I quite enjoyed the time I spent with the Ghibli but it's certainly not everyone's cup of espresso. When I sat down rationally and thought about it, OK, Mercedes and BMW offer competitively-sized cars that offer more, in many ways, for less money. At the Ghibli's price things like an active suspension system and, hey, maybe things like HD radio could be standard equipment, not options. (Active suspension isn't available with the performance package our test car had so the car actually would have cost less with it.)
But somehow the car elicited a peculiar emotional attachment in me. I'm pretty sure it wasn't just the sheer Maserati-ness of it. Fancy badges don't get to me that easily. There was something in the sound and the very direct, intimately mechanical feel of the car. It's a very talkative car that communicates every single thing it's doing through a feel, a sound or a vibration. It brought back to me something that I miss in most cars these days, which is the feeling of really driving.
So when a colleague who'd also spent time with the Ghibli, started ticking through her list of complaints all I could say was "Yeah... Yeah... Well, yeah... That, too... Yeah, and that... But I kind of love it, anyway."
