Chevrolet Corvette vs Maserati Ghibli

What's the difference?

Chevrolet’s Corvette Z06 supercar is an all-American answer to European rivals Lamborghini and Ferrari, but it’s not just this that makes it so appealing.

Spending a week with the most potent Corvette you can get in Australia has left me with a list of notes on this beast I want to hand over to you. Maybe it will help make your mind up about it or change your mind.

What makes the Z06 the flagship of the Australian Corvette range isn’t little luxuries, but seriously upgraded mechanical hardware, much of it track focussed.

Our test car was also fitted with the Z07 Performance package which adds a carbon-fibre aero kit to pin the Corvette down at high speed while also drawing everybody’s attention to it.

Oh, and then there’s the sound of the largest flatplane crank V8 ever to go into a production car… and look out for your ankles - let me explain…

Maseratis make a certain amount of sense to a certain kind of person. As the folks who run the brand in Australia will tell you, its buyers are the kind of people who’ve driven German premium vehicles, but find themselves wanting something more. 

They are older, wiser and, most importantly, richer. 

While it’s easy to see the high-end lure of Maserati’s Italian sex appeal styling and luxuriously appointed interiors, they’ve always struck me as cruisers rather than bruisers. 

Again, they’re for the older, more generously padded buyer, which makes the Trofeo range something of an oddity. Maserati says its Trofeo badge - seen here on its mid-sized sedan, the Ghibli, which sits below the vast Quattroporte limousine (and side on to the other car in the range, the SUV Levante) - is all about the "Art of Fast". 

And it certainly is fast, with a whopping V8 driving the rear wheels. It’s also completely bonkers, a luxury car with the heart of a track-chomping monster. 

Which is why Maserati chose to launch it at the Sydney Motorsport Park complex, where we could see just how quick and crazy it is. 

The big question is, why? And perhaps who, because it’s hard to imagine who wants, or needs, a car with such severe schizophrenia.