Maserati Levante vs MG Im6

What's the difference?

Maseratis are built for a fairly specific niche buyer; someone with a lot of money, someone slightly older and certainly someone who likes the finer things in life and appreciates Italian style, quality and heritage.

They are not, typically, the kind of buyers who want to tear around race tracks like fiends in big, shouty SUVs. But apparently there is a niche within the niche of Maserati fans who do, and they are willing to invest big dollars in vehicles wearing the Trofeo badge, like this Levante.

It might seem a slightly strange creation, a track-mad SUV with a screaming Ferrari engine, but surprisingly, it really does work.

A super solid first outing from the IM brand. Don't let the pricing fool you, there is still bang for buck on offer in the IM6 Performance, even if it at times feels a bit too digital for my tastes.

While the other two Maseratis to get the Trofeo treatment - the Ghibli and Quattroporte sedans - are undeniably lovely, the Levante is not quite as pretty.

Admittedly, for an SUV, it looks very good, and the Trofeo touches - that big, nostrilled bonnet, the red gills on the sides, the carbon, the badges - really do lift its game to another level.

Overall, though, the Levante has just never felt beautiful enough to me to be a Maserati. These guys really do style well, as you'd expect from a premium Italian brand, but making an SUV sexy is beyond even them.

I'll grant you, it does look good from front on, but at the rear they just seem to have run out of ideas.

Credit is due for feeling properly special inside, however.

I feel almost mean saying this, because there will be plenty of people who like the way the IM6 looks, and I don’t want to rain on their parade. But… I’m not one of them.

It reminds me a bit of the pre-facelift Tesla Model Y, in that it’s largely feature-less and a bit blobby, and there’s not a sharp angle anywhere to be found on the thing. Premium to me means powerful and assured — picture just about any Audi — whereas I just find this a bit bland and soft.

Anyway, I do like the big alloys, the insulated glass roof and the light treatment front and rear.

And I like the cabin. The seats aren’t leather, but they’re super thick and comfortable, and there is a genuinely premium air in the cabin, helped by the acreage of screens and the quality elements, like the little door panels.

The doors unlatch electrically, matching the pop-out door handles outside, but they can be a bit fidgety. Someone from MG told me how they worked (you kind of cover the handle and let the door come to you) but I watched everyone else who tried to open them struggle. If you're at the point where you have to explain how a door handle works, you might have over-egged the pudding.

The second screen below the main one acts a bit like a mobile phone. You can alter your home screen widgets and access the main menu, even as Apple CarPlay is synched at the top. You’ll get used to it, I’m sure, but I found it to be a bit fidgety.

Actually it reminds me a little bit of the Lexus trackpad, or whatever that hateful system was called, where you controlled the main screen via a little mousepad thing, though happily it’s nowhere near as annoying as that was.

If you've got to move five people in a genuine hurry, the Levante is a pleasant way to go about it.

There's plenty of head and shoulder room, the seats, while firm in the front, are pleasant to the touch and supportive and there's a 580-litre boot with an electric tailgate and split-folding seats.

The boot feels properly spacious, too, with a 12-volt power outlet and four tie-down points. You won't, however, find a spare wheel out there, so serious off-roading is out (although it probably was already if you look at those expensive wheels).

There are huge door pockets with room for bottles and two big cup holders in the front. The centre-console bin looks lovely, it's all carbon fibre, but is quite small.

There are also three USB points, one in the front and two in the rear, and Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity.

The IM6 measures 4904mm long, 1988mm wide and 1669mm tall, and it rides on a 2950mm wheelbase, with IM describing it as a "mid-large SUV", though I expect it will be classed as a medium SUV Australia.

That said, ICE and EV mid-size electric SUVs are not cut from the same cloth, with the latter making use of a flat floor to maximise space. And so it is with the IM6, where backseat room is pretty damn impressive. I’m 175cm, and I had no problem at all with legroom or headroom, plus the same plush seats from up there are in the back, too.

There are also air vents but no temperature controls, and while there are USB ports, there is no regular household-style plug in the cabin. 

The glass in the windows is laminated, while the roof is double glazed, which MG tells me is Australian summer-proof, but I guess we'll know for sure in a couple of months.

There’s no shortage of cargo room either. There’s a 32-litre frunk up front, and there’s 646 litres in the boot with the rear seats in place. They’re 60/40 split, and if you drop them, luggage space grows to 1621 litres.

The towing capacity is a braked 1500kg, too, but I don’t expect to see many of these towing a camper trailer around.

Premium play means more premium prices, and my IM6 Performance will set you back $80,990 on the road. That might have just sent your eyebrows skyward, but keep in mind it’s faster than some Ferraris, and is swimming with high-end tech, so the bang-for-buck factor is actually still pretty good.

There are cheaper ones, too. The single-motor Premium grade is $60,990 drive-away, albeit with less power and slower charging. Then there’s the Platinum, with a bigger battery and faster charging, which is $69,990

The Performance, though, gets everything IM has to give, including an 800-volt architecture, which means super-fast charging, as well as twin motors, brutal acceleration, a decent driving range and adaptive air suspension.

Elsewhere, you get LED lighting, a big and insulated glass roof, and 20-inch alloy wheels. Inside, there are thick and soft synthetic leather seats that are heated and cooled in both rows, a banging 20-speaker sound system, and wireless charging to pair with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

There’s also 'active noise cancellation', and a seat-aware digital assistant which is about the best, and fastest, I’ve ever used. The IM6’s speaker system can locate where a voice is coming from, so any passenger can use the assistant. For example, if you’re in the backseat and say 'hey IM, lower my window', only your window opens. It’s a technology that I specifically remember the German brands crowing about not so long ago.

There’s also a 10.5-inch central touchscreen that controls much of the vast 26.3-inch screen that runs from in front of the driver to the centre of the cabin, as well as clever little magnets embedded in the dash in front of the driver, as well as in the back of the front seat headrests, that are designed to hold phones, iPads or other little accessories.

Also cool is the IM6’s self-parking tech, but there’s also a relatively useless crab walk function, which leans on the rear-wheel steering system to drive diagonally at slow speeds. I’m still not entirely sure when you’d use that one, to be honest.

Honestly, it’s a lot of stuff, and a lot of tech.

This will be the last time Maserati gets a proper Ferrari engine like this a 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8 shouty monster, which is good for 433kW and 730Nm.

The future, as is the case everywhere, is going to be more electric and less noisy. For now, anyone who can should enjoy this V8 masterpiece, which drives all four wheels through Maserati's Q4 on-demand all-wheel drive system via a limited-slip rear differential and uses an eight-speed automatic transmission.

Its claimed 0 to 100km/h time is 3.9 seconds, which puts it in what used to be super-car territory, and is still very quick indeed, while top speed is an unimaginable 304km/h.

This is the real party trick of the IM6, because there’s a nuclear power plant under the metal somewhere. All up, the twin-motor setup produces a total 578kW and 802Nm, though I suspect you’re never accessing all the grunt all at once. Still, 100km/h zips by in 3.4 seconds, and the top speed is 239km/h. For the record, that’s exactly as fast the Ferrari Roma Spider I recently handed back, so yeah, it’s properly supercar quick.

The official claimed fuel economy for the Maserati Levante Trofeo is 13.5 litres per 100km, but good luck with that. 

A more realistic number would probably sit somewhere above 17 litres per 100km, and we would have easily exceeded 20 litres while driving it like lunatics around a track.

But you just paid $330K for an SUV, what do you care about fuel economy?

Also on board is a 100kWh Nickel-Cobalt-Magnesium battery that produces a WLTP driving range of 505kms. Pretty good.

Charging is strong, too. The high-tech platform allows for 396kW DC fast charging, which is faster than what is currently offered in Australia. The claim is 30-80 per cent charged in 15 minutes. There’s also an external vehicle-to-load (V2L) port.

We got to drive all three Trofeo-fettled Maseratis on track at Sydney Motorsport Park, and before that on the road, where the Levante felt very pleasant, and pleasantly expensive at all times.

As you might expect, a vehicle with 433kW is difficult to fully appreciate on public roads, although there was the occasional and exciting change to give it a quick, loud blat between gears.

It only takes hearing that engine note, and feeling that torque surge, a few times to see why someone might fall in love with this car, or at least this engine.

Out on the track, the rear-driven Ghibli and Quattroporte, which share the Levante's engine, were surely the more fun and frenetic things to drive, but there were those who chose the Levante as their best of the three, even for circuit driving.

There's no doubt that its on-demand all-wheel-drive system, which is biased towards the rear but asks the front wheels for help when required, made it feel the most planted, and the safest, through fast and slow bends.

There's a definite sense that its engine is being asked to work the hardest, though, to push all that bulk through the air (although its brakes never seemed to fade, which is impressive with more than two tonnes of SUV to stop).

While the big, deafening V8 is willing and keen to rev all the way to 7000rpm (where it bangs on the redline waiting for your upshift, if you're driving in manual mode - I do like that), it started to make large sucking sounds towards the top of each gear, as if it was desperately trying to get more oxygen in.

It genuinely sounded different to the other two Trofeo cars, which is odd, but perhaps they just weren't as near their limits. That bulk also slowed it slightly in terms of top speed down the straight, but it still exceeded 220km/h with ease.

What should be said is that I was genuinely shocked at how good the Levante Trofeo was around a track. So much so I asked to have a second go, just to make sure I wasn't going mad.

Sure, it makes no sense to me personally, and I don't know why anyone needs an SUV that's good on a track, but if you do, I can recommend the Levante for sure.

That hugely enjoyable engine is just too much fun, although it's even better in a sedan like the Ghibli...

First things first, don't get too distracted by the word "performance" here. The IM6 doesn't act like a performance car, it feels bit too plush, and bit too digital, for that.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Performance cars are often loud, raucous and uncomfortable, and the IM6 is none of those things. Instead, those mountains of power and torque make silky, silent progress absolutely effortless, which feels pretty premium to me.

MG makes a big deal of how much work went into insulating the cabin from noise – with active noise cancellation joined by double-paned insulated glass – and it is a properly calming and quiet space.

Also strong is the suspension, with the adaptive air setup soaking up most bumps and bruises, but I found it can clang over really solid bumps, sounding like it's bouncing off a stopper. The steering is solid, too, with a nice weight, if not overly talkative in the feedback department, while the rear-wheel steering helps eat into the turning circle for tight three-point turns.

The downside, though, is that it all feels a little too digital, and like there's been a little too much overthinking gone into it. Having to push a button to see behind you in a hurry is bonkers (see my explanation in the Safety section below), and the secondary screen is more annoying than intuitive. And there were several bings or bongs I couldn't even identify. All of which interrupts the otherwise calming nature of the drive experience.

There is a long list of safety aids on the IM6, and I won't detail the lot here. But I will call out a couple of curious mentions.

As always, the driver distraction warning is annoying, but can be switched off. And MG also counts the IM platform, or what it calls a digital chassis, as part of the safety offering. It has its own digital brain that adapts the air suspension, the rear-wheel steering and the active safety kit on the fly.

The other curiosity is the weird way you see out the back. Rather than fit a digital rear-view mirror to counteract the almost non-existent rear vision, you instead push up on a little toggle on the steering wheel to bring up a live view of what's happening behind you on the central screen.

Maserati offers a three-year, unlimited kilometre warranty, but you can choose to buy 12-month or two-year warranty extensions, and even a sixth or seventh-year drive-train warranty extension.

When much, much cheaper Japanese and Korean cars are offering seven and even 10-year warranties, this is so far off the pace that such a fast vehicle should be embarrassed. And if you're buying something Italian, a better, longer warranty would seem like a must. I'd be negotiating at sale for them to throw the longer warranty offer in.

Maserati says servicing for the Ghibli has a "ball park costing of $2700.00 for the first three years of ownership" with a service schedule of every 20,000km or 12 months (whichever occurs first)

Also, "please note that the above is indicative only of the manufacturers basic routine service maintenance schedule and does not include any consumable items such as tyres, brakes etc or additional dealership charges such as environmental levies etc."

The IM6 is covered by a five-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty, rather than MG’S 10-year term. Capped-price servicing is offered for the first five years, with your total bill just under $3000. The service intervals are 20,000kms or 12 months.