Maserati.Inc - Customer studies from the early days of the current Maserati GranTurismo coupe bear out one of our persistent complaints with the car: It’s too quiet and a little too anodyne for a vehicle wearing the chrome trident. The fix is to open ’er up, at least for those buyers who want a little extra Italian wattage.
A new, higher-heart-rate model, the GranTurismo MC, starts at $143,850 and promises to crank up the aural vibrato as well as the throttle response and curve-eating ability of the big coupe. (The company is introducing the Sport version of the GranTurismo convertible at the same time; click here for our first drive.)
Aural Fixation
Exclusivity? Naturally. History? Definitely. For Italian cars, we magazine writers have deployed all the acoustic metaphors, purple and otherwise, in our arsenal: wail, rip, shriek, snarl, buzz saw, warble, the “blood-chilling howl of a feral she-beast,” and so on.
However, generating “the Sound” is one place where Maserati has lately lagged its fellow Latin automakers. Unless you’re standing on it in sport mode, the GranTurismo speaks softly in a hissy and unconvincing dialect of the language of Lexus. Included in the MC’s touchups is a sport exhaust system that, besides being 12 pounds lighter than the base tubing, transmits more of the 4.7-liter V-8’s warbling, wailing, feral howl to the cabin. A little more, anyway. Activate sport mode, and the exhaust bypasses lock open for even more auditory pleasure.
It’s nowhere near as shriekalicious as a Ferrari 458, say, but luxury-oriented Maserati, with its smoother and more docile four-plane-crank, wet-sump version of the shared V-8, doesn’t care to be Ferrari. More Power, Quicker Shifts, New Vents!
Friction reduction accounts for the increase, says Maserati, thanks to the strategic use of “diamond-like coating,” an antifriction technology derived from Formula 1, on wear parts such as the cams and followers.
In auto-sport mode, a revised “MC Auto Shift” transmission program knocks up to 50 percent off the upshift times in the ZF six-speed automatic, claims Maserati. There are five control modes: auto-normal, manual-normal, auto-sport, manual-sport, and ice. In manual-sport, the MC gives you full control with the banana-shaped paddles, so bounce it off the rev limiter if you like. On downshifts, you get pleasing little throttle blips.
The throttle responds to minute changes in pedal angle, the revs coming on like a wave breaking on the sand. It’s clear why the houses of Ferrari—and by extension Maserati—have eschewed turbos. Nothing beats a free-breathing, purosangue Italian revver for establishing unity between engine and driver.
Besides the exhaust and extra horsepower, the MC gets special ducted front fenders and vented hood, rocker extensions, new front and rear bumpers with aero enhancements that improve downforce, and unique 20-inch wheels that shave 10 pounds total from the unsprung weight. Inside, there’s carbon-fiber interior trim that includes longer shift paddles.
The firm but comfortable seats remain the same as the base coupe’s, partly because Maserati doesn’t see itself as a carbon-fiber-race-bucket type of automaker and partly because of the high cost of recrashing the car for federal certification, a requirement when you swap out the seats.
The MC comes standard with a basic coil-over suspension. Skyhook, with its cockpit-adjustable electronic shocks, is an option, but the car doesn’t really need it. The base setup allows some modest roll and pitch, which leaves the MC still feeling like the large and weighty grand tourer that it is. We’ve found in other Maseratis that the Skyhook’s sport setting just makes the bumps harsher while doing little for handling. If you want a car that reads every bump like a Braille whiz, may we show you a Porsche 911 Turbo?
Base price to base price, the MC is $17,000 more than the base GranTurismo S automatic coupe, but when you factor in all that is standard on the MC and available as an option on the base GT (mostly appearance items such as carbon-fiber interior trim for $2550 and Alcantara headliner for $1750), the price difference is about $3515.
For that sum, you get the MC’s extra horsepower, the zippy exhaust, the special hand-modified fenders and hood, and the unique wheels. Competitors to the MC include the $104,375, 510-hp Jaguar XKR and Porsche 911 flavor of your choice. The MC asks for more money but offers Italian heritage, machismo, and rarity in return.
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