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| This two-tonne Maserati is surprisingly agile |
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So Sport manual it is, then. And that means sharper sinews in the Skyhook. We're crackling along some cracking roads south of Modena now, twists and turns and short straights reverberating to the hard-edged, machine-gun-fire V8 (it's that arms-dealer thing again) and the two-tonne Maserati seems to have left its mass back at the factory. It flicks into corners like a BMW M3, its front wheels biting hard, its rear wheels ready to edge outwards as the post-apex power pours forth. The ESP system - or MSP, as Maserati calls it - reins in any tail-out excess, but even on these damp roads it allows plenty of freedom.
It's truly astonishing just how agile, how flickable this car is. The steering may be too light and a touch short of true feel, but it's quick and utterly accurate. You feel at one with this car, helped by suspension of near-miraculous absorbency, given how little those adhesive tyres must contribute to soaking up the bumps. The ride is firm, of course, but never jarring. And if you revert to non-Sport mode, the ride becomes almost cosseting, yet much of the agility remains. All you really lose is the steering's razor edge: the Sport GT still feels much more connected and together than the first Quattroporte I drove.
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| The GT is put together very well indeed |
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This is a great chassis, helped by its slightly rearward-biased (53%) weight distribution brought about by mounting the gearbox in unit with the differential. It's joined to the engine by a rigid torque tube, so the whole powertrain moves as one.
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