Simply Abu Dhabi XXXI

M as-er-ati—I just like saying the name. It rolls so fluidly that you can’t help say it without an Italian lilt. I actually once bought a Maserati mostly because I liked saying that word, along with the beautiful chrome script which announced its name across the bootlid. It was an impulse buy, but I did so because I wanted to be a part of its heritage and Maserati, in the blue corner, is as much about heritage as the red team from Maranello. Ferrari is the Italian supercar we all know and see in every film about cars and in every race but growing up I always looked to Maserati as the thinking person’s Italian supercar. So, the chance to mix the new with the classic racing was too good to pass up, driving the 2019 Model Year Maserati Levante across southern England to spend a day at the fabulous Goodwood Festival of Speed, where the company’s history would be flying past us up the famous hill climb in front of thousands of spectators. Along with the $10 million Maserati MC12 GT1, one of just 11 that raced most recently in the 2010 FIA GT1 World Championship, and a Maserati 250F once raced by Stirling Moss and helped Juan Manuel Fangio to two of his five world championships in the 1950s, the big news was reserved for something else. Goodwood helped the Italian company celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Maserati Eldorado, which was in perfect condition running up and down Charles Gordon-Lennox, the 11th duke of Richmond (formerly Lord March)’s driveway all weekend. The 1958 Eldorado is significant in that it was the first single seater to drop its national racing colour carried by all teams at the time—which in the case of Italy was red—for the commercial colours of a sponsor. Eldorado ice-cream was the first non-automotive sponsor to enter motor racing through this very car. But first we had to get there and thankfully that was behind the wheel of the updated Levante SUv with its 424bhp 3.0- litre, v6 engine. The changes to the 2019 Levante have been subtle but effective as it competes in the increasingly competitive luxury SUv market that keeps growing, taking in the Alfa Romeo Stelvio at the bottom, the likes of the new Porsche Cayenne and Mercedes G-Class along the way and now the new Audi Q8 limousine and Lamborghini Urus at the top. MaseratiLevante atGoodwood By damien Reid