2017 Maserati Gran Turismo C Sport on 2040-cars

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A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.

Ghibli PHEV will launch Maserati's electrification offensive

The hybrid variant of the Maserati Ghibli  announced in 2019 is allegedly scheduled to make its public debut during the 2020 Beijing Motor Show. The yet-unnamed model will launch the Italian brand's electrification offensive. Sources familiar with Maserati's plans told Automotive News Europe the Ghibli hybrid will greet the public for the first time when the Beijing show opens its doors on April 21. Going hybrid in China makes sense on several levels. It's an important market for Maserati, the current-generation Ghibli (pictured above) broke cover at the 2013 Shanghai auto show, yet it's a country it has struggled to gain a secure foothold in. Adding electrified options to its range could give its annual Chinese sales a big boost because officials are promoting cars with a plug to curb pollution. There's no word yet on what kind of hybrid technology the Ghibli will receive, though Automotive News Europe speculated it will be a plug-in setup capable of powering the sedan on electricity alone for short distances. Similarly, it's too early to tell if the Italian firm will drop a hybrid powertrain into the Ghibli as we know it and push it to the market, or if it will also make visual, tech, and other mechanical updates to the seven-year-old model. Maserati hasn't commented on the report, and it hasn't announced when the Ghibli hybrid will make its debut; it only pledged to release the model in 2020. Similarly, we don't know if the sedan will be sold in the United States yet. We've reached out to the company for clarification, and we'll update this story if we learn more. Looking ahead, every model Maserati releases will incorporate a degree of electrification. Some will be hybrids, we expect the existing Quattroporte and Levante models will receive gasoline-electric technology, and we know the replacements for the GranTurismo and the GranCabrio due out in 2021 and 2022, respectively, will be the firm's first battery-electric models. There's a new sports car right around the corner, too, and rumors indicate it will be aimed at the Lamborghini Huracan Evo, but we'll need to be patient to find out what's under the camouflage. Related Video:

2023 Maserati Grecale revealed with 523-hp twin-turbo V6

After months of releasing preview images and several delays, Maserati has introduced the Grecale, its long-awaited entry-level SUV. The sub-Levante model is aimed directly at the Porsche Macan, and it will likely become the firm's best-selling nameplate in the coming years. The latest addition to the Maserati range stretches 191 inches long and 66 inches tall, dimensions that make it about six inches shorter and nearly the same height as the Levante. Visually, it illustrates what Maserati design boss Klaus Busse meant when he told us that future Maserati models would borrow styling cues from the MC20: its front end is defined by a wide grille positioned below a pair of elongated headlights. Viewed from the side, the Grecale leans more toward sportiness than utility, while the back end wears horizontal lights connected by a strip of bright trim. Vents chiseled into the fenders and trident-shaped logos on the C-pillars link the SUV to the rest of the Maserati range. It's a design that works, in our opinion: The Grecale is recognizable as a Maserati but not a copy of an existing model. Busse told us that the idea wasn't merely to Xerox the MC20's front end onto the body of an SUV. "The design philosophy that I laid out in the beginning was actually done before we designed [the MC20 and the Grecale]. We really had to sit down and get our ahead around what we want to do with the next chapter of the brand. The reality is that 70% of the design process is understanding the message that you want to create, and the car then designs itself and the remaining 30% is just putting it on paper. We didn't want to design the car purely for Instagram; end up with a car loaded with real or fake features, lines, and creases. We're very much about purity. Maserati is a very strong performing car, so it doesn't need to shout, "Hey, look at me!" Quite the opposite; it wants to be a rolling structure, a car that adds almost visual value to its environment. That's the overreaching philosophy," Busse told Autoblog. Inside, Maserati integrated a relatively long list of tech features without making the dashboard look like the automotive equivalent of an iPhone. The driver faces up to four screens: a 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster, a 12.3-inch touchscreen for the Maserati Intelligent Assistant (MIA) digital instrument cluster, an 8.8-inch touchscreen positioned right below, and a digital clock — yes, that seemingly counts as a screen.