Rating: 🌕🌑🌑🌑🌑
What would you expect from the second cheapest Maserati? Italian passion and elegance at a (slightly) lower price? Speed? Beauty? Quality? Well, you’d be wrong. It’s none of those things.
The Ghibli was released in 2013 as an attempt for the brand to sell more cars. Immediately, motoring journalists tore it to shreds- they lamented its rubbish interior, boring engines, and poor driving dynamics. A decade on, and those criticisms are even more relevant.
Obviously, it’s not exactly the same car as it was in 2013; it has a new engine (with hybrid assistance), a slightly updated interior, and tweaked exterior styling. However, one thing is obvious: you can’t polish a turd.
Let’s start with the interior. The buttons and switches feel cheap – because they are – most of them are from the Fiat-Chrysler parts bin. The seat is always in completely the wrong position, no matter how you adjust it; you can’t really tell where the front of the car is, yet you feel like you’re sitting on top of it. The b-pillar is right in your field of vision, so you feel like you’re driving with blinkers on. The leather feels cheap. In the back, there’s an embarrassingly small amount of space; it’s a car the size of a BMW 5-series that seems to have less space than a 3-series.
Things get no better when you start driving. The engine (a 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo, taken from Alfa Romeo) is slow to respond and suffers from immense turbo-lag. The gearbox is also slow to respond; and, being a hybrid, the car is very heavy (nearly 1900kg). The result of all of this is a car with the agility of a beached whale. Supposedly, there are 330 horses under that bulging bonnet, but it seems to me that they’ve been supplied without their legs. Usually, in a vaguely powerful automatic car, making overtakes is easy. You stab the throttle, and the car takes off. This doesn’t work here. It caught me out multiple times on motorways, where I tried to exploit a gap, and by the time my telegram had reached the engine, the gap was long gone.
It’s not even as if it’s a comfortable car. The car I drove came on 21” wheels, which were plainly stupid. I wouldn’t say the ride was offensively uncomfortable, but it was nowhere near as refined as you’d expect from a near-£80,000 luxury car. The trade-off can’t even be felt when you hit a twisty road; the steering gives you no confidence, and the car rolls like a cruise ship when you try to have some fun. For a brand with a storied history of racing and building sports cars, this is the opposite of what you’d expect.
I don’t even think it’s a particularly pretty car. Some people do seem to love it, but I think it just looks strange. It looks almost overgrown- it’s a really big car when you actually stand next to it- and it’s full of awkward bulges and blisters which just do nothing for me.
So, who is this car for? Posers. Brand snobs. I can’t think of a single good thing about this car – other than the trident badge on the front. If you want to suffer, but look rich, this is your car. I seriously think that 75,000 McDonalds cheeseburgers would be a better use of £75,000. Just buy an Alfa Romeo Giulia – it’s a miles better car – and it’s half the price. Plus, people who know about cars won’t think you’re a prat.
