Super-GT mega test: Aston Martin vs Ferrari vs Maserati

There’s some debate about exactly who invented the grand touring coupé but very little about where, in national terms, it happened.

The popular response to the question of what the first and defining example was is the 1951 Lancia Aurelia B20 GT (extra credit if you reel off the whole lot in a mockney twang, like Paul Whitehouse in his grocer’s apron).

It could have been the 1948 Ferrari 166 Inter, though, or the 1947 Maserati A6 – or something pre-war, even. Wherever the credit eventually comes to rest, however, the gran turismo was definitely given life and then popularised in Italy.

And rather regrettably, it might have just been slaughtered in Warwickshire. That’s because, as far as Aston Martin is concerned, the grand tourer concept, although fine for the likes of its own DB5, Mercedes-Benz’s 300 SL, Jaguar’s E-Type and Ferrari’s Daytona, just isn’t ‘grand’ enough to effectively describe its new DB12.

We’re to call this a super tourer, apparently.

Introducing the Aston Martin DB12, Maserati Granturismo, and Ferrari Roma

Quick links: Introduction - Exterior design - Powertrains - Interiors - Driving dynamics - Verdict - Full specs

Luckily, we can now leave Aston’s marketing spiel far behind, because this widely updated coupé is about to test its worth by becoming the British beef in an Italian panino sandwich.

On one flank is the brand-new Maserati Granturismo Trofeo, on test here in left-hand-drive form but due to arrive in the UK very soon in right-hand drive.

On the other is the car that its DB11 predecessor could never quite topple: the painfully pretty, wonderfully agile and demonstrative Ferrari Roma.

Whatever you want from a GT, be it beauty, elegance, pedigree, pace, luxury, touring practicality, excitement, noise or just the most worshipful status in the golf club car park, you will find it here.

Our chilly, foggy, sodden test day in the North Pennines is hardly Lago di Como in the spring, but it has nonetheless taken us a long time to get here.

We have come in the modern heirs of a line of luxury cars that so famously have had and done it all. Big engines, big performance, aerodynamic bodies and formidable long-distance touring capabilities.

A comfortable, sophisticated, assured yet supple ride and fine high-speed stability to match the thoroughbred handling poise. Inviting, lavish and practical cabins made to feel like exclusive, enveloping bubbles of luxury. And all of that delivered within bodies of peerless elegance and world-class style.

When picking the line-up for this test, I couldn’t think of better current yardsticks for the new Aston’s kerbside appeal than these two Italian coupés. And now that they’re parked next to each other in a misty County Durham roadside nook?

Exterior design

I’d say the Roma’s status – its unmistakably classic proportions and that instant, effortless sense of style – remains as assured as ever. It looks every inch the modern inheritor of the legacy of the 1964 275 GTB (even though, technically, it isn’t).

The DB12 is bigger and wider and more chiselled in its muscular features but no less evocatively proportioned - handsome, perhaps, rather than pretty. For the Granturismo, however, we seem to be in tougher territory.

Its proportions aren’t quite perfect. Oddly long-looking in its wraparound ‘cofango’ bonnet, it seems that little bit drawn and stretched.

Lower-waisted and less aggressive than the DB12, definitely, but also saddled with just a hint of visual awkwardness.

The Maserati is a bigger car than either the Aston or the Ferrari, and that gives it some relative strengths (to which we will come), but, albeit narrowly, it misses their standard for outright design allure.

Powertrains

What the Maserati counters with might be very useful in these wintry test conditions: part-time four-wheel drive.

The junior member of this GT trio in terms of both power and price, it offers six turbocharged cylinders instead of eight. But on these roads, especially when there are plenty of bumps, cambers and puddles with which to contend, how you use what you’ve got could well prove to be more important than the number of horses you brought along in the first place.

The DB12 certainly brought plenty. Aston’s new Mercedes-AMG-supplied twin-turbocharged 4.0-litre V8 is of a different order of potency than the one that served hitherto in the DB11 (and indeed in the Vantage) and apparently gives the car a class-leading power-to-weight ratio – a claim that, compared with the Roma at least, my back-of-the-envelope maths indeed confirms.

Aston’s structural overhaul of its DB chassis, plus the upgrade under the bonnet, has taken some weight out of the new coupé compared with its predecessor, too. It’s interesting, though, that the still-lighter Roma retains the faster acceleration claim – from 0-62mph, at least.

Interiors

Before we get going, we will take in three quite different driving environments – and we will find both departures and differentiators in doing so.

Neatly enough, these three cars bridge the full breadth of the modern GT class on cabin practicality, the Roma being about as little as any exotic 2+2 coupé you will find and the Granturismo about as large.

With kids of primary school age who seldom turn down the offer of a ride in a nice car, I have at least vicariously tested the second-row seats in all three of these cars.

In the Granturismo, they are almost as comfortable as they might be in a smallish saloon, and no sacrifice on front-row space is necessary to make them so.

In the DB12, they can be made comparable, but only if mum and dad squeeze their seats forward a little. In the Roma, four-up motoring always feels tight, even when two of you are younger than 11.

For boot space, it’s a similar story: the DB12 and Roma are some way behind the Granturismo.

Clearly, however, a lavish and comfortable environment for two occupants is of far greater importance for these cars than how well they might pass tougher practicality tests, and here the Granturismo’s positioning isn’t so strong.

While its interior goes bigger than its rivals on touchscreens, its wider secondary controls look and feel cheaper and more plasticky.

Its row of PRND transmission control buttons across the top of the centre stack somehow looks a bit unbecoming in a £160,000 car (perhaps ironically, this was how Aston used to do it) and its plasticky push-button door release switches might cut it in a Fiat 500 but are less convincing here.

So while the Roma and DB12 offer lower, more couched driving positions than the Granturismo and the latter comparable front-row space for heads, knees and elbows, the Brit actually moves away from the Italians for interior quality and luxury cabin appeal.