When you have a 400bhp Maserati V8, it’s quite nice to be able to hear it. And I can certainly hear the engine where I am right now, standing at the edge of a road that winds through verdant, soft-contoured Italian hills spangled with the kind of terracotta shoppertunities that have we Brits rushing for a second mortgage. I’ve taken station on the inside of a tight hairpin at which a Maserati will shortly be launched for the camera, and though the squeal of tyres is pleasing, it’s nothing to the thrill of that V8 exhausting itself on the over-run, gusts of spent gas spitting and gurgling through a quartet of tail-pipes. Hairpin speared, the pearlescent white coupé plunges toward the valley below, its V8 drumbeat rousing a dog on a distant farm as the engine’s staccato pulses ricochet off the landscape. It sounds absolutely magnificent. And I don’t mean the dog.

Pearlescent white? If that sounds a little exhibitionist from Maserati, well, it is. But you’re looking at the Maserati GranSport, a slightly hotter version of this mature Modenese charger, and it wears some of the oddest sill extensions this side of a Cadillac Escalade. It also has a tiny boot spoiler, a more protuberant front bumper bearing an enlarged mesh grille, and rides on bigger 19in wheels whose spoking pattern ingeniously repeats the Maserati trident. These changes are chasing at defter dismissals of corners – the Maser’s ride height has been dropped 10mm to the same end – and more satisfactory penetration of the air. Not only is the coupé more slippery – its Cd drops two points to 0.33, those sills contributing significantly – but aerodynamic lift has also fallen by 12 per cent, and it’s more evenly spread across the axles, too.