Maserati Quattroporte Trofeo | Test Drive

2 January 2023 Redazione News, Tested

The Maserati Quattroporte has always been synonymous with comfort and elegance. With the Trofeo treatment and its twin-turbo V8 delivering 580 horsepower and 730 Nm of torque, it makes every A to B shamefully rapid and awakens emotions usually reserved for sports cars that you could fit in the trunk, still having enough freedom to do what it was designed for: driving.

Words Alessandro Marrone / Photos Jay Tomei

I still have to get used to the fact that two tons of luxurious and boundless sedan can move with such rapidity and grind tires between corners as if I were actually at the wheel of a typical Italian supercar. After all, the Quattroporte has always been the maximum expression in elegance according to Maserati, that model which better than any other has been able to maintain its place at the top of the trident list as an effigy capable of making even the longest journeys something exciting. Finally having the Trofeo “treatment” now makes possible to instill remarkable ballistic qualities at the disposal of a huge sedan that certainly isn’t afraid to let its tires smoke out of some hairpin bends.

It’s still happening, I really can’t get over the ferocity with which I’m being thrown from one corner to the next. The familiar hiss when braking and the conviction that you can almost hear the brake calipers biting the huge discs are the reassuring intervention that anticipates cornering far too precise for a sedan that is 5.2 meters long and weighs 2,075 kg without the driver on board. Yet it is like this and keeping the steering wheel close and aware that in Corsa mode – exclusive to the Trofeo range –traction control is excluded will let the overflowing power of the V8 up front be transformed into an explosion of horsepower and Netwon-per-metre, to then become white smoke born from the stormy relationship between the tires and the asphalt beneath. Like a rifle shot, the gearbox triggers throughout all the gears at disposal, but pinching the red line requires a lot of courage and a bit of recklessness, especially on a winding mountain road.

Updated with a more modern design for the light clusters, the substantial new features of the Quattroporte are basically two: the infotainment system at your fingertips thanks to the new 8.4″ display, finally fast and precise as it should be on this type of car and the possibility of choosing it in the Trofeo version, i.e. powered by a 580 horsepower twin-turbo V8 in which Ferrari has put much more than just a hand. It is therefore necessary to bring together two seemingly distant aspects such as the comfort (and practicality) of a generously sized sedan, with the ability to actually exploit such power under the bonnet. I thought of offering myself as a cavy and bring the key, which alone weighs more or less like a FIAT Panda.

Trofeo means red piping instead of chrome, more carbon fiber as for example for the rear diffuser, darkened light clusters, identification badges and a great desire to leave some sign on the asphalt, an extremely probable scenario once you engage Corsa mode. If in Normal you still have a four-door with five seats perfectly suitable for the most boring of journeys, selecting Sport lets you immediately perceive a stiffening of the steering. Only this subtle but fundamental intervention contributes to making the Quattroporte Trofeo much more surgical when cornering, offering the driver the sensation that with a firmer pressure on the throttle pedal things will become much more than enjoyable. In Corsa, in addition to fully release the sound of the V8 emitted by the two couples of tailpipes with trapezoidal shape, traction control is deactivated and the throttle response becomes more direct, almost nervous, especially if you indulge in the nature of the car, throwing between bends keeping the number of revs in the optimal torque curve through the wonderful paddles on the steering wheel, which I will never tire of repeating, are among the best ever in terms of size and weight.

The gearbox is an 8-speed ZF automatic and although it works very well in Auto mode, the involvement elevates the experiential factor when you act personally on those shots that are discharged behind, while the tires try to bite the asphalt in the most unthinkable ways, even when the more than five meters of the Quattroporte seem to come out of an indefinite white cloud of burnt rubber smoke. The V8 screams like a demon battling its exorcist and I’m possessed staring halfway between the analog tachometer and the center of the road, which appears impossibly small for the speeds the Trofeo allows you to reach in so little time and space. The 580 horses are just one of the reasons why you move with such extreme violence on the mountain road today (closed to traffic) transformed into a personal circuit that has precipices and rocks instead of run-off areas and curbs.

The echo of the V8 bounces from wall to wall, enters the passenger compartment and accentuates that unhealthy need to keep the gas pedal down, even when grip and common sense beg for a break. The precision of the Trofeo is unnatural, for a Quattroporte as for any sedan, demonstrating that Maserati’s job was not only to stuff tons of horsepower under the bonnet and give you the key to high speed, but to refine a sedan – with a wheelbase of 3.2 meters – to the point of making it an instrument that plays emotions with the same ease as a ravenous wolf eats a lamb left far from the flock. The fact that it is a car that in most real-life cases will live in Normal mode, exploiting a third of the torque available only on the motorway is not important, at least not in this precise moment.

The 730 Nm of torque are the other ingredient that allows the Quattroporte to boast a diabolical elasticity, reacting like a rubber band about to snap and making me jump as soon as the rev counter touches 2,250 rpm. From that moment it is an indescribable bedlam that launches us towards the following bend. I throw myself on the brake, lighten and direct the steering wheel with the front reading what I’m thinking even before it imparts movement to the steering mechanism. Just inside the corner I put my right foot on the gas and as the rear starts to slide the huge 285 back there and the engine revs point towards the redline, there comes that fateful moment when all this madness makes sense. It’s that fraction of a second when you move the steering in the opposite direction of the curve, in which your feet almost seem to dance with a delicacy opposite to the soundtrack of a V8 howling like a werewolf at the moon. And then you straighten the nose by countersteering, stomping more decisively and taking advantage of an inhuman engine torque that makes the primordial brutality of the most elegant and luxurious lady of the Maserati family available in a simple movement.

Perfectly pampered in soft leather armchairs, with a precise navigation system, high quality stereo that I obviously kept off in favor of the eight-cylinder sound, the Quattroporte Trofeo is the apotheosis of Italian style. It almost seems like a bridge between the elegance that imposed Made in Italy all over the world and the fact that it exists now that there are hybrid variants on every corner – not to mention 100% electric ones – thus giving the Trofeo an unparalleled emotional value, precisely because it touches the buttons of the automotive soul. This is the future we would like to see and even if it won’t be like this for long, we rejoice in every moment we can enjoy such a car on this type of road. In fact, the perfect condition is not the astounding performance data, for the record of 4 and a half seconds for 0-100 kph and 326 per hour of top speed, but the sensation of feeling alive at the precise moment in which you lose control of all rationality and let yourself be dragged along by a possessed mechanical object.

Aesthetically pure, sinuous and faithful to its tradition, the Quattroporte Trofeo is one of the few cars nowadays that is perfectly capable of stirring up dormant emotions, just as it left the factory. It is what alone can cover the role of a comfortable travel sedan or a fast express ready to devour some B-roads, not caring about the size and weight you carry and above all that downsizing to which everyone is now accustomed. The Magma Red color of the one of our test – a €18,300 special option – is the undisputed partner of the love that blossomed between her and me, but what wakes me up at night when I seem to feel that steering wheel with the trident squeezed in my hands is more than anything else that emotional tremor that upsets all preconceptions when one thinks of a large and heavy sedan with an avalanche of horses. The Quattroporte Trofeo is like a tornado that arrives, sweeps everything away and leaves a void that cannot be filled. Until the next time.