IN THIS FEATURE Just a prettier face? Heart and soul "A slight weight advantage" Arms-dealer fantasies The machine-gun-fire V8 The Quattroporte in its true colours

For a worrying moment at the Maserati Quattroporte Sport GT's unveiling to the press, I thought I had come to the Modena Military Academy for nothing more than a black chrome mesh radiator grille and a set of giant 20in wheels.

Uniformed chaps from past (dressed dummies in the museum) and present (our military hosts) looked on with reverence and the wisdom of many military and Modenese years, but was I not just looking upon a visual hot-up job?

Sport GT is different by more than just 20" wheels

There were films of old Maseratis and Fangio being heroic, there was a kind of chat-show thing hosted by Ivan Capelli and dominated by John Surtees (F1 Cooper-Maserati in the 1960s being the connection), with Johnny Herbert getting the odd word in edgeways.

I feared it might all be a smokescreen: the Sport GT costs £80,550, which is £6,000 more than the base-model Quattroporte with its rubber mats and vinyl trim (only joking), but all that was different was merely in the eyes of the visual tuner-upper.