MASERATI GRECALE
THE WORLD’S BEST WRITERS IN THE NEW CARS THAT MATTER
Maserati, currently on its 347th comeback, has a new SUV, the Grecale. We know it’s good. But is it Porsche Macan good?
The 300-mile test
NEW CAR MEETS REAL WORLD
Maserati wants to be Italy’s Porsche, and judging by rumours of a potential stock market listing, so does parent company Stellantis. Unfortunately, Maserati is more like Italy’s Jaguar, another brand with a history we’d probably call rich and colourful if many of the best bits hadn’t occurred so long ago they only happened in black and white.
But the winds could be changing for the brand whose naming department has always loved a good breeze. The firm’s MC20 supercar has been a critical hit, boosting the brand’s credibility, especially among younger buyers, and the new GranTurismo’s choice of Folgore electric and traditional combustion power options gives it a USP among GT cars. But Maserati really needs a volume player, particularly since the slow-selling Ghibli saloon is about to check out. And you can’t get much more ‘volume’ in the premium sector than a medium-sized SUV.
Maserati is betting big on the Grecale you see in these pictures, a car with some respectable DNA we’ll explain in a minute, and one aimed directly at Porsche’s most popular car, the Macan SUV. Porsche sold 86,724 examples of its smallest SUV in 2022, almost four times Maserati’s entire output for the year, so the opportunities are huge.
Like the Macan, the Grecale is available with various chilli counts. Horsepower junkies with pockets so deep they can scratch their knees without taking their hands out will go for the £99,700 Trofeo, a twin-turbo V6 weap-on with 523bhp that can storm from rest to 62mph in 3.8 seconds. But most buyers will be downsizing to the tune of at least two cylinders and 200 horses and, with only four cylinders, that tune isn’t going to be anywhere near as musical, sadly.
The £67,810 Modena swaps the Trofeo’s air springs for steel coils with adaptive dampers, and its 3.0-litre V6 for a 2.0-litre MHEV four kicking out 326bhp. Our entry-level GT gets the same basic hardware but loses 30bhp and the Modena’s adaptive dampers and limited-slip differential. At £61,570 it’s the cheapest way into a Grecale, if certainly not the cheapest way into a big-name premium SUV, and it’s the route most buyers are expected to take.
But with £1585 of optional rims adding an inch to each wheel to match the 20 inches of hardware fitted to the Modena and Trofeo, the base GT doesn’t look much less glamorous from the outside, the main difference being the chromed rather than black window trim (you can black out the GT’s surrounds for £1260) and grille gna
