Maserati Ghibli vs Volvo S60

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. 

Sedans have long been supplanted by SUVs as the family favourite but they still have their charms for those drivers who like something that feels more dynamic on the road.

Enter the limited edition Volvo S60 Recharge Black Edition which sees the return of a plug-in hybrid powertrain for Volvo’s only sedan.

I’ve been family-testing the PHEV variant to see just how practical a sedan is for the modern family, and whether it's rivals, the Audi A4, BMW 3 Series and Mercedes-Benz C200 have anything to worry about.