2017 Maserati Levante S Q4
Channel: Auto Today
Date: 02/02/2017

Maserati has been here before. Preserving soul-stirring brand values while managing the balance-sheet realities of being a tiny carmaker has never been easy. The last time this Mo­­dena-based brand pulled it off, however, was long before Lamborghinis went from sharing farm fields with bulls to being named after bulls. In 1957, Maserati was a builder of low-volume sports cars and even lower-volume race cars. Back then, it was also an independent concern, unencumbered by the burdens or blessings of its current parent company, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. When its “White Dame” prototype rolled out that year, the Grand Tourer led the way for the series production 3500 GT—a volume seller (relatively speaking, with about 2200 made) introduced into a market ripe for its combination of Italian speed, sound, and flair.
Moving the sales needle on a comparable scale in 2017 means selling a truck. Well, okay, an SUV. To be completely fair, the Levante, undergirded by the Ghibli sedan, is a car-based SUV. Though it expands the market appeal of that platform, it faces no shortage of competition in the world of upscale crossovers. In the past year, Bentley and Jaguar have folded to the allure of SUV sales at the risk of enthusiast cred. And in the next two years, Aston ­Martin and Lamborghini will join the club.

But an SUV, Italian or not, comes with certain practical expectations. We used the Levante accordingly, loading it with kids and bicycles and navigating Michigan’s smooth gravel back roads and brutal tarmac two-lanes. In fact, it was on one such two-lane where we uncovered one of the Levante’s more defining traits. Observing the busyness of its steering and spleen-splitting ride in sport mode, our eight-year-old daughter issued the most obvious question: “Daddy,” she asked, “what happened to this thing?” Good question, kid.

The answer is twofold. First, Michigan happened. No two-lane in the heart of the Rust Belt survives more than a few years without measurable decay. Second, with its dampers in sport mode, the Levante is genuinely stiff; too stiff for Michigan, fine in California, and pretty good in northern Italy, where we first drove it last spring. Decoupling the powertrain from the stiffest damper setting improves ride quality without compromising engine response, but this is a tall wagon that feels so when driven with purpose. Our measurements confirmed the Levante’s 26.0-inch center of gravity to be higher than that of a BMW X5 M and a Porsche Cayenne Turbo—contradicting Maserati’s claim that it has the lowest center of gravity in the SUV class.
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