2017 Maserati Levante Review: A Luxury SUV That's a Bargain?

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SURE, A MASERATI SUV, why not? The Modena, Italy-based luxury car maker, now owned by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, dropped the Kubang SUV concept on us way back in 2011. By now the brothers Maserati have certainly stopped spinning in their graves.

The production model is named Levante, after the easterly Mediterranean wind famous for blowing swim trunks off hotel railings in Spain, but that's another story. The Maserati Levante ($72,000 MSRP, or $83,000 for the sportier S) comes to us from the company's refurbished digs at Mirafiori, in greater Turin. The Levante, and its rich creamy profits, are central to FCA's survival strategy.

Not just another pretty face-because it isn't-the Levante is still a formidable hunk of machinery, 16.4 feet long and 2.3 tons of you-can't-catch-me, sexed up with handbag leather and pearl paint, and powered by a loquacious 3.0-liter turbo V-6 (345 hp or 424 hp in the S), an eight-speed automatic transmission and all-wheel drive churning 20-inch paddle wheels.

Press the Sport mode button (twice) and the exhaust system sheds its inhibitions and this very strange timbre emerges: The V-6's exhaust note is quite tenor, high and tight like a snare-drum roll under throttle-snnerrr!-and then wildly swampy and gutbucket on the downshift. Buhwoppida-pow! Bwuum Bwuum, Bdddd? In a Pat Conroy novel, that sound in the driveway meant the abusive dad of the story was home.

A half-foot longer than the Porsche Cayenne, the Levante's silhouette approximates the Porsche but on a stretched wheelbase (118.3 inches), with the extra inches devoted to the rear cabin. The Levante's rear seating is conspicuously spacious, with headroom that somehow defies the car's sloping roof (lined in faux suede in our test car). Things are not nearly so nice for anyone in the middle-rear seat, however.

Chassis? Oh yeah, plenty: double-wishbone front suspension and rear multi-links, with air springs at all four corners, and adaptive multi-mode dampers. The Levante's air suspension has six height settings, including a hiked up off-road position (9.6 inches). Do you want to go faster, Billy? The Levante will hiss its air springs, lowering itself toward the pavement, and get down to business. Top speed: 164 mph.

The Mazzer's all-wheel-drive mechatronics also provide brake-based torque vectoring at the rear axle. Mom and dad can enjoy an extra measure of power-on yaw when they drift-bomb the hairpins on the way to Telluride.

You know, I thought I'd hate this vehicle, and I was partly right. It isn't my kind of getting-around, frankly. It's big, it's heavy ("Motor Trend" weighed an identical test car and got 4,979 pounds) and the grille makes it look like it's wearing corrective headgear. While I'm tallying demerits, it's got a monstrous turning circle and I cannot abide the way the legal-language warning appears on the beautiful center touch screen and stays there until you submit to pressing the Accept button.

More seriously, Maserati's gear selector can be quite finicky, and if you aren't mindful you can easily throw it into Reverse meaning to hit Park and, pulling down, Neutral instead of Drive. Holy cats, is the first person to notice this the reviewer for the WSJ? Seems unlikely.

But I couldn't help it. The Levante grew on me. It is so unapologetically boss. Out on the highway, the Levante rides suitably like a magic carpet, lush and well tempered but with a surprisingly amount of allowable body movement. This thing should have deck cleats.

Switching into one of the Sport modes tightens the suspension's laces, as well as sharpens/weights the steering and powertrain response. Let the crazy lupine growling commence.

Under a hard stick, the Levante S rages ridiculously, with gobs of torque and deeply satisfying cannonades as soundtrack. Huge pace, major attitude, plenty of grip from the big tires, if no steering feel, per se. The Levante S is the latest in a line of high-performance dancing bears, including the Range Rover Sport SVT and Mercedes-AMG GLE63, that routinely defy one's belief in what's possible for a 5,000-pound SUV.

But if the Levante is predictable in its muscle-truck absurdity, it's exceptional in ways easy to miss. Cabin quiet and isolation, for example. In addition to the air pillows at all four corners, the windshield and windows are made of acoustic-damping glass, a feature usually found over the $100,000 threshold. Oh, thank you very much.

The vehicle's glazing-the system of windows, seals, roof pillars and tracks-is exceptional, with nearly flush seams around the canopy. The company says the Levante's drag coefficient is a low 0.31 Cd (better than the Cayenne's 0.36), which aids fuel economy. But the seamless canopy also quiets typical wind-noise hot spots, especially around the windshield pillars. Good work here.

It being late fall, our Levante S arrived wearing all-season tires, the enormous Continental ZR20s (265/45 front, 295/40 rear), which look cool as all get out. But the weight of these rims and rubber, as well as the vast disc brakes, make for some significant unsprung mass, and the heavy boots dimmed the Levante's overall refinement. A decent pothole would rattle a front wheel and send an undamped tremble back through the steering rack. And the big tires' road noise seeped into the cabin despite all efforts to attenuate.



The bogey here is the Cayenne, which is way strong. No one knows this better than its competition. Accordingly, the Levante S beguiles with a long list of standard features for which Porsche gleefully charges extra. These include the air suspension; the panoramic sunroof; the acoustic window glass; and a suite of driver-assistance technology, including all-speed adaptive cruise control with dynamic braking and lane-departure warning; rearview camera and parking sensors fore and aft.

Our test car, a Levante S ($83,000 MSRP, $94,600 as tested), had been kissed with the Lusso (luxury) package, including chocolate-brown leather upholstery, on seats, doors and dash; the 14-speaker, 900-watt Harman Kardon stereo; and the 20-inch Continental tires.

I used Porsche's online configurator to spec a Cayenne S ($76,200 base) as closely as possible to our test car but quit when the figure rolled over to six figures, at which point I started frothing at the mouth.

At these prices the Levante will blow a few shorts off.

The Levante is either a year late to market or five years, if you are a Maserati dealer. In any event it joins a swelling cast of swains and huntsmen in the luxury and prestige-luxury SUV space. For those keeping score, these include newcomers Jaguar F-Pace, Volvo XC90 and Bentley Bentayga, as well as the incumbent Range Rover models.

The Germans Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz together offer dozens of crossover/SUV models, in all sizes and shades of ballsiness, the vast majority of which I have no love for. They make great cars and wagons. Don't much care for their busses.

As parity generally reigns, luxury-car purchases increasingly turn on the metaphysics of brand: design and style, perceptions of luxury and rarity, and authenticity. And it is on this score that the Italian government's penchant for social engineering has actually paid off for Maserati.

The Mirafiori assembly hall, now producing the Levante, was but one piece on a burning chessboard when FCA boss Sergio Marchionne launched a global restructuring in the early part of the decade, closing factories and slashing jobs while at the same time attempting to placate Italian ministry, local and labor forces.

With the government's help, FCA promised to revitalize car manufacturing in Italy-and employment, to the extent possible in the robot-centric milieu of modern car-building.

Alfa's reinvention centered on modernizing the plant at Cassino, between Rome and Naples. FCA spent another billion euros scrubbing up the old Bertone sheds in Grugliasco, also in Turin, and set them to work building Ghiblis and Quattroportes. Yet another billion or so went to upfit the landmark Mirafiori factory, where Levantes are assembled.

One result has been that, consequent to all parties' interest in keeping FCA Italian, the new generation of Alfa Romeos and Maseratis have unusually high domestic content, parts and labor. By a quirk of social engineering, Maseratis and Alfa Romeos are nearly 100% made in Italy. Can you even say that about Prada purses or Fendi shoes?

These three factories-Cassino, Grugilasco and Mirafiori-have emerged from the strategic plan as their own city-states, with their own ethos and sense of origin, their own long-term workforce and, to a surprising degree, their own design and engineering, apart from the FCA mothership. As it should be.

If you'll pardon my Latin, Italian provenance is the sine qua non of these two brands. As a car enthusiast I've despaired watching classic marques leave their historic homes in search of cheaper labor. I suppose as a matter of expedience Porsche can build crossovers in Bratislava and Daimler can enjoy right-to-work labor rates in Alabama, but both brands are diminished.

If I'm buying a Maserati, the Italian better be turned up to 11.

The engine of the base model Maserati Levante has 345 horsepower, and the test car driven for this review was outfitted with size 295/45 rear tires. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the engine has 350 horsepower and gave the rear-tire size of the test car as 295/40. (Dec. 1, 2016)

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