Maserati Gran Turismo – For The Executive Driver
If you love cars like I do, but also want a car that you can drive around the city, go into underground car parks with the high speed bumps without having to worry about the bottom scraping on the concrete, you might want to take a look at the Maserati Gran Turismo – it offers you the best of both worlds – a car you can drive to office, and functions to give you the respectability of being a top executive, yet give you the opportunity to feel the freedom of being able to be a driver every once in a while.
Take a step back to 1947 – this was when the idea of putting a racing engine into a road going car was born in Italy – resulting in the very first Maserati Gran Turismo, the A6 1500 GT Pininfarina.
The Maserati Gran Turismo is still built on the same philosophy as the very first model way back before I was born, but today, you have a 4.2 litre engine pulling 405 bhp at a screaming 7,100 rpm, with 400Nm of torque ever ready to punch you and your Gran Turismo from zero to 100 km/h in 5.2 seconds flat. Add to this all the creature comforts that you would want in a luxury coupe, two door, but seats four comfortably, and you have a great machine that you can not only enjoy on weekends, but drive to work on a daily basis as well.
Maserati have managed to put a thoroughbred racing engine, taken from the Ferrari stables, and tame it enough to be driven on the road without any fuss or bother. It comes as an automatic, with six speeds and enough flexibility to allow you to crawl in city traffic, and yet, when you get to the open roads, it will take you up to 285 kilometres per hour without any hesitation. If you find the power lacking, you can opt for the larger capacity Gran Turismo S, which has another 500 cc additional engine capacity, and thirty five horses more.
I was invited for a short spin in the Gran Turismo by Naza Italia, the newly appointed distributors of the Maserati brand, and I took a short drive in the car, chaperoned by the PR people. It was a short drive, enough to allow me to get a feel of the car; actually it was a kind of a re-visit for me, having tested the car a year or so ago in Singapore, as a guest of the previous distributors.
The drive was just as good, only this time I was not restricted to the 80 km/h speed limit of Singapore streets. Not that I could go all the way to reach the top speed, as traffic conditions around Petaling Jaya did not permit that. Still, it was exhilarating enough to feel the G-forces pushing me back into the seat on hard acceleration, and the negative G pulling me forward as I braked to slow down for traffic. The Maserati pulls effortlessly all the time, and although the engine is not any bigger in capacity as some of the other luxury makes, it is tuned for outrageously quick response to throttle demand; like I said earlier, it is a road car with a race engine, and if you do not think a Ferrari engine is quick enough, you will have to search far and wide to find another of the same capacity that can give you your thrills.
It is not as responsive as a Ferrari, which has more of a bare bones construction and is lighter; the Maserati is made for day to day driving, and has the convenience of an automatic, plus all the luxurious trim and creature comforts that are associated with a car in the highest premium range.
You can invoke manual shifting through the use of the F1 type shift paddles located behind the steering if you want, but if you want a leisurely drive, just leave it in auto.
We didn’t go far; I wish that I could have spent more time with it, but even with the short stint, it rekindled the love of driving a fast car in me again.
The asking price of a Maserati Gran Turismo is a couple of hundred grand over a million ringgit, which makes it the playground of only a select and exclusive few; even a second hand one will still cost a bundle; but if you have the money to blow on one, you will probably never regret it.
