Now we have a slight complication. We do our best to test supercars in supercar-appropriate weather, but during our time with the MC20 Cielo, a perfectly dry window was not forthcoming.
So, just how quick is a 621bhp, carbon-tubbed, boosty, rear-drive supercar on a damp September day?
Quicker than you might expect, owing in part to (a) the Maserati’s usually pliant suspension, and (b) a road tester’s willingness to keep the throttle as pinned as possible during moments when the line between maximum-ish forward travel and pulse-spiking flashes of straight-line yaw is fag-paper thin.
The car’s launch control system holds the engine at 5000rpm or so before the first clutch engages as you release the brake. There is wheelspin but scant point in feathering – just settle in and let the computers deal with the getaway. Second and third gears are very twitchy indeed, though by the top of third you’re about out of the woods and the MC20 beneath has just posted a 7.8sec 0-100mph. Being only four-tenths slower than the Porsche 911 GT3, itself tested in the dry, is good going in our books.
As it happens, we have performance tested an MC20 in the dry, though outside the formality of a road test, and in coupé form. For your information, that car fizzed its way to 60mph in 3.1sec and on to 100mph in 6.4sec. Neither figure is at the leading edge of the contemporary supercar performance envelope, but because of the Maserati’s surging, shapely and bombastic delivery, as well as deliciously snappy upshifts, and the way the suspension permits a little squat under hard acceleration, it all feels fast, fun and oh so memorable.
The 2.3sec the coupé needed for 30-70mph in kickdown trails that of the Artura (2.1sec) and 296 GTB (1.9sec). Equally, it is just a tenth shy of the time of the Lamborghini Aventador SVJ. The MC20 is on the supercar money, then, despite its lack of hybrid assist. Or epic V12.
In a sense, the weather couldn’t have picked a better supercar road test to hamstring. The appeal of the MC20’s performance is not to be found in the numbers. It is derived from rotating the little digital mode selector one stage to the right, taking you from languid ‘GT’ to ‘Sport’, and feeling the driveline tense up like a coiled spring.
It is derived from the way the engine note evolves from being almost pure bass-driven boom to something more resonant and fizzing as the crank spins fiercely out towards its peak of 8000rpm. It is derived from the act of eliciting a whip-crack upshift via the car’s juicily big paddle (downshifts aren’t nearly as slick, mind). The MC20 may lack the outright speed of sometimes less expensive rivals, but there’s a beauty in the simplicity of the drivetrain, and a sensory richness that appeals to the heart.
Less appealing are the brakes. Due to the front wheel arch, the pedal itself is left of the centre line and this is useful for left-foot use (yet another subtle racing inference) and no bad thing. But the action itself? Overtly soft and a little wooden at times. It can be difficult to modulate braking neatly enough for precise corner entry. The cast-iron rotors are preferable to the ceramics in this respect.
