The small Maserati sedan uses mild hybrid electrification and stays current with the times

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SINGAPORE

Maserati’s Ghibli sedan may be the Italian brand’s entry-level car, but the name has a very long heritage. The original Ghibli was born in 1967, as a 4.7-litre V8 engined grand tourer that lasted up to 1973. The Ghibli name was resurrected in the 1990s in the form of a boxy coupe with a variety of twin-turbo V6 engines, and that lasted until 1998. The present-generation Maserati Ghibli arrived in 2013, as Maserati aimed it squarely at drivers that wanted a smaller, more affordable Maserati than the Quattroporte and Gran Turismo, famous in Singapore as the car that has a spot in this cringey video, but that aside it remains a fantastically sweet driving car.

The current Maserati Ghibli with its 3.0-litre and 3.8-litre V6 engined remain powerful and pricey cars in the range, but the Ghibli GT variant driven here puts the price of entry down even further with its smaller engine, plus it’s the first series production Maserati featuring electrification in its drivetrain.

The car was launched in Singapore in 2021 and we are a little late to the party in driving it, but now that we’ve gotten our mitts on one, here’s the verdict.

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The Ghibli GT does away with the different V6 engines of the Ghibli Modena and Ghibli Trofeo, and instead goes with a more efficient 2.0-litre, four-cylinder turbo unit. It also gets a 48v mild-hybrid booster, which is where an integrated starter generator functions as an additional power source during acceleration. It’s tuned to help with efficiency in urban driving situations as well, so that the petrol engine doesn’t have to work as hard.

It may be ‘just’ a 2.0-litre turbo engine, but it’s a powerful one and the car has a rated output of 330 horsepower. That’s twice the power you can get from the 2.0-litre turbo engine in a BMW 318i. The Ghibli GT also retains the front engined, rear-wheel drive layout of a classic sports sedan, so that has already set some expectations right there.

Despite the concession to greener motoring, the car’s engine still delivers a distinctive, baritone engine note that Maserati claims comes entirely from tuning the exhaust ports and pipes, with no synthesised noises involved. Press the Sport mode button on the centre console and you’ll hear the tone get slightly angrier too as the engine’s throttle response sharpens further to driver inputs.

The car makes all the right noises and has plenty of feedback through the steering wheel and seats, as you would expect from a Maserati of this calibre. There’s that classic Italian vibe to its handling, meaning that despite the various traction and dynamic stability aids already onboard you still need to work with the car to get it dancing at its best. It’s hard to put a finger on it but the weight distribution of the hybrid componentry, along with the smaller engine, may have something to do with it all.

At least the long accelerator pedal stroke is easy to modulate, an on highway cruises the car is perfectly planted and composed as you would expect from a luxury sedan in this price bracket.

It has a characteristic, sonorous and melodic engine note that you normally don’t hear in a four-cylinder engine, and there’s a real Italian car vibe to the driving experience.

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The fuel economy swings quite widely depending on where you drive it. With a lot of highway driving an average of around 7.5L/100km is entirely reasonable, though if you crawl around the inner city or traffic jams a lot a figure closer to 13.0L/100km is what you can expect.

It may have mild hybrid assistance and all, but it’s also a powerful sports sedan so it’s never going to match the fuel economy of something like a Volkswagen Golf eTSI.

The styling is quite understated, and doesn’t shout out as loudly visually as something like a BMW M3, but the carbon fibre door handles, B-pillar covers, wing mirrors, and rear spoiler add just that right amount of drama to lift the styling to the right level.

The cabin doesn’t have massive screens that have come to feature on new cars like the Mercedes-AMG EQS 53, but that can be a good thing for drivers that like things simple, accessible, and uncluttered. There’s onboard GPS, and wireless smartphone charging in a draw-like slot in the centre console too.

 The gear lever’s shifting is entirely electronic and clicks into electric switches, and the big, chunky sequential paddle shifters on the steering column feel really chunky and good to use. However they don’t rotate with the steering wheel, and having the direction indicator stalk quite far behind the big paddle shifter means that drivers with small hands will find it a bit of a reach.

Rear seat room is adequate, and boot space is about what you’d expect for a sedan of this size despite the battery pack underneath it, so no real surprises here.

For a sedan that’s sized somewhere between a BMW 3 Series and 5 Series, or Mercedes-Benz C-Class and E-Class, or in the same size category as an Audi A5, the Maserati Ghibli GT is a pricey alternative. You could argue that it sits in a different luxury category but the Germans still have better in-car operating systems and better switchgear tactility. Inclusive of COE the Ghibli GT clocks in a list price of around half a million dollars in Singapore, and while you can buy a bigger car elsewhere for the same amount, many would pay to be a part of the Maserati family.

2022 Maserati Ghibli GT 2.0

Drivetrain type	Petrol-electric mild hybrid
Engine	1995cc, inline 4, turbocharged
Power	330hp at 5750rpm
Torque	450Nm at 4000rpm
Gearbox	8-speed automatic
Electric Motor	Not stated
Battery	Lithium Ion, 0.5 kWh
System Power	Not stated
System Torque	Not stated
0-100km/h	5.7 seconds
Top Speed	255km/h
Fuel Efficiency	9.5L/100km
VES Band	C2 / +S$25,000
Agent	Tridente Automobili
Price	S$368,800 without COE
Availability	Now
Verdict	Still a Maserati at heart, but interior appointments have a hard fight against other continental luxury cars

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