2026 Maserati GranTurismo Trofeo Review: Miami

Carsfera takes Maserati’s performance-focused GranTurismo through Miami and Wynwood to discover what happens when 542 horsepower, Italian craftsmanship and one of America’s most expressive cities meet.

In this test drive: Interior · Nettuno engine · Driving in Miami · Price · GT vs. Trofeo · Who it suits

There are certain cars that make more sense once you spend several days with them. The specifications may tell you how much power they produce, how quickly they accelerate and how much they cost, but they don’t necessarily explain what it feels like to have one sitting outside your hotel in the morning, drive it through traffic in the afternoon and then take the longer route home simply because you’re enjoying the car.

The 2026 Maserati GranTurismo Trofeo became that kind of car for me in Miami.

I had already spent time with the GranTurismo in Virginia, where the highways and secondary roads gave me an opportunity to appreciate what Maserati has done with this generation. What stood out wasn’t one dramatic performance number. It was how naturally the car combined speed, comfort and sophistication. It felt like a proper grand tourer, something you could genuinely imagine driving for hours rather than something designed around a ten-minute burst of excitement.

Miami introduced me to the other side of that personality.

Our Trofeo arrived finished in Bianco Astro, with a red full-grain perforated leather interior, carbon-fiber details, Carbon Macrotwill trim, staggered 20- and 21-inch Pegaso-design wheels and an upgraded Sonus Faber audio system.

Its base price was $166,000. With options, the car sitting in front of me carried an MSRP of $185,830.

At that price, it needed to feel special.

After several days driving it around South Florida, I began to understand where that feeling comes from.

Seeing the GranTurismo Trofeo in Miami

Miami is an interesting place to experience an automobile like this because the city has its own visual personality. There is color everywhere, especially when you move through Wynwood. Buildings become canvases, traffic is unpredictable, people are constantly moving, and exotic and luxury cars aren’t particularly unusual.

Yet the Maserati still attracted attention.

The Bianco Astro paint initially seemed like a relatively conservative specification for a car with this much personality, but seeing it under the Florida sun changed my opinion. The white finish allowed the GranTurismo’s proportions to become the focus.

The hood stretches far ahead of the cabin. The roofline falls gently toward the rear. The body has enough muscle around the wheels to communicate performance without relying on oversized wings or excessive aerodynamic decoration.

Against the murals of Wynwood, the simplicity of the white exterior worked particularly well. Later, driving toward Miami Beach, the same car took on a completely different character. Palm trees, modern architecture, hotels, bright sunlight and the blue Florida sky somehow made the GranTurismo look exactly where it belonged.

That is something Maserati has historically understood very well.

A Maserati doesn’t necessarily need to be the loudest car parked outside a restaurant to make you notice it.

The GranTurismo Trofeo has presence without trying too hard to manufacture it.

Our car’s $2,880 carbon-fiber rear spoiler added a little more aggression, while the Trofeo’s unique fascias, carbon-fiber exterior elements, gloss-black details, black-chrome badging and quad exhaust outlets subtly separated it from the regular GranTurismo.

I appreciated that restraint.

It would have been easy for Maserati to cover the Trofeo with aerodynamic pieces and turn it into something that looked more like a track-focused special edition. Instead, you still immediately recognize the elegance of the GranTurismo underneath.

The Trofeo simply looks as though it has been spending more time at the gym.

The Red Interior Changes the Experience

Opening the driver’s door was probably my favorite visual moment with this particular specification.

The exterior is almost understated in white. Then you open the door and discover an interior covered in red full-grain perforated leather and carbon fiber.

Suddenly, the personality of the car makes sense.

The GranTurismo I drove in Virginia had a much more traditional luxury atmosphere, with warmer colors and open-pore wood. It felt elegant and sophisticated, exactly as you would expect from an Italian grand tourer.

The Trofeo felt younger. More energetic.

Not necessarily less luxurious, just more focused on the person sitting behind the steering wheel.

The Carbon Macrotwill trim, a $2,650 option on our test car, fits that personality beautifully. The aluminum column-mounted paddle shifters are another detail I enjoyed because they feel substantial in your hands. They’re not decorative pieces attached to the steering wheel. They look and feel like something you’re actually going to want to use.

And you will.

The seats deserve attention as well. A grand tourer can’t simply look beautiful; it has to remain comfortable after the novelty of the first hour disappears. The Trofeo provides 18-way power-adjustable front seats with driver memory, heating and enough adjustment to find a genuinely comfortable driving position.

Technology is integrated throughout the cabin without completely taking over the experience. There’s a 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster, accompanied by Maserati’s 12-inch and 8.8-inch central displays. Navigation, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, wireless charging and connected features are all present.

Our car also had the high-premium Sonus Faber audio system, a $4,890 option.

It’s an impressive system.

But there were plenty of moments when I preferred listening to something else.

The car itself.

The Nettuno Is What Makes the Trofeo Special

This is where my opinion of the Trofeo really began to form.

Under the hood is Maserati’s 3.0-liter twin-turbocharged Nettuno V6, paired with an eight-speed ZF automatic transmission and Maserati’s Q4 all-wheel-drive system.

The chassis includes adaptive air suspension, Skyhook electronic active damping and an electronic limited-slip differential. There is launch control and four selectable driving modes: Comfort, GT, Sport and Corsa.

You can read all of that on a specification sheet. What the specification sheet can’t adequately explain is how broad the personality of this powertrain feels from the driver’s seat.

The Nettuno is the finest Maserati engine I have personally experienced. And I don’t say that simply because the Trofeo is fast. Of course it’s fast.

What impressed me more was how easily the engine changes character depending on what you’re asking from the car.

Miami traffic isn’t particularly interested in how much performance your Maserati has. There were plenty of moments when I was simply moving from one traffic light to another, surrounded by SUVs, delivery vehicles and people trying to change lanes at the last possible second.

In those situations, the Trofeo behaves remarkably normally.

The transmission isn’t constantly trying to prove something. The suspension doesn’t punish you over imperfect pavement, and the engine can remain relatively relaxed. You can drive the car through Miami Beach at an ordinary pace and enjoy the steering, seating position, interior and atmosphere without feeling as though the car is begging you to drive twice the speed limit.

That’s important.

Because eventually the traffic opens. And that’s when you reach for Sport.

The change isn’t theatrical for the sake of being theatrical. The throttle simply becomes more responsive, the transmission starts holding gears with greater purpose and the exhaust becomes more present behind you.

Push further into Corsa, and you discover the side of the Trofeo that was hiding while you were sitting in traffic ten minutes earlier.

The car tightens around you. Now the aluminum paddles that looked so beautiful when you opened the door become part of the experience. The engine feels more urgent. The transmission becomes more aggressive. You begin looking farther down the road and paying more attention to what your right foot is doing.

This is why I enjoyed the Nettuno so much. It’s not an engine that gives you one experience all the time. It lets the GranTurismo be a GranTurismo first. Then, when you ask for more, it gives you considerably more.

Miami Is Actually a Good Place to Understand This Car

Nobody thinks of Miami as the place to test the ultimate limits of a performance car.

There are no mountain passes waiting outside South Beach, and you’re probably going to spend considerably more time on I-95 than attacking a series of perfect corners.

But that’s precisely why driving the Trofeo here was useful. This is how many owners are actually going to use the car.

You’re going to drive to dinner. You’re going to sit in traffic. You’re going to take it to a hotel. You’re going to cover long stretches of highway. You’re going to deal with heat, rough pavement and those Florida rainstorms that seem capable of appearing five minutes after you were looking at a perfectly blue sky.

The Trofeo has to work in all of those situations before its performance becomes relevant.

And it does.

What Does $185,830 Actually Buy?

Our GranTurismo Trofeo started at $166,000, but several significant options pushed the final price considerably higher.

The carbon-fiber rear spoiler added $2,880. Carbon Macrotwill trim cost another $2,650. The high-premium Sonus Faber system added $4,890, red brake calipers were $1,320, the ADAS Base Package added $5,180, the Comfort Package another $1,240, and the Sport Design Package contributed $1,670.

Final MSRP:

$185,830.

That’s real money, even in this segment.

And I think anyone considering this car should look beyond the question of whether $185,830 buys enough performance. It does.

But so do plenty of other cars. At this level, horsepower alone isn’t particularly difficult to find. Neither is acceleration. What becomes harder to find is personality.

And perhaps most importantly, it gives you something you can’t really measure:

A reason to want to drive it.

GranTurismo or GranTurismo Trofeo?

Driving these two cars in two different parts of the country made the answer much clearer to me.

The GranTurismo I drove in Virginia is probably the easier car to understand.

It’s elegant, fast, comfortable and beautifully suited to covering distance. It reminded me what a proper GT should be. You don’t finish a long drive feeling as though the car has been fighting you for the last three hours.

The Trofeo takes that same philosophy and adds another layer.

It’s still comfortable. It’s still elegant. It still feels like a Maserati GranTurismo.

But there’s more anticipation every time you get behind the wheel because you know another version of the car is sitting there waiting for you.

The standard GranTurismo makes the journey enjoyable.

The Trofeo makes you wonder whether there’s a more interesting road to get there.

That, more than anything else, describes the difference I felt between them.

Who Is This Car Really For?

I don’t think the GranTurismo Trofeo is simply for someone who wants the most expensive or most powerful version of the GranTurismo.

The buyer who will appreciate this car most is probably someone who could own a dedicated sports car but doesn’t necessarily want to live with one every day.

Maybe you want to leave Washington or Miami in the morning and drive several hundred miles without arriving exhausted.

Maybe you want to take someone to dinner without making them climb into a car that feels designed primarily for a racetrack.

Maybe you care about Italian design and the small details that make an automobile feel different every time you approach it.

But when the road opens, you still want something serious underneath your right foot.

That’s the person I think Maserati built the Trofeo for.

It doesn’t force you to decide whether you want the elegant car or the exciting one before leaving the house.

You get both.

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