Maserati Levante Trofeo

Maserati’s Most Powerful Production Car is an SUV!

- Rohit Paradkar

Muscle car on the Pacific Coast Highway in the US? Check! German sportscar on the Nurburgring? Check! Japanese sportscar on a fabled mountain road? Check! Italian sportscar at the Mecca of motorsport? Not yet?

Leaving that box unchecked on the bucket list after so many years of being a motoring journalist, bothers me. A consolation, however, came earlier this month, in the form of an invitation to visit Modena to drive a car that had all the figures you expect from a sportscar - close to 600 horses, a V8 with red cylinder heads, a naught to 100 time of under four seconds and member of the hallowed 300kmph club. Why consolation? Because this car doesn’t hug the road, instead it has a 175mm clearance between its belly and the road, is the tallest in the fleet, seats four in great comfort and space, and yet has a trident piercing the grille up front. By our standards, that ground clearance is still sedan territory, but in the motoring districts of Italy it qualifies as an SUV. That is the Maserati Levante. Except what I’ve come to drive has the Trofeo tag to it, which makes it Maserati’s most powerful production car ever (don’t count the MC12 because it wasn’t considered series production)

The Levante doesn’t need introduction. Since 2016, this has been But the Trofeo only lets you go down to a 21. I would go with a size 20 for they offer a relatively cushier ride, but that size is only available on the Levante GTS, which too has debuted this year alongside the Trofeo. It sits at a spot lower than Trofeo though and has slightly more elegant styling with its body-coloured splitters. The cabins of these two variants are largely similar.

Cabin