Maserati Levante Trofeo Launch Edition

We may have had our wings clipped when it comes to travel but if you’re lucky you can still drive like the wind.

Maserati Levante Trofeo Launch Edition

Travel is not always about the destination; sometimes it’s about the journey. It’s about getting there as much as being there, or at least it can be. As Australians face the prospect of clipped wings and having to holiday this coming summer in our own country – perhaps even in our own state – we have two options as tourists: wishing and hoping things were different, or embracing the fact that we’re grounded. There’s an opportunity to see more of this country by planning a good old-fashioned road trip.

Every state in Australia has plenty to offer within comfortable driving distance. So this coming holiday season, forget about flight schedules and their inevitable changes; forget about airports, security checks and pressurised cabins. Hit the road, roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair.

Road trips haven’t always been my favourite thing, thanks to some hellish childhood holiday experiences. I’m one of five boys; I know, “my poor mother”. Well spare a thought for poor me stuffed in the back seat between two of my brothers, all bored out of our minds, for a 10-hour drive. There’s only so much I Spy you can play without breaking out into a fight. Vacations in my family were always in Australia; I didn’t travel overseas until I was able to pay for it myself. But up until then I saw lot of the east coast of the country, or as much of it as you can from the middle back seat of the family station wagon.

Seven people were packed into the car (as well as luggage, groceries, several surfboards, and possibly even a bicycle or two), which – shocking to people under the age of 30 – didn’t have air-conditioning, or TV screens, or even a radio that worked when you got a few kilometres out of the city. The windows of our car, at least on highways, were not wound down either. My father, who rarely drove over 80km/h, was convinced the buffeting wind would affect the aerodynamics and therefore burn more petrol (as if a boxy 1970s Holden Belmont station wagon even had anything as highfalutin as aerodynamics). Oh, and my mother was a constant smoker.

One memorable summer, my father thought we should head south and visit friends who lived in Mildura, on the border between NSW and Victoria, instead of enjoying our normal Port Macquarie sojourn on the state’s mid-north coast. We drove for two days through a heatwave, and somewhere in the middle of the Hay Plain, from my position in the back seat, I projectile vomited all over the front seat and the dashboard. The car was never quite the same and neither were we. When we finally arrived at our destination, my younger brother, who was hallucinating due to heat stroke, had to be placed in a cold bath until he calmed down.

But as an adult with no children of my own, I’ve found road trips have gone from being the stuff of nightmares and health hazards to adventures I relish. My working life is normally filled with a lot of international travel and I spend a significant amount of time on aeroplanes. In recent years, when it comes to summer holidays, I want to be as far away from an airport as possible, to be in charge of my own destiny and not at the mercy of an airline’s schedule. It helps that a few years ago I bought a nice car for the first time in my life – and driving it was sheer pleasure. Now the thought of driving for hundreds of kilometres on a freeway rather than in stop-start city traffic is almost as exciting as the holiday itself.

But my car is not as nice as the one featured on these pages; it’s not even close. And it’s nowhere near as much fun to drive as the Maserati Levante Trofeo Launch Edition either. This car is light years ahead of my car, and so far removed from the family station wagon of old that comparing them is hardly fair. Both are made from metal and both have four wheels, and that’s where the similarities end. And while this car might look like any other Maserati Levante (apart from the colour – more on that later), it’s what’s under the hood that makes all the difference with this model. Hiding under its big, bulging bonnet is Maserati’s most powerful engine ever: a whopping 3.8 litre, V8 – the same one used in corporate stablemate Ferrari’s 488 and Maserati’s own Quattroporte – with 590 horsepower. All that power means a driver could, in theory, go from a standing start to 100 km/h in the blink of an eye (3.9 seconds. to be exact).

Suffice to say the Levante Trofeo goes like the wind – literally. Maserati has a history of naming its cars after famous winds, starting in 1963 with the Mistral, a two-seat gran turismo named after the strong, cold wind that blows across southern France. Then there was the Bora, a two-seater coupe made from 1971 to 1978 and the first Maserati with four-wheel independent suspension. The Khamsin, produced from 1976 to 1982, bears the name of the hot desert wind from Egypt. In 2016, when Maserati launched its first SUV, it gave it the name of the eastern wind that blows across the Mediterranean and can change from calm breeze to gale force gusts in an instant. It’s as apt a metaphor for this car as any could be.

The Levante Trofeo also has a top speed of 304 km/h – not that there is anywhere in Australia where you can legally test this claim. Nor should anyone ever need to. The point of a powerful car is not really what it can achieve but how it makes you feel when you’re behind the wheel (or stuck in the back seat). That’s not to say that having this kind of power at your disposal isn’t without its thrills. The pleasure most drivers will have in controlling this car is in the calmer breezes.

First, there is the Pieno Fiore leather used extensively throughout the cabin. It reportedly comes from cows raised in mountainous parts of Italy that are free from things that could blemish their hides, such as mosquitoes and barbed wire fences – apparently it’s the only way to get such smooth, flawless leather. The Launch Edition of the Trofeo, of which only 100 are available globally, has a black leather interior with contrasting yellow stitching to match it’s unique exterior finish. This exotic, luxurious leather has been mixed with uncoated carbon fibre on some of the hard surfaces of the interior, as well as the front splitter, side skirts and bumper on the exterior. Where the carbon fibre in cars is normally lacquered and smooth to the touch, here it is rough and textured and used sparingly on the centre console, doors and dash to contrast with the smooth leather.

And then there’s the striking colour: yellow. Called Giallo Modenese, it is applied in a three-layer treatment that gives it an extraordinary luminosity. Giallo Modenese is only available if you opt for the Launch Edition of the Levante Trofeo (which starts at $330,000 and is $395,000 for the edition featured on these pages).

The colour needs to be seen in the flesh for its true brilliance to be appreciated. It’s a shame more cars don’t come in hues as daring as this instead of the usual grey, silver or white. If you’re driving a car that emits a sound that has been compared to operatic music, you want it to be in a colour equal to those tones. Red is so obvious for a fast car, but yellow – particularly this deep bumblebee shade – stands out not just for its vividness but because it’s such an unusual sight on the road.

When the car is driven in Corsa mode, which gives the engine a faster throttle response and quicker gear shifting – another feature exclusive to the Trofeo model – that unmistakable Maserati sound swings into another key and sounds like a supercar with even the slightest tap on the accelerator pedal. It’s another feature that causes heads to swivel.

When WISH was handed the keys to the Levante Trofeo Launch Edition for the day, we decided to visit the Blue Mountains region, a short drive west of Sydney, to get a feel for the way the car handles.

The most direct route to the Blue Mountains is via the Great Western Highway, which can be as boring the name sounds. Add to that the fact that it can be heavy with traffic and it’s not the kind of road on which to put a car like this through its [legal] paces. The alternative route, and often just as quick, is the Bells Line of Road, a 59km stretch that winds its way from Richmond at the base of the Blue Mountains to Bell, its north-westernmost village.

The Bells Line of Road was marked out in 1823 by explorer and politician Archibald Bell, who, with the help of Aboriginal guides following a traditional indigenous pathway across the mountains, established an alternative route to the one taken by Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth, which is now the Great Western Highway. The Bells Line of Road, however, wasn’t officially opened until 1905 and remained rarely used in comparison to the highway. But with the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, the road attracted renewed interest as a strategic alternative route for evacuating Sydney should the Great Western Highway be severed by enemy attack. In 1942, it was identified by the government as an important defence route and was subsequently upgraded.

The urban development of Sydney to the west followed the Great Western Highway, which means the Bells Line of Road remains a charming, meandering country route through some of the Blue Mountains’ most spectacular bushland. The area was badly damaged during last summer’s bushfires but heavy rains since have brought significant regrowth in a matter of months. With the burning of the dense bushland the natural rock formation has been revealed and the drive through these parts is more spectacular than ever, the effects of the devastating fires offering visitors a rare glimpse of the natural topography. Given the area’s proximity to the centre of Sydney, it’s the perfect destination for a weekend getaway or even just a day trip.

The drive takes in the villages of Kurrajong, Bilpin, Mount Irvine and Mount Tomah, among others, which are scattered with impressive cool-climate private gardens featuring native and exotic plants. Many are open to the public on certain days. At Mount Tomah you can visit the Blue Mountains Botanic Gardens, part of which was damaged by the fires but which has since reopened. The area around Bilpin is known for its apple orchards and the stretch of road through it is strewn with roadside stalls selling freshly picked apples, pears, peaches, nectarines and cherries when in season.

The Maserati Levante Trofeo with its Ferrari engine made light work of the winding roads and hills along the Bells Line of Road. Most cars, even with a standard 1.4 litre four-cylinder engine, can handle this terrain, so you might be wondering, why drive something so powerful when you can’t use it to its fullest capacity? To that I’d have to say, why not?

Driving this car is all about the way it feels and the joy you get every time you accelerate – even just a bit – and hear that mighty engine growl. With a car like this I’d even consider doing the 1000km drive from Sydney to Mildura again – just for the memories.