Maserati celebrates its centenary this year, and one of its birthday treats for pasta-loving petrolheads is the machine you see here – the 2014 edition of the GranTurismo MC Stradale. The updated coupe gets a touch more power from its naturally aspirated 4.7-litre V8, various go-faster aero bits and a pair of rear seats, so this street-legal Maser racer can now ferry three passengers instead of one.
But adding those backseats would have resulted in a weight increase, so the car also gets a new carbon fibre bonnet with a central air intake and two smaller rear vents. Besides the weight savings, the bonnet also helps to improve high-speed downforce and engine cooling. It lends the revised MC (Maserati Corse) Stradale a more aggressive mien, too.
Styling cues taken from the Trofeo racecar include a deep front splitter and “blacked out” Trident grille, aerodynamically functional side skirts and a pronounced rear lip spoiler. All these elements combine to give the Stradale a sleek, taut silhouette that reeks of Italian couture.
If the looks alone cannot convince you to open your chequebook, firing up the 4.7-litre V8 probably can. The sound it produces is pure aural pleasure. All Maserati powerplants sound good, but the exhaust bark from this model is great. It makes music like Pavarotti.
There’s more muscle, too, with 460bhp (up from 450bhp) and 520Nm (up from 510Nm). The muscular Maser is even faster now, clocking 4.5 seconds in the century sprint (0.1 second quicker than before) en route to a maximum speed of 303km/h (2km/h higher).
Strangely enough, in this age of double-clutch transmissions, this Maser has stuck to a robotised 6-speed manual gearbox, with a dual-plate dry clutch. But it’s up to the task of transmitting the powerful performance, in a suitably brutish manner if required. In Race mode, upshifts are performed in a scant 60 milliseconds (F1 cars do it in 50 milliseconds).
Two more co-drivers can play GranTurismo in the MC Stradale, following its 2014 update.
