Teamspeed First Drive: Maserati Ghibli S Q4

There’s something intrinsically pleasing about testing cars in Italy. Especially fast cars. You sort of know that this could be your one and only chance to drive faster than you really should. Never again will you be able to experience the magnificence of the most challenging Italian roads with apparent impunity. Why? Because the police seem to work somewhere else when Ferrari, Lamborghini or Maserati are demonstrating their latest wares.

Simply writing this down could be the biggest mistake I have made in my journalistic career. Next time they’ll probably be waiting right around the corner for me in a unmarked van with bars at the windows. Yet I won’t easily forget the time local polizia made the foolish error of stopping no less than four Ferrari 458 Spiders simply because they made a lot of noise. It had to be explained to him how these things work.

And so it was that I was in Tuscany to evaluate the new Maserati Ghibli on roads with nonsensically low speed limits that occasionally had to be taken with a pinch of salt. Not in the villages or near cyclists, but in the middle of nowhere they were fair game.

The Ghibli is intended to be the car that opens up the world to Maserati. Last year it sold fewer than 7,000 cars. By 2015, it aims to sell 50,000. No, that’s not a typo. The BMW 5 Series-sized Ghibli and the forthcoming Levante SUV are the cars to build the volume, they say.

The Ghibli gets a new 3.0-litre V6. The single turbo version produces 330hp, the twin-turbo S 410hp. Handy figures, which though not at M5 or E-Class AMG level, promise entertainment. Significantly, for Europe, there’s the first ever Maserati diesel, also a 3.0-litre V6 with 275hp.

The base 330hp Ghibli is not to be dismissed lightly. It makes all the right noises, zings through the rev range and, if you take it by the scruff of the neck, is genuinely entertaining. Driver enjoyment is directly related to how much you put into the experience in the first place.