ITALIAN TAKE ON SPORT UTILITY
Maserati powered by Ferrari engine
TABIANO CASTELLO, ITALY I am going to ask a seemingly obvious question. Nonetheless, it’s a serious query, one a few of you — actually, maybe more than a few of you — may have to answer sometime around this coming Labour Day: Would you like a sport-utility vehicle powered by a Ferrari engine?
It doesn’t seem like a serious question, right? I mean, who wouldn’t want an SUV with a Ferrari engine underhood?
Now I am going to make the question seem ridiculous: How would you like an SUV powered by a Ferrari engine for $85,000?
I know your answer. “Eightyfive-thousand bucks? I thought the bloody engines alone cost that much. So $85,000 for an entire SUV — a leather-wrapped, luxury SUV no less — and a Ferrari powertrain?
“And what’s this? It’ll also tow 2,725 kilograms? You’re saying an SUV with a Ferrari engine that will tow my Malibu Wakesetter 24-footer for about the price of a Porsche Macan? Now you’re just messing with me.”
But I’m not. Maserati — conveniently, for the hallucination conjured above, is owned by Fiat Chrysler which, as you know, also owns Ferrari — has taken its Ghibli sedan and crafted a sport brute on its skeleton, just like so many luxury automakers before it have done. And, like the Ghibli, this new SUV, the Levante you’ve been reading so much about, is powered by a twin-turbo V-6 built in Maranello on the very same production line as engines destined for Ferraris.
An updated version of the 3.0-litre powering the Ghibli sedan, this built-by-Ferrari, massaged-by-Maserati twin turbo is nothing short of incredible. Smooth and sophisticated as one expects in a luxury sled, it is also, at 345 horsepower for the base version and 424 horses for the S, impressively powerful and surprisingly frugal. But what sets it apart, why your Porsche Macan-owning neighbour is going to be just dripping with envy, is the sound.
Anyone can engineer volume; few can choreograph tone.
It’s especially hard in a V-6, making the harmonies spilling out of the Levante’s twin tailpipes all the more impressive. More contralto than basso profundo the Maserati’s engine is at once frenetic and precise, so seemingly distinct is each individual combustion that one hears every one as individual retort rather than just muddled boom.
Zipping up and down the gearbox, the high-revving 3.0-L engine is doing its manic best to emulate a Formula One racer; it’s easy to forget one is behind the wheel of an SUV.
And it is very much a sport utility vehicle. It is large — longer than a Porsche Cayenne in both wheelbase and overall length — and the base Levante weighs in at a healthy 2,113 kg.
The Levante, however, drives much smaller. When a driver flings it through Italian mountaintop switchbacks, it seems to shed four or five hundred of those kilos. The top-of-the-line 424-hp version fairly zips down the straights while Maserati’s Skyhook suspension keeps the meaty Pirellis glued to the road.
One expects such con brio from anything Italian, even more so from something wearing Maserati’s trident badge. But what of its utilitarian abilities? Sport is, after all, only half of the SUV formula. How does the Levante measure up with other utes when the going gets rough?
Not too darn bad, thank you very much. It’s no Land Rover Discovery or even a Range Rover Evoque, but the Levante nonetheless has adequate off-road bona fides (apart from those comparatively “slick” Pirellis).
Maserati’s all-wheel-drive system can vary from a 100:0 rear-to-front torque split to 50:50 in just 150 milliseconds; the variable-speed hill-descent control system makes slippery inclines a doddle, and thanks to a two-position “off-road” air suspension system, the Levante can boost its ground clearance by some 40 millimetres when gravel turns to actual rock.
Nonetheless, the miracle of this Maserati, and to a lesser degree the Ghibli it is based on, is that it offers all the emotional appeal of an Italian sports car with at least a healthy portion of the clinical pragmatism that is, after all, the reason to buy a sport utility vehicle.