Yahoo Autos 2021 Maserati Quattroporte Trofeo Needs to Be Weirder
The 2021 Maserati Quattroporte Trofeo isn't weird enough. It ought to be louder than a hyperactive calliope, styled using Dadaesque chaos theory, and have an interior designed for a lobster. The Quattroporte should be for lunatics, not people who just want a Lexus with garlic butter. Yes, the Quattroporte is Italian. But it needs to be really, really, deeply Italian. Like stupidly, insanely Italian.
The Trofeo is the high-performance version of the Quattroporte and sits in Maserati's line alongside the smaller Ghibli Trofeo sedan and the Levante Trofeo SUV. At $148,085 to start, the 580-hp, twin-turbo V-8-powered Trofeo is at the top of three-model Quattroporte line. That's two steps above the 424-horsepower, twin-turbo V-6 powered, rear-drive S model, and one step up from the $108,685 S Q4, which is the S but with all-wheel drive. The Trofeo is rear-drive only, making this the big, powerful, luxury four-door to buy if lurid burnouts are part of your commute.
Keep in mind that the impressions reported here come from limited exposure to proctored laps run around Southern California's Willow Springs International Raceway. More exposure to the Quattroporte Trofeo on actual streets is pending.
The Quattroporte name, Italian for four-door, goes back to 1963. The first Quattroporte was a zany looking, Frua-designed model that seemed untethered to convention or reason. The first Maserati with a V-8, it seemed to be cross-eyed and going six directions at once. Only 776 were built.
The second Quattroporte was a V-6-powered front-driver that shared its chassis with the Citroen SM and had an awkward and angular body from Bertone. The third generation reverted to rear drive and V-8 with a Giugiaro body. The fourth Quattroporte resorted to a sort of brutalist battleship design ethos. Imposing and massive, a case could be made that its famed supercar designer Marcello Gandini's least beautiful design. The Pininfarina-designed fifth-gen returned some of the elegance of the early generations. The in-house design of the current Quattroporte debuted in 2013 as a 2014 model and is the least adventurous of the bunch.
While it may be the least adventurous, it's the fastest of the predecessors. The 3.8-liter twin-turbo V-8 isn't new, having been offered in the current Quattroporte since 2014. The engine is a version of the V-8 Ferrari installs in all the current Ferrari models. But while the current Ferrari versions displace 3.9 liters and use a flat-plane crank, the trident's version has a shorter stroke and a traditional cross-plane crank. Yes, 580 horsepower is a lot of whinny, but the Maserati engine doesn't have the same rev-happy personality of the Ferrari powerplants nor does it have the same brilliant contralto staccato voice. It feels, in a word, compromised.
