Maserati Ghibli saloon - Interior & comfort

Although there are undeniably shortcomings elsewhere, from the front seats the Maserati Ghibli makes a good case for itself. There’s plenty of space, the seats and steering wheel offer lots of adjustment, while the overall design is different enough to be special, without being awkward or overly idiosyncratic.

Three trims are offered; the standard Ghibli, the GranLusso and GranSport. The GranLusso has a more relaxing and luxurious feel and brings ‘Comfort’ seats with 12-way power adjustment and a memory function, with the option of Ermenegildo Zegna Silk Edition upholstery or full leather, and wood trim. GranSport features ‘Sports’ seats, a different steering wheel, gearshift paddles and new pedals. Both trims add adaptive LED headlights and painted brake calipers, while the GranLusso brings soft-close doors.

At the top of the range, the Ghibli Trofeo is considered a standalone model and it has several styling tweaks to set it apart from lesser models. Changes include larger 21-inch alloy wheels, a vented bonnet and air intakes on the front wings. It also gets a sportier looking bodykit, with carbon fibre styling including a larger front splitter, deeper side skirts and a redesigned rear diffuser.

Maserati Ghibli dashboard

As with most modern cars, an infotainment display – in this case an 8.4-inch offering – sits in the centre of the Ghibli’s dashboard. It features Apple CarPlay as standard and a recent facelift has bought a new rotary controller into play. This is some way off BMW’s iDrive system for ease of use, but requires no major contortions or concentration to operate and is a significant improvement over the setup found in the pre-facelift Ghibli.

Equipment

All Ghiblis come with leather seats, DAB digital radio, automatic wipers and lights, cruise control and dual-zone air-conditioning, so it’s far from spartan inside. You’ll probably want more interior and exterior colour choices, though, and this requires you to inspect Maserati’s options list. Deep breath.

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Options

For just over £2,500, you can get the Premium package, which includes keyless entry, a powered bootlid and power-adjustable front seats and steering column. There are two Driver Assistance packages (at £1,930 and £2,700), which add items such as adaptive cruise control, blind-spot monitoring, rear cross-traffic alert, highway assist and traffic-sign recognition.

The Cold Weather package (an eye-watering £2,805 on the entry-level Ghibli), meanwhile, gets you all-round heated seats, heated windscreen-washer nozzles, a heated steering wheel and a power-operated rear sunshade. Considering the outlay this requires, it’s clear specifying a Ghibli requires either deep pockets or an iron resolve to resist temptation. We’d argue that many of these features should be standard on a car starting at almost £60,000.

The adjustable suspension is available as an individual option for just over £2,000 (standard on the GranSport), although we didn’t notice it made a much of a discernible difference in the way the Ghibli drives. A box we do recommend ticking is the one for the steering-wheel-mounted shift paddles. At £270 these seem good value, and they’re standard with the GranSport version.