Maserati Grecale review

Even so the Grecale is not just a Stelvio gone from smart casual to business attire. It has a longer wheelbase, a more spacious interior and a unique, elevated state of tune for each engine, befitting the Grecale’s premium pricing and positioning. Prices start at £61,570 for the 296bhp GT, rising to £67,180 for the Modena which comes with another 30bhp, adaptive damping, a limited-slip differential and various styling upgrades as standard. Air springs are optional on both, the wisdom of choosing I shall be returning too in a moment. There is then an enormous jump in power and price to the 523bhp Nettuno-powered Trofeo which comes with all the above and more as standard, as it absolutely should for £99,700.

The pricing is interesting. Clearly the key rival is the Porsche Macan but Maserati has been careful not to go mano a mano against the Stuttgart machine. Both 2-litre cars have more power than either of the 2-litre Macans (standard and T), but here’s the thing: you can buy a 2.9-litre V6 Macan S with vastly superior performance for less money than even the base Grecale GT. Maserati would doubtless say its cars are better equipped, but the observation is worth making nonetheless. Maserati is also quietly pleased there is no Macan Turbo at present so Porsche has nothing in terms of either power or price to put up against the range-topping Trofeo. Then again, it’s only fair to point out the scarcely less powerful Stelvio Quadrifoglio is almost exactly £20,000 cheaper…

I tried the mid-spec Modena first as it’s the one most will buy; importantly it also came with the optional air springs.

The first disappointment is its appearance, which is not to say the Grecale is in any way ugly. On the contrary and so far as mid-sized SUVs go, I’d say it was one of the better ones. But this is a Maserati, a car for whom looks are – or at least should be – a key USP. For decades it has been looks that have kept certain quite woeful Maseratis alive for so long, the only recently deceased Gran Turismo chief among them. A design that is simply easy on the eyes should never have been enough to get the thumbs up from the boardroom, particularly when that pesky in-house rival from Alfa has so many of its failings excused by its appearance.

The interior is better. The famous Maserati clock is now digital which grates a bit, but the dials and infotainment system are generations ahead of what we have come to expect from the brand and the quality of the materials is generally beyond serious criticism and in places quite exceptional. It’s roomy too: all 6ft 3in of me sat comfortably behind all 6ft of fellow Ti contributor Andrew English with no risk of knees or noggin contacting the car. What’s the point of paying even more for the bigger but ageing Levante, I hear you ask. And it’s a very good question.

So far, so predictable. But what I realised next was less easy to anticipate. That four-pot motor with mild hybrid is really good. It has bundles of torque, very little lag and a voice that is both smooth and sonorous. What’s more, it works so well with the automatic gearbox not once did I find myself wishing it had a double-clutch transmission. I was genuinely surprised.

A pity then that the chassis seemed so out of sorts. The low speed ride was nothing short of poor, the steering lacking a little precision and a lot of feel, and the handling tended to let the body fall before being abruptly checked by its active dampers. In the end I drove it with said dampers in sport mode just to firm up the body movements and put up with an even more compromised ride. It’s been so long since a stiffer damper setting has been the best choice on a UK road I literally can’t remember when or even if I’ve driven a car before where that was the case.

It was disappointing, not least because I could see a decent car, at least by its class standards, being held back by a chassis that appeared at odds with itself, as if constantly vacillating between prioritising ride and handling and ending up doing neither particularly well.

I returned to base, hoping to snaffle a Trofeo but Maserati only had one and it was out, so while I waited I thought I might as well trundle up the road in the unloved entry-level GT model. So remember: no limited-slip diff, no active damping and, on this particular car, no optional air springs.

And I was scarcely out of the car park before I knew I preferred it. Not only did I feel instantly more connected to it through its clearer, more communicative steering, it actually rode better too on its gnarly old coils, especially at the speeds at which most of us drive most of the time. It was genuinely enjoyable and if it really was 30bhp down on power, I didn’t miss a single one of them. It was a better car, period.

Nor should we be too surprised by this. I’ll bet all the tea in my cupboard that this was the car that enjoyed 90 per cent of the development work and then had the additional goodies applied. LSD? Adaptive dampers? Air springs? It not only doesn’t need any of them, it’s better off by far without.

What then of the Trofeo with its punchy V6 motor? Despite having all those goodies that spoiled the Modena, it was actually pretty good because, I am sure, it was designed with them as standard from the very beginning of its development rather than applied as an option to a pre-existing package. The strong sounding engine is powerful enough to make you wonder why anyone might want to go faster in an SUV and it handled in a reasonably engaging, idiot-proof but still quite adjustable way. A BMW M3 Touring it is not, nor any remotely close approximation, but within its genre it was impressive enough.

Just nothing like as impressive for a bit less than £100,000 than the GT was for a bit more than £60,000.

Is either worthy of the Maserati trident on their prows? Actually I think we passed that argument more than 20 years ago when Porsche decided to add a two-tonne SUV to the exclusive diet of two-door sports cars it had made until then. If you think Maserati should be making fast and gorgeous sports cars, then I am with you entirely – and I should point out that, for the first time in decades, with the MC20 it is. But if you think they should be made to the exclusion of cars like the Grecale, there our paths divert, because without the money made by one, it’s not possible to make the other. And it really is as simple as that.

The Grecale is not the kind of car with which someone like me is likely to fall in love, but I’d say the same about every other car in its class. But correctly specified, which is to say with very little specified, I liked it far more than I thought I might. Next to a Macan I can’t think of any other car in its class I’d rather drive than this, which is praise of a kind I’ve rarely heaped on any Maserati.

So, to answer the question I asked Peter Charters at the start of this story, namely ‘how do you convince your customers that a 2-litre, four-cylinder SUV is somehow worthy of calling itself a Maserati?’, the answer is: ‘Let ’em drive it.’ Oh, and avoid the air suspension.