Maserati Ghibli vs Mercedes-Benz S560

What's the difference?

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. 

Ever since the middle of the 1990s, I've been captivated by the Mercedes-Benz S Class. It used to be known as Sonderklasse - special class - and teenage me certainly thought it was. The one that caught my attention was the W140. A huge, two-tonne beast when that sort of mass was rare, it was loaded with amazingness and owned the road.

Part of its unique appeal was that that it was properly ugly. When it hove into view it was like a battleship entering Sydney Harbour. And it used almost as much fuel, with the V12 on board.

Over the years, genuine style has invaded the S-Class and today I found myself, for the first time, in an unusually pretty pair of S Classes - the S560 and S63 Coupes. And, astonishingly, it's the first time I've ever driven an S-Class. So with all that baggage I've built up over the years, they had a lot to live up to.