Maserati MC20 - long-term review

Brightens up the blues, doesn’t it?

Out of the gloom, an email on Maserati-headed notepaper landed in the digital Top Gear in-tray. “Hello folks,” it said. “Everyone is too much of a coward to book our 630bhp twin-turbo supercar in the middle of winter, so our poor MC20 is sat here doing niente. Would you like to daily it?”

I’m paraphrasing, but not much. And after diligently checking this wasn’t a clever phishing scam, a bright yellow Maserati supercar growled its way up to the office gates. It’s ours, all ours, for a little while. And exclusively on TopGear.com, you’re going to find out what it’s like to live with an Italian supercar in a British winter.

It’s even on the correct tyres. Maserati has bolted on a set of Michelin snowpiercers to give its flagship a fighting chance of nailing its rampant, turbo-boosted ponies onto a slimey, salty, mud-encrusted British B-road on the sort of day when the weather forecaster warns you to stay at home under a blanket sucking your thumb. A supercar on winter tyres: is there anything cooler?

I’ll talk you through the spec in a moment. First off, let’s just take a moment to drink in what a knuckle-bitingly pretty car this is. We first set eyes on the MC20 back in 2020, which feels like longer ago than it actually was because lockdowns warped all of our brains’ perceptions of time worse than a Christopher Nolan film. But whereas some aero-obsessed shapes date, or seem to get less outrageous as time goes by, the MC20 is still an uncanny beauty.

There’s a charming simplicity to it. No active aero shutters or wings. No wild air-mangling devices. It’s even fairly compact for a modern supercar, but still exotic enough to command presence. Even before you send the, um, Lambo doors skywards and summon a thousand cameraphones.

I’m still not sold on the blocky rear lights, and I can’t quite un-see the Jaguar’ness of it after a mate remarked it reminded them of the C-X75 (which was, in fairness, also a complete stunner). But the fact is you can’t put a price on driving around in something that’s unarguably beautiful.

Maserati can, though. When the MC20 was revealed between the lockdowns, it cost £187,000 and that wasn’t too bad for a carbon tub, 200mph supercar with F1-derived ignition geekery that looked a million dollars.

But since then, the car industry’s suffered more financial earthquakes than an absent-minded parent leaving their credit card details logged into the App Store. So the MC20 has got expensive. It’s now £222,025 – ten per cent more than the (more powerful, hybrid) McLaren Artura and ‘only’ £20k less than the Ferrari 296 GTB.

And of course, £222k is where the fun starts. We’ll dig into the reasons why next time, but for now, mull over the notion that this particular MC20 is specced to the teeth-sucking total of £310,735. Yowch. Why was no-one volunteering to drive it in the sleet and hail and dark again?

Stay tuned – more from life with the MC20 coming soon…