Yahoo News 2018 Maserati Levante first drive
Love it or hate it, the “luxury” SUV is more than here to stay; it is, in fact, the only thing keeping the books balanced for the next decade for many performance-car manufacturers. Think Porsche Cayenne, think Bentley Bentayga, think Rolls-Royce Cullinan and think, most definitely, Maserati Levante.
Like all brands now building SUVs, Maserati already depends massively on the Levante which, despite being less than two years old, accounts for 55 per cent of the company's total sales. The most crushing fact for any SUV haters is that for 90 per cent of Levante customers, the SUV is the first Maserati they have owned. That’s 25,000 global sales Maserati would never have had if it hadn’t built a four-wheel-drive 'utility' vehicle.
The Levante was launched in the UK in 2016 with just the diesel variant. But a Maserati needs to be, at heart, a Maserati, no matter what skin it wears, and that means a sonorous Ferrari-created petrol engine. Introduce the twin-turbo, 3.0-litre V6 petrol unit, and all seems right with the world - or at least palpably less wrong.
The new Levante features design changes which you’ll miss if you sneeze. There’s the addition of two trim levels: GranLusso and GranSport, the first signifying luxury, the second performance, with the base “S” level below them. The GranLusso specification is determined by a little silver badge on the side, silver front grille and more chrome detailing. The GranSport gets a rear roof spoiler, black grille and black details. Oh, and there are new soft-close doors.
The more significant changes are engineered: the steering is now electronic as opposed to hydraulic, which introduces more torque to the steering at low speeds for greater resistance and precision around the dead-ahead position, and there is a new driver-assistance package including traffic-sign recognition, active blind-spot detection and highway assist which acts on the steering to pull the car back into line if it detects you are straying into the next lane. Add that system to the active cruise control and you have very basic autonomous driving.
Undoubtedly, the petrol engine is the way forward. With a raucous 424bhp on tap, its tenor vocals soaring though the hearty rev range, it’s a joy in Sport mode, and the closest you can get to proper sporting flavour from an SUV. The 0-62mph time of 5.2 seconds puts it up there with the Porsche Cayenne GTS, but you get some added dolce vita to boot.
Push the Sport button twice to engage both powertrain and suspension in dynamic footsie, beat the aluminium paddles shifters down a couple of cogs, and it actually sounds fun. Who knew? Maybe a performance-imbibed SUV really is a possibility.
On the other hand, that infotainment screen is still an embarrassment. Do Italians really still consider everything other than the engine to be insignificant?
But the special Zegna trim is a gorgeous thing, with silk inserts on the seats, and there’s an embarrassment of high-quality leather hides stitched tightly across the dashboard.
If I was going to buy an Italian sporty SUV, I’d go for the Levante’s cheaper sibling, the Alfa Stelvio, which feels more sporty and shares the Levante’s 50:50 weight distribution (despite sitting on an entirely different platform, with different components and engines - go figure the economics of that decision). On the other hand, the petrol engine is on song in the Levante and you get four-wheel-drive and air suspension as standard.
You pays your money, you takes your choice…
Maserati Levante 2017 - specs
Tested: 2,979cc twin-turbo V6 petrol, eight-speed auto, four-wheel drive
Price/on sale: £76,995/now
Power/torque: 424bhp@5,750rpm/428lb ft@5,000rpm
Top speed: 164mph
Acceleration: 0-62mph in 5.2sec
Fuel economy: 25.9mpg (Combined)
CO2: 253g/km
