2017 Maserati Ghibli vs BMW 5 Series

What's the difference?

The entry grade petrol Ghibli is more placid than its rivals, with a plush cabin, comfortable ride, and an engine that doesn't have an anger management problem. The Ghibli's looks like nothing else from the front, but like everything else from the back, there are a few areas where the quality feels like it should be better, but the Maserati brand still adds a superhero aura to the Ghibli and that exhaust note is one of the sweetest soundtracks to come from a V6.

Not all superheroes wear capes, and we're proud to report the 530e does its bit for green motoring without feeling the need to shout about it. And with no price or specification penalty, it's easier being green than ever before, and the pricing of this BMW really puts the cat amongst the canaries.

On the outside the updated Ghibli is identical to the previous one. Those C-pillars adorned with the Maserati Trident logo flow down into the hulking rear haunches. The nose turns down supercar style to that stiff upper lip. While the front bumper and splitter are cleanly styled and don't steal any of the spotlight away from the centerpiece - that unmistakable grille which along with the decorative side vents have become the key Maserati identifiers.

This is a stunning car and more emotional in its design than the Alfa, BMW, or Benz. Sure, the rear end looks like just about every other car's bottom and it is a bit stumpy, but that's the reality of a cab-back design also shared by its rivals which moves the cabin rearward to allow the nose to extend like that boat from Miami Vice.

Sumptuous is a word really only ever dusted off and used to describe food and hotel rooms, but it also nails the feel of the Ghibli's cabin.

The Ghibli shares the same chassis and suspension design as its Quattroporte big brother, but is 293mm shorter at 4971mm end to end. That's long for this segment – the Giulia QV is 4639, the M3 is 4661mm and the C63s is 4686. It's wider and taller too, at 2100mm across including the mirrors and 1461mm high, the C63 s for example is 2020mm from mirror to mirror and 1442mm to the roof top.

Sumptuous is a word really only ever dusted off and used to describe food and hotel rooms, but it also nails the feel of the Ghibli's cabin. Modern, luxurious and a bit over the top, our Ghibli was fitted with the 'Luxury Package' which costs the price of a brand new Kia Rio, and adds premium leather.

Not so premium is the touchscreen which looks suspiciously like the same one from the Jeep Cherokee (also owned by Maserati's parent company Fiat Chrysler Automobiles), right down to the air vents which flank it, and the window switches are also very close to those used in the Jeep.

On this topic of quality the Ghibli wasn't as high up the scale as we'd expect. The windscreen wipers were unusually loud and had less than perfect contact with the window. The top tether anchor points for child seats were housed in sharp plastic wells that felt little piranha mouths and the air vents and plastics in the back row were a bit cheap feeling.

Not at all cheap feeling is the Ghibli's key fob, it weighs about the same as a small cobblestone and feels like one in your pocket. It's surely weighted with concrete or lead or dark matter to give it that solid, quality feel.

Crucially, there's nothing weird about the way the 530e looks. While some green cars look like they've been designed by one of the kids from 3rd Rock from the Sun, the 530e looks much the same as the rest of the range, save a few tiny but telltale giveaways - like the e-drive badging outside, and what looks like a bonus fuel flap tucked in behind a front wheel that houses the whole plug-in bit.

And we really, really like it. It's elegant and statesman-like from every angle, and looked especially important in the deep-blue colour of our test vehicle. It's not over-designed, with body creases used sparingly, and the occasional glint of polished silver that rings the windows and the grille adds a final sense of shininess to an understated design. 

Inside, there's more going on than you might normally find in a BMW. The hugely complicated digital display screen now includes everything from battery charge, power usage to the usual assortment of speedometers and petrol readouts. 

It doesn't feel overdone or crazily festooned, but there's more at play here than in your usual BMW.

The dash is busy, too, with a wide screen emerging from a centre stack that also houses a CD player and a digital aircon setup, which in turn sits above a complex centre console from which you can alter driving settings, control the multimedia or cycle through electric modes. It doesn't feel overdone or crazily festooned, but there's more at play here than in your usual BMW.

Elsewhere inside, the seats are beautifully designed, with a quilted leather highlight through the middle, while the gloss-black strip that lines the dash hides a dual strip of ambient interior lights that also runs across all four doors.

Leg and headroom in the back seat depends on where you're sitting. At 191cm I can sit behind my driving position with about 30mm of space between my knees and the seatback and about the same distance above my head.

The middle seat in the back is really only for kids – even one of our web developers who's built like an elf complained about the lack of headroom and having to straddle the driveshaft ‘hump'. I didn't mind though, because I was driving.

The fold-down armrest in the back row houses a storage tray with a USB port and a 12 volt power outlet, plus two cup holders. There are another four cup holders up front (with two in the giant centre console bin). The connoisseur of the finer things in life will also be happy to know that a jumbo Slurpee will fit in the cupholders near the shifter. 

There is still an apple in the boot of the Ghibli but it's just going to have to stay there because it's so far back  I can't reach it even with my stupidly long arms.

The only bottles you'll be able to fit into the tiny door pockets are those little ones from hotel bar fridges. But for the rest of the hotel towels, linen and bathrobes there's heaps of space in the boot, which is massive.

Seriously, there is still an apple in the boot of the Ghibli but it's just going to have to stay there because it's so far back  I can't reach it even with my stupidly long arms. That might give you a better picture of the cargo space rather than just telling you that it has a 500 litre volume. But if you appreciate numbers you'll like to know its boot capacity is 20 litres bigger than the luggage room of the M3, C63 s or Giulia Quadrifoglio.

As the world's motoring tastes shrink faster than a lap-banded Clive Palmer, it's easy to forget the joys of the full-size sedan, but the space for passengers and luggage in the 5 Series will have you questioning your downsizing ways.

Upfront, there's plenty of room between front-seat riders, who will also share two smallish cup holders, along with room in each front door for bottles. There's also a dedicated wireless charge pad (which, because of its tight design, is crazy difficult to actually remove your phone from), but you'll also get two USB points and a power outlet that's hidden in the sizeable centre storage bin as standard fit.

Backseat riders get heaps of space, both in width and in leg room behind the front seats. And there's twin air-con temp controls and twin power outlets, too. But middle-seat passengers will be forced to sit with their legs on either side of the raised tunnel, which will definitely impact on comfort.

The boot's still sizeable, despite shrinking slightly to house the battery/fuel tank setup

Best to ditch the fifth passenger, then, and deploy the pull-down seat divider, which also houses two cup holders. Finally, there are three ISOFIX attachment points, one for each seat in the back.

The boot's still sizeable, despite shrinking slightly to house the battery/fuel tank setup (the tank has been moved further back to accomodate the batteries), and can be adjusted to be a flat load area if you'd like, offering up to 410 litres with the rear seats in place.

The 530e commands a 530i-equalling $108,900 price tag, which is genuinely impressive when you consider all the extra bits and pieces that go into make a plug-in hybrid. That money buys you a well-equipped car, and only those allergic to money need reach for the options list.

As standard, you'll find leather-wrapped - and heated in the front - sports seats, 19-inch alloy wheels and a 10.25-inch touchscreen that pairs with a really very good 16-speaker Haman Kardon stereo. Wireless Apple CarPlay is available, but it'll cost you an extra $500. To be honest, though, we didn't miss it.

You'll also find adaptive LED headlights, a huge head-up display (so big, in fact, that it impedes vision when climbing steep hills), dynamic dampers, an auto opening/closing boot and a self-parking system, along with BMW's suite of self-driving tech - but we'll come back to that under the Safety sub-heading.

The C63 s has its bellow, the M3 screams, the Giulia's voice is deep and loud and the Ghibli exhaust note is unmistakably a Maserati with its high-pitched, smooth sound.

In that long nose is a Maserati-designed, Ferrari-built 3.0-litre twin-turbo V6 making 247kW/500Nm. Compare that to the Giulia QV's 375kW/600Nm, or the M3 Competition's 331kW/550Nm, or the C63 s's 375kW/700Nm and the base spec Ghibli seems underpowered.

The eight-speed ZF automatic transmission is smooth and a bit slow, but perfect for highways and peak-hour city driving. I find it preferable to the dual-clutch in the M3 which while super quick isn't too smooth in heavy traffic.

Drift around in pure EV mode and you'll be relying on the 530e's 83kW and 250Nm electric motor, which will provide what BMW refers to as "between 28 and 32 real-world kilometres".

Run out of range, or simply use too much throttle, and the 2.0-litre petrol engine comes into play, adding 135kW and 320Nm to the mix. All up, that's 185kW and 420Nm - respectable numbers by any measure, and enough to match the petrol-powered 530i's zero to 100km/h sprint of 6.2 seconds.

That power is fed through an eight-speed automatic transmission before being sent exclusively to the rear wheels, where it belongs.

Maserati says the Ghibli should consume premium unleaded at an average combined rate of 8.9L/100km. Ours needed 19.1L/100km which is higher because most of the 250-odd kilometres we drove were in the city, and in Sport mode, and with me shifting manually, and mainly holding second gear almost all the time to impress/offend bystanders. You too can more than double the recommended fuel usage and annoy people if you drive like me.

Like a Facebook relationship status, it's complicated. The 530e will sip a claimed combined 2.3 litres per hundred kilometres on the claimed/combined cycle, which is amazing for a car this size. Better still, it seems genuinely achievable - at the vehicle's launch, our own Richard Berry recorded a stunning 2.0 litres per hundred kilometres on a short test route.

But that's with a full load of battery charge on board. For our week with the 530e we were unable to actually plug it in (living in Sydney, I can't afford a garage), so once the initial battery charge had been used we were back to mostly petrol power. Unlike some other plug-in hybrids we've driven, we found it very difficult to recharge the battery to any meaningful level using regenerative braking, so once we were flat we stayed flat. If we had plugged it in, it would have been a two-hour recharge using a specialised wall unit, or about four hours using a normal plug.

As a result, though, our fuel use was closer to 7.0 litres per hundred kilometres after some considerable real-world testing.

The first impression is how large that steering wheel is, the next is the exhaust note and then long nose out in front. The Ghibli feels light, the steering is smooth, the suspension is soft even in sport mode and the ride is comfortable even on the 19-inch rims shod with wide and low profile Pirelli P Zeros (245/45 front, 275/40 rear).

The Ghibli is a chatterbox in that the feedback from the road through the steering and the seat is excellent; handling is exceptional and is helped by a (mechanical) limited slip differential.

These factors along with the comfortable ride make the Ghibli easy to live with – more so than an M3 or C63 s.

But in this base grade it lacks the brutal punch of its more powerful rivals, you'll also need to drive it harder to get it to shout louder and that could obliterate a driver's licence instantly.

The turning circle isn't bad at 11.7m (the same as a Mazda CX-5), steering is light and visibility (forward and rear) is good, while the transmission is smooth. These factors along with the comfortable ride make the Ghibli easy to live with – more so than an M3 or C63 s.

I never could get used to the shifter. It looks normal enough but the lumpy mechanism meant I nearly always overshot reverse and had to concentrate to select my gear.

All doors have a central locking button – sounds appropriate for a limousine, but it provided unending amusement for my toddler who locked and unlocked the doors constantly and all we could do was demand that he "stop it for Chrissakes!"

There's so much to like about the way the 530e sets about saving the world, and that's mostly because it doesn't shout about it, either to the driver or the outside world.

It's very much an underpants inside its pants superhero, which makes us like it even more. Set off in EV mode, and the 530e will drift silently away from the curb, burning battery power over fuel for as many as 30(ish) kilometres. But equally important, the shift from green to gas is largely imperceptible, with the petrol engine joining in willingly when you ask it to - usual via a prod of your right foot.

It is so effortlessly smooth that you need to really pay attention to notice the eight-speed 'box changing gears at city speeds, and it's commendably quiet, whichever drive mode you're in.

Downsides? Well, it doesn't feel quite as sharp as it's conventional-engined siblings. The batteries add around 230kg in weight, which never helps, and it all feels a little softer and a little less dynamic, even with Sport mode engaged. BMW assures us the adaptive suspension setup and tune is identical, but the 530e feels noticeably softer when you tackle a twisting back road. And that encourages you to use your right foot a little more, which in turn negates the whole electric thing in the first place.

One of the great joys of BMWs has always been their ability to transform from cosseting comfort to rear-drive rocket when you want them to, and you can't help but notice the 530e isn't quite up to that challenge. But if your intentions are mostly city- and freeway-based, then this plug-in BMW is almost indiscernible from its petrol-powered sibling.

You'll want for little here, with front, front-side and full curtain airbags joining parking sensors, a surround-view camera and a self-parking system.

You can also expect active cruise control, lane control assist with lane keep assist (so it will stay between the lane markings for you), AEB and cross-traffic warning. And all of that means that, technically, the 530e can drive for you. That is, of course, if you don't mind driving like a dick - in full-autonomous mode it will swerve from lane marking to lane marking like it's playing bumper bowling.

The Ghibli is covered by a three year/unlimited kilometre warranty. Servicing is recommended every 12 months/20,000km.

Like the rest of the 5 Series range, the 530e falls under BMW's three-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty. There are no set service intervals, either, with BMW using what it calls 'condition-based' servicing. In other words, the car will tell you when it requires a trip to the service centre.

The batteries are covered by a separate warranty covering six years or 100,000km.