not always the right option on the road.

The steering, meanwhile, takes a siesta every time you pull the nice wood and leather steering wheel (another option, this time $1000) off-center. Up in the mountains, pinballing from apex to apex, it's almost impossible to place the car as accurately as you'd like on the entry into the turns. The GranTurismo's front end also feels like it's on tippy-toes-a bit like the old coupe-and on the freeway, you're constantly chasing the nose of the car, making tiny corrections that are amplified by the steering's dead-zone. The gluey weighting of the steering, presumably designed to make the front end feel less busy on the freeway, also effectively strangles any feedback from the Pirelli PZeros up front, making it almost impossible to judge exactly what the front end is up to.

Force the issue -- hustle the GranTurismo as you would a Jaguar XKR or a Z06 or a 911 -- and it retreats into sulky understeer, the stability-control system muttering under its breath. It's best to back off to eight-tenths or less and go with the flow of the road. Brake early, then turn in for the apex (if you can find it past the thick A-pillars), lean on the tires to maintain corner speed, and have patience before you squeeze on the gas. Magically, you find the big Maserati settles into a rhythm, a pace that's maybe not as fast as you think it ought to be, but deceptively quick and relatively effortless nonetheless. In other words, grand touring.

The finer points of chassis dynamics will be largely academic for the majority of American GranTurismo buyers, however. That's because this car does some of its best work at just 25 mph, idling through Beverly Hills, South Beach, the Hamptons, and other areas awash with SL Benzes and 6 Series BMWs, offering genuine exoticar cachet -- "Look! A Maserati!" -- at a fraction of the price of Bentley Continental GTs, DB9 Astons, or Ferrari F430s. Despite the horrors such as hand-grenade Biturbos and the Iacocca-inspired Chrysler TC, Maserati's storied history in Grand Prix and sports car racing gives the marque a raffish, olde-worlde charm.

The GranTurismo is also a surprisingly useful coupe-about-town. Leave the transmission to shift itself, switch off the sport mode, and the big Maserati will loaf from brunch to the golf course to the valet front row at the best hotel in town, with a tasteful hint of Italian brio from the quad exhaust when you gun it away from the traffic lights. Standard equipment includes sat-nav (though it's not the most intuitive interface in the business), 11-speaker Bose audio, and power everything. And unlike most other 2+2 GTs you can think of-the Jag XK, Bentley Conti GT, BMW 6 Series-it has a truly useable rear seat (six-footers will find the headroom tight, but you only need the seat 1.5 inches from its rearmost position to sit without splayed knees) plus a good-size trunk.

The interior dcor is classic Italian-no one does pale leather and dark carpet better than the Italians-but the details betray development budgets that cannot match those of Bentley or Audi. Details like the one-color-suits-all black seatbelts and black plastic parts in the center console and the gaping seams around the airbag enclosures in the dash and the doors (Maserati can't afford to certify tear-away materials for airbags that deploy at different rates for different markets).

This car's predecessors, the Coupe and GranSport, were oddly pedestrian-looking. That's been fixed, emphatically. The GranTurismo is voluptuous, sexy, gorgeous. Pininfarina's lascivious hips and haunches put curves in all the classical sports car places, without resorting to the self-consciously retro cues of recent Ferraris. It has real character and head-turning street presence.

Enthusiasts expecting a sports car will be disappointed by the GranTurismo. It needs more power and torque (or to go on a diet). It needs better steering and better brake feel. (Actually, that sounds a lot like the product spec for the forthcoming GranTurismo S, which adds a proper paddle-shift manual transmission into the bargain.) But the GranTurismo is a car so dripping with charisma, you can almost forgive its faults. As a luxurious coupe-about-town, it's a distinctive alternative to the Benzes and Bentleys that currently dominate the segment. Just remember, it's a grand tourer. Not a sports car.

[source: Motor Trend]

 

Nice photo