Maserati GranCabrio

• The Maserati GranCabrio will make its debut on September 15 at the upcoming Frankfurt Motor Show. The Maserati GranCabrio is a four-seat convertible that promises to offer enough space for all its occupants, completes Maserati’s product line-up that now consists of three different families of models: Quattroporte, GranTurismo, GranCabrio.
  
  The GranCabrio is powered by a 4.7 litre V8, 323 kW engine and is the convertible with the longest wheelbase on the market. The GranCabrio’s roof is strictly canvas-made, emphasizing the link with the Maserati tradition.
  
  The Maserati GranCabrio was designed at Pininfarina and will be built at the Viale Ciro Menotti Maserati factory will go on sale next spring.

Frankfurt Show: Maserati GranCabrio Photo Galore

Maserati blew the top off the dazzling convertible version of it GranTurismo coupe, which goes by the name GranCabrio, at the Frankfurt Show today. The first four-seater convertible in the history of the Italian automaker borrows the GranTuismo S' 440HP 4.7 liter V8 engine which is paired with a 6-speed automatic transmission. All it takes for the driver and the passengers to enjoy an open-air experience is a push of a button and 28 seconds latter presto, the cloth top is neatly tucked away under a special compartment behind the rear seats.

The Italian firm's engineers paid particular attention to vehicle's aerodynamics, with the creation of a flat aluminum base that not only adds to the overall body's rigidity but also reduces Cx by 6 points. Amazingly and for the first time -or so Maserati claims- the topless version is able to maintain the same aerodynamic performance of the coupe, with a Cx of 0.35.

The new Maserati GranCabrio will be available for order this coming winter, with first deliveries expected to arrive the following spring of 2010.

NOTE: New Zoom Function for Photo Albums

In our never-ending quest to better our blog, (we'll list the changes in a post after the Frankfurt Show), one of the latest additions is a new zoom function for the photo galleries. The pictures not only load faster now but they also open in the same page and more importantly, are automatically re-sized according to the width/height of your browser screen without affecting the download size that remains the same.

Try it out after you refresh your browser and tell us what you think. If there's a bug, we'd appreciate it if you sent us an e-mail, and yes, a next-previous image function is in the works

Maserati Drops the Top on the new GranCabrio

At last, after countless spy shots and months of waiting, we can present the convertible version of Maserati's stunningly beautiful GranTurismo coupe, the GranCabrio - not the best choice of names in our book... It's the Italian automaker's first-ever four-seater convertible and it will make its worldwide debut on September 15 at the upcoming Frankfurt Motor Show with international sales set to start in the spring of 2010.

Even though most of the heavily disguised test mules of the GranCabrio featured a retractable hardtop, Maserati finally chose to offer the production model with an automatic canvas top, a decision that seems to have been dictated by 'mama' Fiat in order to differentiate it from the sportier Ferrari California.

Like the coupe variant, the convertible model has been styled by Italian design house Pininfarina and at least with the top down, we can say that the GranCabrio looks the part.

Maserati says that the GranCabrio has the longest wheelbase on the market of any convertible, promising to offer "proper seats" for all four passengers.

There are no changes under the hood as the GrandCabrio comes with the same powerhouse as the GrandTurismo S, which means a 4.7-liter V8 engine that cranks out 440HP at 7,000 rpm and 490Nm (362 lb-ft) of torque at 4,750 rpm. Power is sent to the rear wheels through the firm's dual-clutch, electro-actuated gearbox with fast MC-Shift arranged in the transaxle layout.

The Italian company did not disclose any performance figures but we expect the GranCabrio to be a tad slower the lighter GranTurismo which goes from zero to 100km/h (62mph) in 4.9 sec and achieves a top speed of 295 Km/h or 184 mph.