With a short five-day test drive of the Maserati Quattroporte GTS here is what I thought of this executive performance car.
Day 1 – Maserati Quattroporte GTS First Impressions
I was excited to get my hands on and feet behind the controls of the most powerful production Maserati ever made, the Quattroporte GTS. I remember days before the car arriving just thinking about how it would feel and how it might drive. When the car arrived I took a quick look around it with the delivery driver, I was overwhelmed with how good the car looked. The Quattroporte is an absolute beauty; the Italians certainly know what they are doing when it comes to external design.
Getting straight into the driving seat and taking the car for a quick spin, as you can imagine, I was very excited. The first thing that I picked up on was how energetic the 3.8-litre V8 felt. The second was how much soul the car has, the exhaust note coming from the rear of the car was just incredible. And thirdly, once I got over the excitement of driving the car, was just how luxurious the interior is. Straight away I knew that I was going to enjoy my 5 days testing the car.
Day 2 – Bespoke Photo shoot
We took a 5am start to capture the Maserati Quattroporte GTS in the best available light. We selected to shoot the car at sunrise in an urban area of Birmingham city centre. The location provides a selection of tall buildings but still allows us to see a nice sunrise. We arrived early to clean the condensation off the car and set the cameras up, and then waited for the sun to start rising. During this time we spent around 20 minutes just looking at the car waiting for the sun to rise. I was surprised at just how many unique design touches there are on the car that craft such an iconic design, lots of these features are often over looked until you spend time looking at every aspect of the car.
Once the sun started to break we then began the shoot and we captured some fantastic pictures. Ross Jukes was carrying out the shoot, whilst I captured some video highlights of the car. After around an hour it was time to move on, but we spent another five or so hours travelling around to different locations creating a selection of static, panning and rolling shots. It was a very productive day and I am certainly happy with the pictures and video we captured, to see more take a look at the gallery.
Day 3 – Finer Details
We planned a second early morning shoot, this time we wanted to cover a selection of detail shots photographing some very simple elements of the car that we felt we wanted to focus on.
Take a close look at the features and you will notice loads of beautiful pieces of design. The legendary grille looks as strong as ever’ sporting the Maserati badge in the middle with two bold red lines giving it more distinction. The GTS features an impressive quad port exhaust that gives the car a powerful look from the rear. The GTS also comes with a set of multi spoke 19” alloy wheels, which the car sits very well on.
Day 4 – Falling in Love
So far every day I have learnt something new about the car, whether that be economy related, performance related, or just an extra little feature that I was unaware of. Each day my opinion of the car has got better and better, and I thought the car was brilliant to start, so that speaks for itself.
The rest of the day was spent just as a normal day for me. Driving around to a few different places carrying out various tasks that I needed to do. Once you settle yourself with the car, it’s so comfortable and really easy to drive. You don’t have to be going deadly fast to have fun with the car either, you can just leave the car in gear a bit longer than needed and listen to that exhaust note; I know I didn’t get bored of that at all.
Day 5 – Looking back on my time
We only had a short amount of time to test out the Maserati Quattroporte GTS, but I was pleasantly surprised everyday; I was gobsmacked with every element. I wish I could’ve taken more time and put many more miles on the car, but unfortunately that was just not possible this time round.
A month prior to this test drive I drove the Maserati Ghibli S, the Quattroporte GTS after spending some time with it is certainly the more mature and premium model without a doubt. The Quattroporte will always be the one for me, it’s the car you think of when you think Maserati, it has more power, more speed and is head to toe luxury.
I was certainly sad to see the car go back and I look forward to getting more time with the Quattroporte in the future.
I have owned 2 of them, the QP5 and now the QP6. I still get a thrill everytime I climb in. I you put your foot down at just the right time when overtaking, you get a sound like a gun going off just as you pull level with the car you are overtaking, always makes them jump! But the best bit is how understated it is. A friend once remarked to me that, the car “looked like you were doing OK in life, but you don’t feel the need to boast to anyone else about it.”