• Good space up front
• But not so much in the rear
• Boot space on par with competition

How much space is there?

As a five-seat, four-door saloon, with a generously-sized boot you could expect the Ghibli’s practicality to be very good, and to a degree it is.

Up front in the cabin there’s a large storage area, but the cupholders are too small to hold bottles. Open up the storage area where you rest your elbow and you’ll find more cupholders, which are still too small for bottles. Add to that a glovebox that is on the slim side and meagre door pockets and its clear storage wasn’t high on the designer’s priority list.

The area to wirelessly charge your mobile is well-thought out however. Push to open up the slot in the centre console, post your phone through the aperture, close it and you’re done. No faffing around and you won’t be distracted by it either.

14

Though there are five seatbelts provided, the rear bench is sculpted more for a pair of occupants rather than three, as the transmission tunnel eats into foot room for the middle person quite significantly. 

At least there’s a decent amount of headroom back there, and legroom is acceptable for the size of car, however it’s not as good as the back of a BMW 5 Series or Mercedes-Benz E-Class.

Boot space and storage

At 500 litres in size, the Ghibli’s boot is around the same kind of size as most of its rivals, accessed via a slightly limited saloon bootlid, but that’s also par for the course for this kind of car. 

The boot can be expanded, though, by folding down the rear seats. However, this is unlikely to be the kind of car you’ll be doing runs to the tip in at the weekend.

Is it easy to park?

At almost five metres in length, the Ghibli is a long-ish car. On the motorway you won’t notice its heft, but on tighter urban roads or country lanes, there’s only so much it can do to disguise its size and weight. 

That said, with a range of cameras available on the Ghibli, manoeuvring the car into spaces isn’t too tricky.

Safety

• Five out five from Euro NCAP…
• …Back in 2013
• Lots of safety tech

The good news is that according to the Euro NCAP the Maserati Ghibli’s safety is first-class, with a full five stars awarded. The bad news was that this was back in 2013 and it hasn’t been retested since.

At the time the executive saloon received particular praise for adult protection and safety assist, and received maximum points for infant protection in the rear. Most of its rivals also score very well from Euro NCAP, but have been tested much more recently.

As you’d expect there’s a switchable stability system, which keeps things pointing in the right direction by reducing engine torque should it detect the wheels are spinning at different rates – indicating a skid. 

There’s seven airbags, including one for the driver’s knees (as well as in the steering wheel) while the front seat passenger has their own frontal and side bags as well as anti-whiplash headrests. All occupants benefit from curtain airbags.

A suite of driver assistance, including adaptive cruise control are available as an option. Which seems a bit stingy on such an expensive car.

Maserati Ghibli Euro NCAP crash test results