Maserati has opened its order books for its flagship Grecale SUV, with prices starting from £58,500 and the first deliveries set to begin from early next year.
Primed to be Maserati’s most strategically important and potentially best-selling model in decades, the Grecale will launch with a choice of three specifications and power levels.
Entry-level Grecale GT models pack 296bhp and all-wheel drive, with power sourced from a 2.0-litre hybrid powertrain.
Standard equipment includes LED headlights, a reversing camera, active cruise control and parking sensors, while all cars are also fitted with a 12.3in touchscreen and an 8.8 digital driver display.
Mid-range Modena cars feature a slight power boost, producing 325bhp and commanding a £64,500 price tag. Range-topping Trofeo models, meanwhile, swap out the hybrid for a more powerful 3.0-litre V6, which produces 525bhp, a 0-62mph sprint of 3.8sec and a top speed of 177mph.
The new Grecale SUV, which provides the Italian firm with a long-awaited rival to the Porsche Macan, will play a fundamental role in its rapid transition to electrification.
Revealed shortly after Maserati’s parent company Stellantis announced that the brand – along with Alfa Romeo, DS and Lancia – will launch only electric cars from 2025, the Grecale has been engineered to accommodate pure-combustion, hybrid and fully electric drivetrains (see below), which will lend it a similar flexibility of purpose to its German rival, itself due a pure-EV in 2023.
It sits below the Levante in the Maserati line-up and will be joined in dealerships by the long-awaited second-generation Gran Turismo sports car – which will also be offered with an electric drivetrain, as well as the all-new versions of the Maserati Quattroporte and Maserati Levante due in the coming years, each with a full spread of drivetrain options.
Powertrains
It will be available from launch with three petrol engine options: a variant of the 3.0-litre ‘Nettuno’ V6 first used by the MC20 supercar for the top-spec Trofeo, and two four-cylinder mild hybrid for the entry-level Grecale GT and mid-rung Modena.
The V6 uses the same pre-chamber combustion technology as the full-fat MC20 engine, which aims to boost both performance and efficiency, but has been modified in line with its more mainstream billing. It has a wet rather than dry oil sump, for example, and can deactivate the right cylinder bank at a cruise for reduced consumption – this function necessitated a ‘complete redesign’ in order to accommodate collapsible tappets which allow the valvetrain on that side of the engine to be deactivated independently.
Figures of 523bhp and 457lb ft deliver a sprint time to just 3.8sec – quicker than the BMW X3 M Competition.
