Here's Why the Maserati GranTurismo Is the Only Good Maserati

this is a maserati gran turismo mc and it is the only good maserati on sale today now that's not saying much as i've previously called out the maserati ghibli and the levante for being well not very good but the gran turismo mc is good and today i'm going to review this one and show you why [Music] now i've borrowed this gran turismo mc from mark motors here in bernie texas which is near san antonio mark motors has an excellent inventory of luxury cars and performance cars and exotic cars and they told me i could have free reign of their inventory to pick something and film a video with it and i decided to choose the gran turismo because this car has been out for over a decade now and yet i still haven't reviewed it yes this car came out way back in 2008 and yes it is still on sale as a new car which is something that surprises a lot of car enthusiasts that you can still buy one of these new of course things have changed a lot over the last decade when this car first came out it only had 400 horsepower these days the sporty mc version this one has 454 horsepower it'll do 0-60 in 4.7 seconds it's also way way too expensive the starting price on a brand new gran turismo mc is around 153 000 and for that money i can't tell you how much i would rather have anything a mercedes amg gt a porsche 911 gts a used ferrari f430 a three-bedroom house in suburban omaha four pet giraffes anything it is amazing to me that maserati feels they can charge three 153 dollars for this ancient car with its old design considering how many great competitors are on sale but this particular gran turismo mc is a 2016 model it's not even three years old yet and mark motors has it listed for sale for less than 84 000 in other words it's half price and it's not like this one is messed up it has a clean carfax report no accidents one owner and it's only been driven around 5 000 miles and that's sort of the thing about the gran turismo it makes no sense to buy one of these cars new but when you start looking at the numbers and the used prices on these i'm thinking about buying it used well then it starts to seem like a pretty good purchase and in fact it is although someday i would like to review a 2008 or a 2009 gran turismo those are selling for like 30 grand now this car also illustrates just how quickly these depreciate and how appealing they become so today i'm going to take you on a tour of this car and i'm going to show you all of the quirks and features of the only good maserati then i'm going to get it out on the road and drive it and then i'm going to give it a dug score and for more of my thoughts on the gran turismo click the link below to visit autotrader.com oversteer where i've also rounded up a list of the best used maserati bargains currently listed for sale on autotrader all right now before i get into the quirks and features of the gran turismo i'm going to talk about some of the things that make this car feel so old starting with the folding key basically every other car at this price point has a key you leave in your pocket you get in you push a button not this in this car you still have to press the unlock button to unlock the doors get in stick the key in the ignition like a toyota 4runner old school truck and also a 150 000 exotic sports car and that's nowhere near the only old-fashioned item in this car check out the climate controls first off just look at this climate control screen it looks like a 1980s clock radio screen very very old school but also just the controls themselves there are 17 different climate control buttons on this car vastly too over complicated and over buttoned of those 17 buttons a full six of them are devoted to controlling where the air is coming out in the car and there are also two little slots where there could be buttons but instead there are these horizontal holes your guess is as good as mine now above the climate controls you have probably the most obvious old-school item in this car and that would be a phone dial pad this car is so old it comes from the era back when we still just remembered our friends phone numbers because we didn't have cell phones to put them in you can dial up somebody with your maserati phone dial pad now i admit maserati changed this for 2018 they put on a larger screen they got rid of the phone dial pad but up until 2017 this was what you got when you spent 150 grand on a maserati sports car teslas were driving themselves and in maseratis you still had a phone pad you could call up your blacksmith and inquire about the status of your horseshoes and also ask him you know do you know anybody who services kerosene lamps because mine just aren't as bright as they used to be other old-fashioned insanity in this car the screen itself is not a touch screen which was crazy for 2016 2017 in a car this valuable and entering a navigation destination is such a challenge it's like it was when gps first came out like 20 years ago you have to go and individually scroll over to each letter and the name of your town and then in the name of your street and then choose a street number and it takes like four minutes to enter a navigation destination and when you do finally enter a destination in the navigation system look how old school this map is it really looks like something from 2003 2004 but it was in a 2016 car that cost 150 grand amazingly you can't even move the map when you're looking at it if you want to move the map you have to go into map settings and map functions and click on move the map and only then can you actually move it around you don't have that option on the main screen everything is counter-intuitive and ancient now i will say in spite of all the drawbacks of the infotainment screen at least you have in the upper right corner a maserati logo placed there at all times just to remind you that no matter how bad this screen is you're still in a maserati it's not much consolation now i'll get back to the infotainment system in a minute but i want to go through some of the other old-fashioned items in this car starting with the fact that there is no blind spot monitoring there is no forward collision warning there is no adaptive cruise control there's no automatic emergency braking no lane keep assist there's no lane departure warning most of this cars modern rivals have this stuff this car doesn't even have a backup camera i shift in reverse it doesn't come on there's no camera in this car now the federal government mandated backup cameras for the 2018 model year maserati apparently waited until the very end until they were mandated to add this safety feature like they were building some sort of really cheap economy car and finally you want to play your music in this car you just plug into the usb except you don't because there is no usb so you just bluetooth it well there's bluetooth but no bluetooth audio instead the only music connection in this car is in the glove box it has one of these old-school ipod connectors again they made this all the way up to 2017. nobody was using this then except for maserati now fortunately that cord has the maserati logo on it again reminding you that it might be old but at least it's cool now other interesting items in this car go beyond how old-fashioned it is there are a lot of things in here that can be described simply as quirks and features i want to start with the parking brake which is electronic to release the parking brake you push down on this little p in the center console and then in the gauge cluster the park light blinks for like five or six seconds i guess while the parking brake is turning off and then eventually the light goes off kind of odd here's another one i absolutely love the trip odometer in this car is inside this gauge cluster screen and yet when you put on miles the trip odometer rolls like an actual rolling odometer and each individual mile and tenth of a mile rolls forward like it's an old-fashioned odometer that is an interesting thing most cars just have it go up to the next number rather than going through this rolly process next up back to the center console you'll find a few interesting items in here one is the world's smallest ash tray over to the right of the transmission lever it is really really tiny good enough for your cigarette butt singular you also have cup holders in here not that unusual except if you open up the center console you will see there is room for even more cup holders so you can stick quite a few cups in the front of the maserati gran turismo unusually practical for a maserati now next up another very unusual item is this car's heated seat situation there's no heated seat button in the center console instead there's a little wheel on the side of the seat you're supposed to roll it and that turns on your heated seat zero one two or three now people must have complained that you couldn't see that little wheel and so when you roll it an item appears in the gauge cluster letting you know what level your heated seat is on fair enough the weird thing though is the passenger seat is set up the exact same way including the little gauge cluster display when you turn it on so you're driving down the road the passenger puts on their heated seat and it shows up in the gauge cluster taking precedence over your current speed that the passenger has just adjusted their heated seat temperature makes no logical sense another item that makes no logical sense there is a button below the infotainment screen that says dark if you press that it goes into dark mode actually what happens is the screen just turns off a lot of us would call that an off button but maserati calls it the dark button another interesting item in the infotainment system it allows you to choose what color you want you can configure your infotainment color and what are your color choices well day or night which seems a little strange what's your favorite color i don't know about you but mine is day another interesting item in this car i like the fact that you're able to choose languages and when you do italian is first it is an italian car then you can scroll through various other languages my favorite one though is at the very bottom you have russian and that's cluster only it will change the instrument cluster but not the infotainment screen they didn't want to pay someone to translate all of that stuff into russian they stopped after the instrument cluster no this guy's not working out we're done only let him do the cluster then we're firing him and next up it is time to do what i do best i'm going to climb into the back seat of the gran turismo yes there is a back seat it is after all the gran turismo a grand touring car so the theory is you drive around with yourself and three friends on a grand tour but anyway you move the seat forward then you move the seat back forward and then you can climb into the back although it is quite tight back here and obviously it gets even tighter when i put the seat all the way back i don't have much room and that's with the seat all the way in the forward position now there are a couple of interesting items in the back seats one of which is the fact that there are two more cup holders back here now if you combine the two rear cup holders with the four front cup holders you have six total cup holders in this four seat car you have a better cup holders deceit ratio in the maserati gran turismo than you do in the honda odyssey another interesting item in the back seat of this car is you have two big climate control vents right in the middle and in the front on that giant panel of overly complicated climate controls there is a button for rear so the front passengers can actually choose whether or not the rear passengers get climate control air blown through those vents that's sort of proof that maserati did really intend this car to be a grand touring vehicle with people in the back seat they paid extra attention to the rear seat climate controls but anyway now it's time to get out which is never easy now next up we move on to the outside of the gran turismo there are a few interesting quirks and features starting with the door handle put your hand around the door handle you can see you don't just open it there's actually two levers you can choose from to pull the lever on the right is electronic you pull it and it pops open the door easily the one on the left is manual in case the electronic one breaks the battery is dead you pull that and it manually releases the door kind of strange but that's what they've done in this car now next up we move into the trunk and the trunk itself is not particularly interesting it just looks like a trunk not especially large but there it is but underneath the floor of the trunk there are a couple of interesting items one is this tool kit take a look at this isn't this the coolest cover for a tool kit you've ever seen actually opening it up is pretty boring just regular tools but i love the cover the other thing i love in the trunk is the emergency inside trunk release it's a thing you can pull to get let out in case someone tries to kidnap you in a gran turismo and you can see it doesn't just showing a person getting let out of a car but rather a person getting let out of a gran turismo just in case there was any confusion when you get kidnapped if you pull it am i just going to get light out of a generic car or this car maserati clears that up now next we move under the hood in the gran turismo and you can see this car's v8 454 horsepower but the first thing you notice when you open up the hood is just how far back the engine is set in the engine compartment it basically only takes up half of the engine compartment and i think the reason for that is they want to push it further back to put it more in the middle of the car for weight distribution as opposed to putting it out over the front wheels then the front of the car starts to feel heavy but by doing this they've contributed to something i've never really liked about the look of this car which is the front end is just too long and then it comes to a point in the front where the grill looks like a fish take a look at the maserati grill and then now this fish and that isn't the only styling element i don't like in this car in fact i've never really liked how this car looks and another big contributing factor is the wheelbase i think this car is just too long and the wheelbase is just too extensive i think the car looks kind of ponderous and oversized for what it is i will say however that i am in the minority most people seem to agree that this is a pretty nice looking car but personally i just don't see it one thing we can agree on however is the exhaust note which sounds fantastic take a listen [Music] by the way one other styling element that i don't love about this car relates specifically to this one the newer mc models when a car starts to get older auto makers in order to make the design last longer they seem to add like cuts and intakes into the car so this car has one here and here and here and here and here and here and here and it didn't have any of those when it first went on sale of course it also has three port holes on this side and then another three port holes on this side i counted it up and in addition to the grille this car has 13 different holes before you even get to the front door it's just excessive but that was maserati's goal to try to make the car look more modern and fresh let's just add more air intakes and inlets and so those are the quirks and features of the gran turismo mc now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives all right driving the gran turismo mc for one thing there's the sound which is obvious this is one of the better sounding cars on the market especially at this price point it just sounds so good it sounds like a true sports car i mean listen to this engine [Music] i'm sitting inside the car and it sounds that good do you have any idea how many automakers are piping in sound that still doesn't sound that good this is just such a great sounding car it actually feels somewhat comfortable if you wanted to i've got in sport right now and so it's kind of letting me go up into the rev range but if i take sport off put it back into comfort this could totally be just a drivable car now when this car came out that was a big deal because there weren't maseratis they weren't around there was no maserati you could just drive to work and it was really incredible that this was that it was a car that was fun and you could drive it to work and it had that dual personality thing now you see ghibli's everywhere and it's not as special the fact that you have a maserati that you can just kind of cruise in it does feel quick doesn't feel incredibly quick certainly not a hundred and fifty six thousand dollar quick eighty thousand dollar quick yes especially when you couple it with that sound the brand name the exotic styling it's got all that great stuff it really does kind of feel like the car that can do it all especially with back seats this is sort of the 911 of the maserati world i just wish it wasn't so old on the inside if this had the same tech as a 911 it would honestly start to become hard to buy a 911 especially used one over this car because the handling is not that far off the brand name is obviously cooler the styling most people think more exotic cooler the sound is obviously better and it does all the other stuff just as good the sort of you can still daily drive it the kind of stuff you can't get into ferrari the stuff that porsche is famous for and it's just a shame this car is so old because i really think maserati has the ability with their brand name to go and compete with porsha in that world they choose not to instead they went after you know the low hanging fruit the sedans the suv makes sense but it would be nice to back all that up with a really good sports car they have that they just charge too much for it and it's too old all right i'm gonna get into it here [Music] yeah acceleration is nice and strong again not 150 000 dollars strong but it feels good it's quick it's powerful feels nice to drive and it's very smooth i've always felt the steering in this car was very linear and precise that's something they got right from day one and it's especially impressive considering this car's relatively large size especially its large front usually a car like that you feel like you're sort of sitting in the middle of it or behind a lot of stuff this thing you still feel like you're turning and it just does a great job the string rack is great it feels really tight really really quick steering i always have been impressed good mid-range power everything feels good at the end of the day this is exactly what maserati calls it gran turismo it's a good grand touring car uh you load up some people in it you go for a drive it's not a crazy all-out sports car it's not a crazy all-out luxury car but it's a very good car at doing kind of what it does it's just with the tech they have in it even with the latest update it's just not acceptable at 150 plus thousand dollars when you have other stuff in that range mercedes amg gt aston martin vantage is close to that uh when all myriad 911s i mean you could go through a bunch of different cars um but as these things start to depreciate they start to make more sense and so that's the maserati gran turismo mc i think it would be insane to pay 150 160 000 for a new one of these but these cars sound so good they lose value so fast they have the brand name and they drive well enough that at some price point these cars actually start to make pretty good sense anyway now it's time to give this car a doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the gran turismo looks fine i don't like it but i know most of you do i'll compromise and give it a 6 out of 10. acceleration does 0-60 in 4.6 seconds and it gets a six out of ten handling is excellent especially for a four-seater car like this and it gets a seven out of ten fun factor is great with the excellent noise and the sharp steering and decent acceleration and it gets a seven out of ten cool factor is only okay as these have become more common and it gets a 6 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 32 out of 50. next up are the daily categories and features the gran turismo mci drove was shockingly low on tech and it gets a 4 out of 10. comfort is pretty good for a car in this segment and it gets a 6 out of 10. quality is average the interior is nice enough but reliability is suspect and it gets a six out of ten practicality is normal for a car like this and it gets a four out of ten finally value and this is a bargain compared to the original sticker price although it's still got a long way to fall in terms of depreciation the real bargain is to pick one up in the 50 to 60 thousand dollar range though this is relatively closed and it gets a 6 out of 10 for a total daily score of 26 out of 50. add it up and the doug score is 58 out of 100 which places it here against some similar cars the gran turismo mc does okay in this bunch and it really is the only good maserati but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a great car [Music] you

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 2,606,777

Keywords: maserati granturismo, maserati granturismo review, granturismo review, granturismo, maserati review, granturismo mc, maserati granturismo mc, maserati granturismo mc review, maserati, doug demuro, demuro, doug de muro, de muro

Id: 7AHJaYGes5w

Length: 21min 50sec (1310 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 25 2019