Maserati Adds Automatic to Quattroporte Luxury Sedan

Smooth Automatic Gearbox Makes Maseratis Biggest Better

The Maserati Quattroporte: Elegant, Exotic, Luxurious. Its a one of a kind performance luxury sedan that pampers the lucky few who have the opportunity to drive it, yet, at the same time its a remarkably capable sports sedan betraying its size and weight. Based off of a heavily modified version of the Coupe and Spyder platform, the Quattroportes sporting credentials were verified by a thoroughbred Ferrari-derived V8 engine and a rear-mounted sequential gearbox called DuoSelect (also known as Cambiocorsa).

For the performance-minded who know how to get the most out of it, the DuoSelect gearbox works perfectly well. It gives precise control over the cars gearbox via steering wheel mounted paddles, allowing the driver to get in touch with the car much like a smaller sports sedan. The only problem with DuoSelect has to do with the daily conditions that most Quattroportes see; day-to-day action in cities and urban congestion rather than the open road. Though the DuoSelect offers a fully automated function which swaps the cogs for the driver, its engagement isnt quite as clean and smooth as a true automatic.

Weve been expecting Maserati to announce the details for the Quattroporte Automatic - with a proper automatic featuring a torque converter - for quite some time. That day has now come, as Maserati prepares for the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

For starters, the gearbox was designed by German autobox-maestros ZF, who supply pretty much the entire six-figure luxury sedan crowd with six-speed automatics: Audi, Bentley, BMW and Volkswagen, to drop a couple of names. Unlike the standard Quattroporte, which will continue with the sequential gearbox, due to the design of the automatic transmission it had to be mounted directly behind the engine rather than at the rear of the car as is currently the case. This changes the weight distribution from 47-percent front, 53-percent rear to 49-percent front, 51-percent rear. Nevertheless, thats still an excellent figure, unmatched by anything else of its size and luxury quotient.

We will have to wait to find out about the Quattroporte Automatics figures to see what effect the automatic gearbox has on the cars outright performance, however, in recent times automatic gearboxes have improved dramatically. From launch, Aston Martins DB9 was only offered as an automatic (with a paddleshift manual mode as is expected with the new Quattroporte), and it received more praise than the late-delivery six-speed manual. Even Porsche cant keep away from advancing the automatic, as its new automatic-equipped 911 Turbo accelerates to 60 mph quicker than the manual version. Sounds like the ZF automatic might just be what the Quattroporte needs.