Test: 2012 Maserati GranCabrio

CROWDED strips of sand and concrete adjoining Trieste’s dazzling Miramare castle are adorned with topless sunbathers soaking up the far-eastern Italian seaside sun.
The beauties are cause for a glance. But they’re eclipsed by a far younger topless model, the latest Maserati convertible with a more potent engine and sports-oriented body details.
Maserati has perfected the art of using subtle changes to appeal to new buyers.
Tweaks to the GranCabrio Sport, however, have turned an attractive convertible into one with more appealing driving characteristics.

VALUE: The GranCabrio Sport is expected in Australia in December and, on likely exchange rates, it will land for less than $350,000.
That’s a premium of about $20,000 on the current and ongoing GranCabrio.
What do you get? There’s a more sporty line of body gear, such as a front splitter, side sills, black grille and headlight surrounds plus 20-inch wheels. The greater value is in the slightly more powerful engine, firmer suspension and an enhancement of the world’s best exhaust note. The modest changes to the body sharpen its street cred and the engine note is certainly headturning. But is this lot worth the extra loot? Maybe not.

DESIGN: The Sport reprises the existing GranCabrio but with the additions mentioned. In honing the model and creating a new, high-priced variant of the convertible, Maserati is gilding the lily.
It seats four people — yes, adults can fit in the back for short trips — and the ride comfort is very good for a car that has been worked over in the suspension department.
It’s equally quiet and comfortable with the electrically operated fabric roof up or down. The boot is small and in the test car, was practically filled by the addition of the fold-out wind deflector.
Cabin treatment is excellent, falling over only in the placement of some switches behind the steering wheel where they are invisible to the driver, and a satnav system that isn’t up to Japanese standards.

TECHNOLOGY: Maserati makes a song and dance out of the extra 8kW and additional 20Nm. More important is the friction-reduction campaign that has reduced fuel consumption and emissions by 6 per cent to 14.5L/100km and 337g/km CO2.
The result is 331kW/510Nm for a 0-100km/h time of 5.2 seconds. That’s a mere 0.1 second faster than the 323kW/490Nm standard version.
The ZF box gets longer steering wheel paddle shifters made of carbon fibre, which is dotted around the interior as a trim material.
The box changes gears twice as fast as the existing model and blips on downshifts. Manual mode will allow the engine to run to the rev limiter.
Suspension springs are 15 per cent stiffer and the dampers are firmer, too. The brake rotors are ventilated, drilled and slotted to minimise fade.

SAFETY: Standard kit includes stability and traction control, six airbags and automatic pop-up roll bars.

DRIVING: The sport button on the dash is the most important control in this car. Press it and, at 2500rpm, baffles within the exhaust pipe twist open and immediately the heads on every passer-by twists on cue.
The sound of the exhaust is hair raising. Outside Trieste, heading north-west towards Italy, roadway tunnels became auditoriums for the moving symphony of the GranCabrio Sports. The coupe plays the same music but with the roof down you can immerse yourself in that mechanical howl.
It weighs 100kg more than the coupe — a good result given the need to stiffen the chassis — but you wouldn’t know it. This is a quick car, made even more so by using the paddle shifters to climb up and down the six-cog box.
The ride is really surprising. I ran over everything from dodgy bitumen on narrow mountain passes to beautiful freeways and never did the car buck through the bends or shake or creak, and occupants remained unfazed by the bumps.
It is excellent but at $350,000, you’d expect as much. The dashboard — in fact the whole car — is very well made and indicative of how far Maserati has come.

VERDICT: It’s clearly Italian with its showy styling, loud exhaust and ability to sprint. Despite its exotic tag, it’s a real pussycat to drive. But the value equation struggles against rivals.

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