Worth a detour in a Maserati Quattroporte The powerful V6 Maserati engines are made by sibling firm Ferrari in Maranello, Italy. Picture: Jason Michael Lang Source: Supplied Maserati Quattroporte on the mountain roads in the Italian Dolomites. ASIDE from Silvio Berlusconi and the Costa Concordia captain, Francesco "Oops, I slipped into a lifeboat" Schettino, Italians rarely do stupid things. They are culturally tied to the concept of "face" and the art of doing the little things - the minutiae of life and work - beautifully and in harmonious fashion, so a fall from grace in Italy is a long way down. So, take it as fact that Maserati's decision to put into production two of the most affordable Maserati marques in history - the V6 sedan Ghibli, a smaller version of the Quattroporte, and the SUV Levante - is seismic. Ruthlessly pragmatic, the Italians certainly don't pour billions of dollars and four years of planning, as Fiat-owned Maserati has done, on lemons or things that don't sell. The new cars have even been spiritually blessed in a way, Maserati naming the new Turin-based factory producing the Ghibli and Levante after Gianni Agnelli, the former Fiat company chairman, major shareholder and "uncrowned king" of Italy. It's not so much "Maserati for the masses," but if the Modena-headquartered firm has its way, the 200k Ghibli (arriving in Australia next March) and the estimated 120-140k Levante (arriving late 2015) will boost its global sales from about 6000 cars shipped worldwide each year to 50,000 in 2016, including up to 1500 cars a year in Australia/New Zealand. For a company that began in 1934, an iconic Italian motoring brand, it represents a serious gamble on its future, pitting the marque against the upper echelons of Mercedes-Benz and BMW. Will it get there? We say without a shadow of a doubt, but we'll get to that later. Ultimately, the market will decide. Putting 200k down for the Ghibli is no small change in Australia, but for those who can afford it, the lure of buying into Maserati at about 120k less than it takes to reach Quattroporte will certainly have many well-off Australians punching numbers furiously into calculators. Out of all of Italy's melodious sounds, the guttural roar of the Maserati Quattroporte engine - made by a Fiat sibling in Maranello - is one of the most beautiful. The snarl starts on ignition, evolving to a throaty growl in first gear, followed by a full-bore Pavarotti-sized aria on acceleration. I feel this first-hand en route from Modena to the Dolomites for a test drive of the new Maserati sixth-generation Quattroporte. The audio I made on the fly of the Quattroporte exiting tollgates captures it beautifully. After the initial acceleration and subsequent operatic-sized wall of sound, there is the equally sweet pop and crackle of air travelling through the exhaust. As the Quattroporte goes to load, the exhaust opens the flaps and lets the air gush straight through, rather than to silencers. In 2008 a British-operating insurance firm, Hiscox, put 40 participants aged 22 to 61, half male and half female, in a room. The sound of revving engines from Maserati, Lamborghini, Ferrari and a Volkswagen Polo were played for 30 seconds each. After 20 seconds, the levels of testosterone in the participants' saliva was measured. According to the study, 50 per cent of the men showed an increase in testosterone in reaction to the Maserati, and 60 per cent of them to the Lamborghini. However, 100 per cent of the women showed an increase in testosterone for the Maserati, the highest total for women. While the study was not large enough to draw any serious scientific conclusions, eliciting affirmative Pavlovian responses from 20 out of 20 women is nothing to sneer at. WISH is here in Italy test-driving the sixth-generation Maserati Quattroporte V6 two-wheel drive. Maserati has been building the Quattroporte since 1983, and this latest version represents the latest results of the Fiat-driven family network of tying the blood relatives - Ferrari and Maserati - into a new clan of autonomous but bonded marques. The Ferrari-made Quattroporte engine powerfully delivers, as you would expect. The eight-litre twin turbo V8 and V6 engines (both options available) are bonded with an eight-speed gearbox, and it's a shot of adrenalin every time you get behind the wheel. Mountain roads seem to shrink around you in terms of handling, but you can still wind things back, withdraw from Sport mode, and do the ride comfortably. The combination of performance plus comfort plus emotion is paramount to Maserati. The firm, which was founded by seven brothers and has a colourful history with few financial highlights until its purchase by Ferrari in 1988, traces its roots to the racing era of 1934. Following 23 years developing racing-only marques, Maserati stopped competing after winning the Formula One world championship in 1957 and started to produce road cars, no more than 200 each year. Maserati's insertion of radio and airconditioning into its cars was considered ground-breaking at the time. Technically the Berlinetta, built in 1954, was Maserati's first road car. A treatise in automotive grace and elegance, a masterpiece of form and function, the 1954 Berlinetta - the last car made by Pininfarina for Maserati - was produced in a total of four cars, all of which survive today and are worth millions each. One of the original four 1954 Berlinettas is on public display in Modena at the Hombre Organic Farm, a parmigiano reggiano artisanal cheese producer owned by Matteo Panini, a Maserati collector. If you ask Panini whether he would sell the Berlinetta, among the 20 or so other vintage Maseratis he owns, he will say, "No, it's a part of my heart; I can't sell it." Such is the emotion beautifully designed cars can have on the Italian heart. The Lorenzo Ramaciotti-designed 2013 Quattroporte might inspire similar sentiments in Australians. It is a beautifully designed creature, and has a commanding on-road presence. Ramaciotti is something of a legend in Italian auto circles. He was the former head designer of Pininfarina for nearly 20 years and now heads up Centro Stile, the Maserati design centre. Ramaciotti was behind the Ferrari F430 and the style upgrade of the 2003 Quattroporte and was il capo of this 2013 version. There's no doubt Ramaciotti's Quattroporte is an impressive car when you see it from the outside - all muscular, harmonious lines that flow seamlessly into one another without making it appear overtly aggressive. At 5.26 metres long and 1.95 metres wide, with elongated wheelbase, it is a large car but it looks completely in proportion, almost coupe-like. It never looks bulky and or too big. Like Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, a slightly more famous Italian icon, its proportions are elegant and sophisticated. The interior is the kind of solid artisanal work you'd expect from Italians, a mixture of leather, wood and carbon fibre. Maserati says it has nine million specifications able to be made on the QP, including the aforementioned interior (including breaking up the steering wheel into a combo of lacquer, leather, wood and carbon fibre). The colour, rims, exhaust and carbon fibre on all parts of the car can also be changed. The projected $280,000 cost for the V6 (available in December) and $320,000 for the V8 (now available in Australia) doesn't cover any of these upgrades, obviously. That will require a further deep dive into your pockets. "The anima [soul] of Maserati is very simple," a Maserati staff member with four decades' experience tells me in Modena. Maserati must be a powerful car, an exclusive car, but for daily use. We are different from our competitors in the past - Ferrari, Lamborghini. The goals of these brands are to be the most powerful in the world, to have the most acceleration. Our cars must have an elastic engine to drive on the highway, but to drive also in city, to drive 500 kilometres ... So you must be in a comfortable car. Our company motto is 'passion through excellence' and every worker at Maserati is part of the glory of the car. We say it [the car's purpose] is about comfort and performance but also exclusivity. Maserati's moral high ground on exclusivity is about to be tested with the introduction of the Maserati Ghibli and SUV Levante. While 2015's Levante is set to compete with the Porsche Cayenne and, probably, the upcoming Bentley SUV, the Maserati Ghibli is targeted at those who want a slightly smaller, slimmed-down version of the Quattroporte and at a more accessible price point. Maserati first produced the Ghibli (the name refers to a desert wind from the Middle East) in 1966 as a two-seater, but the 2013 Ghibli is no rifacimento, no restoration of what was hardly a classic. While the Quattroporte is a large, well-proportioned car intended for touring, the Ghibli is far more sporting in its purpose, a luxury statement. It has a 3.0-litre V6 engine driven by the same eight-speed gearbox as the QP and a none-too-shabby 410HP. The dash layout is a long, slow spread of leather and wood without the drive/passenger divide of the QP. Unfortunately, I missed the Ghibli test drive in Italy, having to return to Australia (ironically) because of a family member's serious car accident. I sent WISH photographer Jason Lang in my stead. Jason is a Californian from just outside San Francisco and one of the most laid-back guys on the planet. Unlike me, he rarely gushes over the great and the good, but his email was waiting for me as I touched down in Sydney. "Dude," it began, "we've had a freakin' amazing day in the Ghibli - those cars SMOKE. I've been tearing up the tarmac with Peter [Peter McKay, motoring journalist] and the boys since early this morning. Amazing fun, mate. The Ghibli is the shizzle!!! Translation: rather exceptional. It feels tight, dude. I prefer over the QP, which is crazy. While Jason's subjective and colloquial correspondence may have been worded for my eyes only, it does shows how the layman might respond to the Ghibli. "Smokin" and "tight" are right. Glen Sealey, Maserati Australia's managing director, is feeling suitably bullish about its sales in Australia. "Yeah, we are confident," he says. We believe that people here are generally passionate, that Aussies are genuinely passionate about the cars we drive. We work hard but we also live well and Maserati is a brand for people that enjoy life. And we think that if we can let people enjoy [Maserati] life at a slightly lower price point, making that experience more accessible but nonetheless not diluting the driving and performance experience, the Ghibli will be very successful here. Sealey says that Maseratis have strong resale value and that financing in Australia for the current stable of Maseratis - Quattroporte, Gran Turismo and Gran Cabrio - is currently about 25 per cent of all sales. But he expects financing to rise quite a bit with the introduction of the Ghibli, followed by the Levante. While the average age of an Australian Maserati owner is 49, that demographic is projected to decline as well. "The brand is excellence in passion," Sealey says, "and everything you've seen in last few days here in Italy is passion. There's a passion for cars, a passion for life, a passion for community. People who love life love this brand. People who let life go by aren't interested in this brand. It's people who live for the experience, who want to enjoy and suck the most out of everything they do ... that's the type of people that have an affiliation with the Maserati brand. It's going to be an interesting market. Why will Aussies buy it? The mix could be people that always dreamed of owning one but now can because it's slightly more accessible from a price perspective. Some buy it because it's discreet or discerning; others just buy it just for the noise or for the Italian flair. Or, [they] may buy the Ghibli because you can get all of that and can still get kids in the back. It's not one for chauffeuring, that's for sure. "Well, you can be [chauffeured]," Sealey argues, "but you just want to drive the Ghibli. It's about taking that detour that has a bit of life in it, as opposed to running straight down the highway. I disagree with this last sentence. The well-off urbanite may just look at the 200k price point for buying into Maserati and decide to resettle in the country, using the 200k saving on comparative house prices for a 11/2 -hour dash up the highway to work each day. Certainly, from what I experienced in the Quattroporte, time on the road in a Maserati is time well spent. Ultimately, the consumer will decide whether that experience is worth a couple of hundred grand. My gut feeling is that if Maserati Australia can get the customer in for a test drive, it will be a fait accompli.