New Maserati SUV makes a sound to curdle the brain

Well, this is a bit embarrassing.

For last week’s review, I gushed all over the Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio – its beauty, its noise, its outright pace, and the fact that while you could barely use the indicators as a result, it had big metal paddle shifters on the steering wheel for changing the gears manually.

But this week’s reality is that if you have a little bit more money, you could get a Maserati SUV.

Okay, it’s more like $30 K extra for my Grecale Trofeo. Where the Alfa started at $162 K, the Maserati – also built by the same parent company, Stellantis – costs $189 K, and there are downsides.

I can’t say I’m terribly sold on the looks. The front end is obviously lifted from Maserati’s mid-engined supercar, the MC20, but when grafted onto an SUV body, it ends up looking more like a Ford Puma.

Other things sound grand in theory, like the electronic buttons you push on the inside of the doors to open them, but under Australian Design Rules, these must also be accompanied by a manual release for emergencies.

Then there are the buttons for Park, Neutral, Reverse and Drive underneath the central touchscreen, but to save you having to hunt for the right button when performing something like a three-point turn, you can also change between drive and reverse using the paddles on the steering wheel.

They’re clever, techy features, certainly, but you also wonder if perhaps if they’d just gone for normal door handles and a gear lever, they could have saved themselves a lot of unnecessary engineering.

On the whole, though, it might be an SUV, but there’s always been something about a Maserati that’s extra special. You’d strike up a conversation with a man at the pub if he had a Maserati because you’d know you’d be in for an interesting evening. He’d probably also buy your drinks.

The Grecale, appropriately named after a north-easterly Mediterranean wind, still oozes the same Italian charm.

It has all those beautiful little touches, from the Maserati trident on the rear pillar (my three-year-old daughter knew it as the “car with the fork” by the end of the week) to the analogue clock on the dash. Well, almost analogue.

As I discovered, not only can you turn this clock into a compass or G-force meter, but it will even flash up a chequered flag when you’re using the navigation system and arrive at your destination.

Trofeo spec adds a few other niceties, like the genuine carbon-fibre on the front, rear and side skirts, as well as all over the door and dash trim. Does this improve the handling on something with an unladen weight of 2027 kg? Probably, in the same way your house becomes lighter when you shake out the rugs.

But on that – and just like the Alfa – the Grecale hides its weight quite miraculously.

The other ‘lesser’ Grecale models feature a turbocharged four-cylinder mild-hybrid arrangement, with a fully electric Grecale Folgore also on the way. But the Trofeo uses the same three-litre V6 twin-turbo powering the aforementioned Maserati MC20.

It doesn’t kick quite as violently as the Alfa when you put your foot down, but there are very few places on earth you can do that anyway. The 0-100 km/h time of 3.8 seconds is still the same.

Besides, you’re perfectly happy trundling along at normal speeds simply because of how it purrs. Maseratis have earned a reputation for how the sounds emanating from their exhaust pipes make humans go cross-eyed, and the Grecale definitely gets a point here.

It’s also a strong contrast to the indicator noise, which sounds like someone tapping a paint bucket.

You can toggle between five drive modes with the right-hand-side dial on the steering wheel – the default ‘GT’, as well as Off-road, Comfort, Sport and Corsa.

There are also two suspension settings for the last two – hard or soft – but despite trying my best to summon deep connections between my bottom and my brain, I found them both a perfect blend of comfy and sporty.

I also never used Off-road, because not only does this seem preposterous on 21-inch staggered wheels, but I was also just too terrified of crunching the carbon fibre skirts on something.

I wasn’t sure how it would go, having literally everything on one of the two massive touchscreens – even down to the hazard light button – but everything is easy to find and lets out a refined little clicking noise when pressed.

And to help you when you’re concentrating on traffic, for instance, there’s more cleverness – you can swipe anywhere on the bottom touchscreen with an up-or-down motion to change the temperature and side-to-side to raise or lower the fan speed.

Worth the extra $30 K over the Alfa’s more conventional physical dials? You are getting a more well-rounded car, but one that just like the Alfa, still fights off all the criticisms of performance SUVs with aplomb.

2025 Maserati Grecale Trofeo

• $189,500 (plus on-road costs)
• 3-litre twin-turbo V6 petrol, 390 kW / 620 Nm
• 8-speed automatic, all-wheel drive (AWD)
• 0-100 km/h in 3.8 seconds, 285 km/h
• 11.2 litres per 100 km combined fuel consumption, 64-litre tank
• 2,027 kg.

Thanks to Maserati Australia for providing this car for testing. Region has no commercial arrangement with Maserati Australia.