Fangio would have approved
No one would complain about a trip to Monte Carlo, but it did seem like a long way to go to test-drive a new automatic transmission. Even if that transmission is attached to the latest Maserati Quattroporte and this year celebrates 50 years since a Maserati driven by Juan Manuel Fangio won the Monaco GP, the first presided over by Princess Grace.
Using the latter as a metaphor to say that the Quattroporte exhibits a blend of the company’s high-performance tradition with regal elegance was a stretch, but Roberto Ronchi, Maserati CEO, was candid on another point. Why did his company wait so long (the Quattroporte debuted at the 2003 Frankfurt auto show) to offer a fully automatic transmission in addition to the oft-criticized semi-automatic DuoSelect, nee Cambiocorsa?
“We have sold around 9000 with the DuoSelect transmission that emphasizes the sportiness of the car,” said Ronchi. “We gained our niche as a sporty sedan because our customers preferred the DuoSelect, but we need the fully automatic transmission to increase our business. The U.S. is our target market, where we estimate that 80 percent of sales will be the automatic. We took over 18 months to develop an automatic because we must keep the sporty nature."
Technical director Jean-Luc Brossard explained that retaining the Quattroporte’s “sportiness” with an automatic transmission was complicated by the 4.2-liter, 400-hp V8’s 7000-rpm redline and a drivetrain layout with a transaxle at the rear for a handling-biased 47/53 front-to-rear weight distribution. The car was designed around the Duo-Select, adapted from Ferrari’s F1 paddle-shift transmission. The full-automatic project entailed more than contracting ZF Friedrichshafen AG to develop a Maserati-specific six-speed automatic that could deal smoothly with the high-revving engine; the car had to be reworked to mount that transmission forward, right behind an engine that itself was also significantly amended.
While horsepower rating, compression ratio and displacement are the same for Duo-Select and automatic versions, the V8 in the latter has been converted from dry sump to wet sump lubrication and has a new air intake system, revised intake cam phasing, modified pistons and a redesigned cylinder head. The cylinder head is painted in traditional Maserati blue, not red. This engine produces a peak 339 lb-ft of torque at 4250 rpm, as opposed to 332 lb-ft at 4500 rpm—the difference looks minor, but the fatter torque curve at low-rpm ranges matters more than peak output.
Curb weight is up about 44 pounds. Top speed drops from 172 mph (276 km/h) to 168 mph (270 km/h), while 0 to 62 mph takes 5.6 seconds, as opposed to 5.2 seconds. The good news is, even though the transmission is now sitting behind the engine, the weight bias is an agile 49/51 front to rear.
Monaco and the surrounding roads provided an ideal test of the Quattroporte Automatic. A half-hour, three-kilometer crawl through commuter traffic in Nice proved the worth of the full automatic mode. On the narrow, cliffhanging, serpentine “rally stage” roads above Monte Carlo, manual shifts came off so slick and smooth, we intuitively adapted to the racing-style “up is down, down is up” gear selection without turning our passenger into a bobble-head. The steering’s immediate turn-in response and feedback and the favorable weight balance made the commodious luxury sedan feel much smaller and sprightlier than its actual size and weight would indicate.
Equally enjoyable was the silhouette that drew admiring glances in a town where Bentleys line the curbs.
The Quattroporte Automatic is priced at $116,500, $1,200 above comparable DuoSelect models. Shift paddles are optional on base and Executive GT models, and standard on the Sport GT.
source: autoweek.com
No one would complain about a trip to Monte Carlo, but it did seem like a long way to go to test-drive a new automatic transmission. Even if that transmission is attached to the latest Maserati Quattroporte and this year celebrates 50 years since a Maserati driven by Juan Manuel Fangio won the Monaco GP, the first presided over by Princess Grace.
Using the latter as a metaphor to say that the Quattroporte exhibits a blend of the company’s high-performance tradition with regal elegance was a stretch, but Roberto Ronchi, Maserati CEO, was candid on another point. Why did his company wait so long (the Quattroporte debuted at the 2003 Frankfurt auto show) to offer a fully automatic transmission in addition to the oft-criticized semi-automatic DuoSelect, nee Cambiocorsa?
“We have sold around 9000 with the DuoSelect transmission that emphasizes the sportiness of the car,” said Ronchi. “We gained our niche as a sporty sedan because our customers preferred the DuoSelect, but we need the fully automatic transmission to increase our business. The U.S. is our target market, where we estimate that 80 percent of sales will be the automatic. We took over 18 months to develop an automatic because we must keep the sporty nature."
Technical director Jean-Luc Brossard explained that retaining the Quattroporte’s “sportiness” with an automatic transmission was complicated by the 4.2-liter, 400-hp V8’s 7000-rpm redline and a drivetrain layout with a transaxle at the rear for a handling-biased 47/53 front-to-rear weight distribution. The car was designed around the Duo-Select, adapted from Ferrari’s F1 paddle-shift transmission. The full-automatic project entailed more than contracting ZF Friedrichshafen AG to develop a Maserati-specific six-speed automatic that could deal smoothly with the high-revving engine; the car had to be reworked to mount that transmission forward, right behind an engine that itself was also significantly amended.
While horsepower rating, compression ratio and displacement are the same for Duo-Select and automatic versions, the V8 in the latter has been converted from dry sump to wet sump lubrication and has a new air intake system, revised intake cam phasing, modified pistons and a redesigned cylinder head. The cylinder head is painted in traditional Maserati blue, not red. This engine produces a peak 339 lb-ft of torque at 4250 rpm, as opposed to 332 lb-ft at 4500 rpm—the difference looks minor, but the fatter torque curve at low-rpm ranges matters more than peak output.
Curb weight is up about 44 pounds. Top speed drops from 172 mph (276 km/h) to 168 mph (270 km/h), while 0 to 62 mph takes 5.6 seconds, as opposed to 5.2 seconds. The good news is, even though the transmission is now sitting behind the engine, the weight bias is an agile 49/51 front to rear.
Monaco and the surrounding roads provided an ideal test of the Quattroporte Automatic. A half-hour, three-kilometer crawl through commuter traffic in Nice proved the worth of the full automatic mode. On the narrow, cliffhanging, serpentine “rally stage” roads above Monte Carlo, manual shifts came off so slick and smooth, we intuitively adapted to the racing-style “up is down, down is up” gear selection without turning our passenger into a bobble-head. The steering’s immediate turn-in response and feedback and the favorable weight balance made the commodious luxury sedan feel much smaller and sprightlier than its actual size and weight would indicate.
Equally enjoyable was the silhouette that drew admiring glances in a town where Bentleys line the curbs.
The Quattroporte Automatic is priced at $116,500, $1,200 above comparable DuoSelect models. Shift paddles are optional on base and Executive GT models, and standard on the Sport GT.
source: autoweek.com
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