Maserati Ghibli Hybrid review: clever and economical, but it sounds like a hair dryer

What’s been done to Maserati’s first hybrid car feels as wrong as letting your dog drive it.

Good looking: the Maserati Ghibli Hybrid

I am officially, or at least by common consent, a bad person. Not because I am particularly surly, sarcastic or supercilious, but because I don’t like dogs. The reasons are too many to mention, and all of them are, apparently, unacceptable to the vast majority of the population who think of dogs as small furry children who crap on your lawn and lick your groin.

I am particularly opposed to dogs in cars, not just because they like to stick their head out the window and dribble down the side of your vehicle, but because I just don’t feel like they belong there. A dog in a car is like me in Lycra.

What made me connect the Maserati Ghibli Hybrid and canines is not the fact that “Ghibli” sounds like something you might call a schnauzer, but the horrific practice of de-barking, which the folk at PETA describe as “an invasive surgical procedure that involves removing a large amount of laryngeal tissue” and post-operative pain. It sounds cruel, which makes me wonder why someone has done it to this Maserati.

Front view

Of course you can argue about what the greatest selling point of Maseratis is – their muscular yet lithe design, the luscious quality of their interiors or the fact that they have engines made by Ferrari, and thus make fabulous noises. What’s not in doubt is that if you take the glorious soundtrack away – by fitting it with not only a relatively puny 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine, but a hybrid one (developed by Maserati itself rather than Ferrari) – it feels as wrong as letting your dog drive. The Ghibli Hybrid is clever and extremely economical, but it sounds like a hair dryer.

The engine is connected to something called an e-Booster, which, according to Maserati, transforms it from a mild hybrid – one that does very little in reality, but will save you a skerrick of fuel here and there – into a wild one. A 48-volt battery powers the car’s ancillary systems, improving fuel economy, but the Ghibli Hybrid also has an electric turbocharger, supported by its own battery, to boost performance when you hit the throttle and take some of the workload off the engine, further saving petrol.

Back view

Maserati’s stated goal with its first ever hybrid was to produce a power unit that was faster than the diesel engine the Ghibli already came with, and yet more efficient than a petrol engine. It certainly delivers in economy terms – I drove 628km on a single tank of fuel (albeit an 80-litre one) during my week with the Maserati, and it was still indicating 280km of range to go. Maserati claims an average fuel-consumption figure of 7.5 litres per 100km, a significant drop from the V6 Ghibli’s 11 litres. What you miss out on, of course, is the noise, which was so absent at times that I had to put the windows down to see if I could hear anything at all.

The performance this Ghibli offers – with its thrusty 246kW and 450Nm and a 0 to 100km/h time of 5.7 seconds – is of a piece with the look of the car. It’s a big luxury sedan, extremely comfortable in the front but ever so slightly pinched in the rear seat, and it rides beautifully.So why wouldn’t it be quiet? Because it’s a Maserati, not a Lexus, so it should be operatic, not apologetic.

Inside the cabin

After several days of moaning about how unexciting the whole experience was, I found myself deep in the countryside with a chance to engage Sport mode and change the gears myself with the big shift paddles. And suddenly I was quite impressed, because the Ghibli Hybrid steers very well, and with appropriately muscular feedback through the wheel. It can also accelerate out of bends like something properly Italian, and, if you’re willing to drop it to second gear and rev it to 5000rpm, you can almost hear, in the distance, what sounds like an engine.

Multiple points should also be given for how fabulous it looks. Car companies seem to be set on the idea that green motoring should be represented by lots of blue bits; the blue gills on the side of the Ghibli Hybrid are certainly eye-catching, and even the little blue swish under the Maserati trident badge is quite nice. Look at it front-on, and this Ghibli – with its proud and bold face and enormous bonnet – really does turn heads.

While it’s not as big as the fantastic Maserati Quattroporte, it’s still too large for most inner-city car parks, and too low at the front for speed humps – but practical concerns such as these are for people who can’t afford a Maserati. Mind you, the $139,990 price tag is frankly a bargain for this much Italian style on wheels.

If you buy one, just for me, please don’t take your dog in it.

ENGINE: 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder with e-Booster (246kW/450Nm). Average fuel 7.5 litres per 100km

TRANSMISSION: 8-speed automatic, rear-wheel drive

PRICE: $139,990

RATING (out of 5): ★★★