2024 Maserati GranTurismo Folgore Exclusive First Drive Review: First Strike

The fratelli Maserati got their automotive start building 2.0-liter grand prix racers for Diatto while overseeing their own spark-plug-manufacturing business. In 1926, when Diatto suspended racing operations, the brothers started building highly successful Maserati race cars. To improve profits and ensure funding for their racing efforts, the brothers set about adapting their winning 1.5-liter racing engine and chassis for road use in 1941, with the resulting A6 1500 Gran Turismo appearing in 1947. Today, circumstances are again forcing Maserati down a new path—this time toward electrification—and the brand will again incorporate motorsports tech on its first production EV. Fittingly, it will again be a grand tourer. But rather than adapting a race car for road use, this time Maserati co-developed an all-new Formula E race car alongside the 2024 GranTurismo Folgore.

The racer will run in the ninth e-Prix season in early 2023. The road car arrives later in the year, and we just got an exclusive opportunity to test it out on Maserati's home track—Autodromo di Modena.

The heart of any racing or performance car is its powertrain, and just as motorsports has always done for combustion engines, Formula E racing development is unlocking new ways to maximize power and minimize energy use. The solutions aren't always cheap, but big racing budgets and luxury grand-tourer sticker prices can help incubate innovation. The 2024 Maserati GranTurismo Folgore employs three motors, designed and built by Maserati. Each arrays 100 permanent magnets in intricate vee formations within the rotors. Note: These are traditional barrel-shaped radial-flux motors, not the pancake-style axial-flux type; none can be declutched, so they're always powered, and all those magnets make these motors too pricey for mainstream Maserati EVs like the forthcoming Grecale Folgore SUV.

To achieve the same low seating position and leg environment found in the Nettuno V-6-powered GranTurismo (which changes little relative to the previous model), the battery pack fills the center tunnel, expanding into the engine compartment in front and the area beneath the rear seats in back. Pouch-style batteries comprise 32 modules to form the pack, which is built at Maserati's Mirafiori factory near Turin. Total capacity is 92.5 kWh, 88.0 of which are usable. The 800-volt pack can be DC fast-charged at 270 kW, taking the battery from 20 to 80 percent in 18 minutes. Level 2 AC charging can be as fast as 22 kW with a 100-amp L2 charger, and an upgrade to 300- or 350-kW fast-charging is anticipated.

Each motor gets its own power inverter (to convert DC battery power to AC motor power or vice versa), and Maserati says it will be first to production with these more efficient, costlier Formula E-derived silicon-carbide MOSFET inverters. They play a key role in delivering both the GranTurismo's power and its comparative efficiency.

All those permanent magnets can handle a lot of electromagnetism to deliver stout torque over a wide rpm range. Each motor can deliver 402 hp and 332 lb-ft of torque to the road. But the battery can only deliver 751 hp total, and then only for 30 seconds of continuous full power. (Note that the system can recover a total of 818-hp worth of regen braking.) And although the EPA has yet to get its hands on a 2024 Maserati GranTurismo Folgore for testing, the manufacturer expects a 250-mile rating—impressive given the car's size, long-legged gearing, and lack of a disconnect mechanism for highway cruising (which aren't a thing in racing).

Top speed is 200 mph, and the 2024 Maserati GranTurismo Folgore gets there with a single gear ratio by spinning the motors to 17,600 rpm through 6.90:1 gearing in front, 7.20:1 in back. (The difference accommodates staggered 265/35 20-inch front and 295/30 21-inch rear tires.) Even with such comparatively tall gearing, the battery and motors are stout enough to catapult the GranTurismo Folgore to 60 mph in 2.6 seconds. Keep the accelerator on full bore, and the car hits 124 mph in 8.0 seconds and reaches top speed in 32 seconds—just as the battery begins to reduce power.

Designing the car for both ICE and BEV power from the outset means the only structural differentiation required is in the rockers, central tunnel, trunk floor, and front "engine" compartment. (The Folgore's is filled with electronics, motors, and batteries, so there's no frunk storage space.) Suspension links are all identical, and height-adjustable air springs and electrically controlled dampers are standard on all GranTurismos, though the springs, dampers, and their programming differ between ICE and BEV models.

Our December drive was entirely on the track to avoid Italy's mandatory winter tires, which would have kneecapped at-limit handling. Pressing the start button on the steering wheel summons a deep basso thrum that seems as loud outside as the previous model's V-8, though Maserati might lower the 107-decibel volume for production. Maserati engineered the sound to incorporate fourth-order V-8 vibes. Inside, the sound becomes more pronounced in the more aggressive drive modes, and it rises and falls as appropriate when driving.

Having the track to ourselves, we started out pretending it was a rural road to sample the Max Range and (default) GT modes at a leisurely pace. These limit power to a still stout 600 horses—plenty for merging or passing. With full stability control vigilance in force, dynamics are perfectly neutral and benign. Sport and Corsa modes dial back the nannies, and Corsa permits separate fine-tuning of the traction control and rear torque-vectoring systems from neutral to Track to Drift. Our most satisfying drifts occurred in the Track setting, but that may have been because the tires had heated sufficiently to stick better by the time we tried Drift. Regardless, the 2024 Maserati GranTurismo Folgore proved to be a deft dance partner.

It's a full-figured one, though. Offering short-trip accommodations for four modest-sized adults and  providing a 9.5-cubic-foot trunk (only 1.5 cubes smaller than the V-6's trunk), it's no surprise the GranTurismo Folgore is about as long and wide as a Jaguar XF (though Maserati claims its roof is lower than any other four-seat production EV). And with that big battery, it weighs about 5,000 pounds. Because it can route up to 402 hp and 332 lb-ft of torque to either outside rear wheel, it yaws into turns eagerly and hence feels nimbler than its size and mass suggest. Having the battery weight centralized along the car's roll center means there's less of the inertial roll resistance that can inhibit full-floor-battery cars' willingness to turn into corners.

Braking is by wire, with the level of regen controllable via steering wheel paddles in four steps that range from mimicking the combustion GranTurismo's coasting deceleration rate to full one-pedal driving. The calibration seemed faultless, with no discernible transition from regen to friction. Coming off the straights, the 15.0-inch front/13.8-inch rear steel Brembo brakes never evinced a hint of fade.

The car we sampled had a Folgore-only interior, rendered in a stunning Wedgwood blue and ivory two-tone featuring a pattern of radiating rays embossed in the leather. The inserts were an Alcantara-like material called Econyl, made from recycled fishnets to help clean up the oceans (currying favor with Neptune, whose trident adorns all Maseratis). The center console is finished in matte carbon-fiber weave that incorporates copper strands. The double-screen central display, borrowed from the Grecale SUV, places infotainment above the transmission shift buttons with another screen beneath that controls climate and other systems (including the headlights). The Dodge SRT gang surely helped program the upper screen, as there are myriad performance gauges, a drag-racing screen, and more—all rendered in Maserati fonts.

The 2024 Maserati GranTurismo Folgore is a comfortable, relaxed, continent crosser (DC fast charger network permitting), very much in the vein of a Bentley Continental. It's gorgeous inside and out, and it manages to feel like $200,000 well spent. We look forward to spending more time in the 2024 GranTurismo Folgore as we approach its third-quarter 2023 U.S. launch.

Much of the development work on both this GranTurismo and the MC20 supercar was conducted prior to the construction of a single prototype, using the advanced dynamic simulator at the Maserati Innovation Lab. The company swears the lap times generated here were matched by the same pro driver in an actual car running the same calibrations.

The sim rig perches a realistic cockpit atop a six-axis lateral motion unit to generate acceleration, braking, and cornering g loads. Three angled actuators add pitch, dive, and roll, while five more shakers contribute higher-frequency powertrain and chassis vibrations. Then there's a five-point harness and seat-cushion bladders that help sustain the impression of acceleration and braking events that may last longer than there's physical room to simulate via moving the cockpit.

Naturally, there's a seamless 270-degree screen onto which photorealistic high-resolution graphics are projected, and vehicle and powertrain sounds are piped in. After lapping for real all morning on Maserati's "home track," the Autodromo di Modena, the team loaded the programming for it and the 2024 GranTurismo Folgore onto the simulator, and I tried it for maybe a dozen laps.

My hat is off to the Maserati driving aces who could divine chassis tuning changes in this environment, because while the cornering forces—especially in the tightest turns—felt quasi-realistic, I couldn't sense acceleration and braking performance accurately enough to gauge my speed using visual cues alone. As a result, I braked way too heavily into every turn on my first few laps. Later braking then resulted in spins and crashes I (thankfully) never experienced on the real circuit.

Simulators all struggle to align physical motion your inner ear senses with the visual information your eyes take in, which frequently results in kinetosis (motion sickness), so the operators were highly impressed that this noob lasted so long without barfing.

This simulation rig has been in use since 2013, and two more static simulators at the MIL help provide hardware-in-the-loop development of various chassis and driver assist systems as well as the user interface.