The super sports car boasts a Maserati-designed twin-turbo V6, refined styling elements, and amazing road feel as the first in a promised “product renaissance.”
- The all-new carbon-fiber MC20 has 621 hp and 538 lb-ft of torque in an all-new twin-turbo V6 that is the first all-Maserati engine in 20 years.
- The car is a long, comfortable, howlin’ scream to take around a race track.
- It’s also the first example of a new styling approach at the company and a new way of organizing and presenting the entire Maserati line.
The new Maserati MC20 is more than just another gorgeous Italian supercar. Though it is that. With oozingly liquid good looks, 0-60 mph in “less than” 2.9 seconds and a top speed of “over” 202 mph, it’s checking boxes where you didn’t even know you had boxes.
But it’s more than that. The MC20 represents a new era at the 108-year-old company, and what promises to be a very fast era, judging by our several laps around the big course at Willow Springs (“Fastest Road in the West!”) as well as a short drive in relatively real-world streets.
“This is the first iteration of the product renaissance we’re ready to embark on,” said Bill Peffer, the new CEO of Maserati North America.
Three of the colors available in the new MC20.
Maserati
A product renaissance? Does that mean all Maseratis will have 621-hp mid-engined V6s wrapped in carbon fiber? No, it means some styling elements you see on the MC20 will carry over to other Maseratis: a new logo, those vertically integrated headlamps, a new “slimmed down and modernized” trident.
“The actual oval logo, we’ve removed the red from that,” said a Maserati product specialist during a walkaround of the car. “It used to be the Bologna flag with the red, white, and blue. Now it’s just a two-tone cream and dark blue.”
All part of the flagship role of this new two-seater.
“It’s the brand halo,” said Peffer. “It’s competing in a segment that elevates our brand. Our sales were up pretty significantly in 2021. We don’t talk specific numbers, but we were above 50% from the year prior.”
Maserati is also doing things differently now. Sheer numbers, which the company doesn’t release anyway, are not the goal.
“We’re concentrating on profitable volume and the customer experience,” said Peffer. “A couple of things we did were kind of cool for 2021. We did mid-cycle updates on all of our product and we made V8s available in all of our existing lineup, including the Ghibli, so we have V8s across the range in the Trofeo model lineup for 2022.”
That means you can get a 580-hp V8-powered Trofeo model in everything: Ghibli, Quatroporte, and Levante. Something as seemingly mundane as inventory has also been streamlined.
“We’ve simplified the lineup,” said Peffer. “We had the dealers order all their cars, so production is more in line with demand. We’ve changed the mix to be in line with where the market is. We were focused on (the lowest-priced) GranTurismo and the sedans. We’re not selling (many of) the Grand Tourismos. Now what we do is, our primary car is the Levante (the SUV), and that’s great because it’s a prelude to bringing in the Grecale (a smaller SUV meant to compete with the likes of Porsche’s Macan), which will allow us, with a two-car two-SUV lineup, to legitimize us as a performance luxury SUV brand. The lineup we have has been simplified into three series: We had a lot of value with the GT, which features a 345-horsepower V6 across the range; the Modena, which is our focus trim, with 424 horsepower and sporty elements to it; and then the Trofeo, which is the 580-horsepower V8. So before, we weren’t as consistent with that lineup. It’s easier now for dealers to sell the value in each of those series customers we’re out seeking it. And it’s really worked for us.”
Now, you would think that the Levante SUV would be the big seller, as it is for every other luxury performance maker that introduces an SUV, but it wasn’t.
“The Levante has been out since 2017. And it wasn’t our franchise lead vehicle, the Ghibli was, and so we concentrated on that, we spent some dollars on that.”
Was Ghibli a bigger seller because it was more profitable?
“I think Ghibli was more familiar, it was more in line with our 100-year-old brand. Quattroporte is synonymous with the brand, it’s been around since 1963. I think customers got attuned to buying sedans and we said, ‘Wait a minute here, if the market’s moving to SUVs, and we have this SUV (the Levante), and we’re going to bring out a second SUV (the Grecale), why not put some emphasis on that?’ And so we did it. We didn’t do it through incentives, we just did it through marketing and our influencers to get the name out there. And that’s what the name of the game is, generating awareness. Everybody loves the Maserati brand. But the familiarity with specific models drops off pretty quick. And so we’ve made some investments in Levante to change that.”
So how will Maserati get the word out about all the cool cars and SUVs it has in the lineup?
“I think it’s multifaceted. First thing we do is, you know, we concentrate on our big markets: we sell a lot of cars in the Northeast and South Florida and L.A., those are our biggest markets. And we’re looking at where opportunities exist in other parts of the country we can grow. We’re working closely with our dealer body to improve the customer experience but improve the representation that we have in order to generate more awareness in cars. But then we do things like this, we talk to our media partners, we showcase our vehicles, we do ride-and-drive events like this. We’re trying to track with a car like this.”
The cabin has room for large and/or tall adults.
Maserati
Ah yes, a car like this.
The MC20 is an amazing thing, a brilliant jewel of a symbol of the new Maserati. As such, it’s either the sportiest Gran Turismo ever made, or the most comfortable sports car you’ll ever want. Maserati calls it a Super Sports Car, which is fine.
It is built around a carbon-fiber monocoque with front and rear aluminum frames to hold the engine in back and the suspension at both ends. The body panels are a mix of plastic composite and carbon-fiber composite, according to engineer Giovanni Perrona. Unlike the MC12, which was a rebodied Ferrari Enzo, the MC20 is all-Maserati, all the time.
The car rides on bespoke Bridgestones, 245/35 front and 305/30 rear. While similar to the tires on the Huracán STO, these were made specifically for MC20, developed at Bridgestone’s facility in Poland and tested at tracks in Belanco, near Turin, Italy, and at the Nardo Ring.
It’s either the sportiest Gran Turismo ever made, or the most comfortable sports car you’ll ever want.
The twin-turbo V6 engine, meanwhile, is called the Nettuno, a name derived from the statue of Neptune in the piazza in Bologna, Italy, the city where Maserati was founded, before the company was moved to Modena. The Nettuno is the first Maserati-made engine in 20 years; the intervening powerplants were all made by Ferrari, which is not a bad place to be getting your engines. The Nettuno sits behind the cockpit mounted longitudinally. The combustion chambers include direct injection and a passive prechamber that together Maserati calls Twin Combustion, with twin sparks for double the bang. With all due humility, Maserati calls the V6 “a technological gem.”
Aft of that is an eight-speed DCT transmission and an electronically actuated limited-slip diff, in that order. All told, the MC20 weighs “less than” 3300 pounds SAE, Maserati promises.
Does it work? You bet your sweet babboo.
We were lucky enough to take many laps around Willow Springs’ big course, where you can get big speed at the entrance to Turn 8 and along the front straight. More luck came in the form of GT3, LMP2, LMP3, and Maserati Trofeo driver Patrick Byrne, who rode in the passenger seat and offered high-speed guidance around that storied track. What did Byrne think of the MC20?
“I really like it,” he said. “It’s more like a go-kart.”
Indeed, the first thing I noticed driving it was the steering ratio, which Perrona said was a race-car-quick 12:1 ratio. That took a little getting used to, as did the carbon ceramic brakes which, while pleasingly progressive, were unhindered by boost.
The MC20 was not too loud, either, nor too harsh around Willow’s somewhat bumpy nine turns. The electronic chassis control was set to “Sport” on my drive, which was a little more forgiving than “Corsa” or “off.” A short while ago I had lapped this very track in the Lamborghini Huracán STO, which was set to Corsa. That was a bit harsher an experience, and when I suggested that Lamborghini should have set the STO to Sport, I was politely dismissed.
I would guess that I was lapping much quicker in the MC20 than in the Huracán, and not just because of the suspension setting. The Maserati had plenty of headroom for my freakishly tall torso, whereas the Lamborghini was built for short Italian Formula 1 drivers. The MC20 is also considerably more comfortable than any McLaren I’ve driven, from the MP4-12C up to the Senna. I submit that almost anyone short of a real driver like Byrne could go faster and have a better time doing it in the Maserati than in either of the competitors. As for the Porsche equivalent? The last one I drove was the new Turbo, which compares favorably with the MC20 in most categories, with 572 hp, a 0-60 mph time of 2.7 seconds, and a top speed of 199 mph.
But the day was not all MC20. To get to and from Willow, Maserati loaned me a 424-hp Ghibli Modena Q4, which I drove over and back on Angeles Crest and Angeles Forest Highways. I must say I thoroughly enjoyed both directions. While response in the Ghibli was not as immediate and not quite as precise as in, say, the BMW M5 CS I drove recently, that car is priced considerably higher at $142,000 than a Ghibli. You can get into a Ghibli Modena Q4 starting at $85,300 and a Ghibli GT at $78,000.
And you can get into a Maserati MC20 starting at an entirely reasonable $212,000, though the MC20s I drove ranged in price from $256,050 to $315,550, but those had things like a carbon-fiber engine cover, racing seats, and numerous other $5000 options. Surely you have 212 grand sitting in some offshore account somewhere, don’t you? Hey, do you have another 212 large, too? I’ll pay you back once my Lira account is unfrozen, I swear.
Keyword: Fast Times at Maserati in the New 2022 MC20