Italy is the best place in the world. All the things that matter to me are here in concentrations and combinations unknown anywhere else. Whether you like food, wine, architecture, cars or countryside, Italy has it all. Italians are the best-looking race on earth and they even have the best language. Joe Greens here are Giuseppe Verdis there.

It makes life so much easier for them — Britain’s exotic car manufacturers have to invent evocative names such as Continental, Phantom and Vanquish to create the right sense of occasion for their cars. But if you’re Maserati, conjuring a name your customers will have rolling around in their mouths for years to come is simplicity itself. Which is why it can get away with calling its new saloon the Quattroporte. “Jaguar Four Door” doesn’t have quite the same ring.

This is just one example of the effortless charm that pervades the Quattroporte and, to some extent, allows it to excuse faults that would be deemed unforgivable in a rival Mercedes, BMW or Audi. They include a lumpen ride around town, poor engine refinement on the motorway, a deeply flawed paddle-change gearbox and a limited range, courtesy of truly terrible, sub-15mpg, fuel consumption.

If this doesn’t sound too promising, imagine how I felt approaching it knowing the last time the Italians produced a good big saloon was the Alfa Romeo 164 in 1988.

Even so, several things immediately endear you to the Quattroporte. First, it looks good inside and out. At more than five metres long it is firmly in Mercedes S-class territory, but it neither looks nor feels bulky. Four 6ft adults will find its cabin spacious and attractive, even if the boot is scarcely generous.

Drivers will be annoyed by its many fiddly and often poorly sited switches but it’s not difficult to find a comfortable position behind the wheel and it won’t be long before the Ferrari-developed, 4.2 litre, 400bhp V8 motor diverts your attention from such trivia.

This is an epic engine and if you thought the snarl-howl-scream of the finest Italian supercar tradition could have no place under the bonnet of a four-door saloon, the Quattroporte will make you think again. The figures say it needs 5.2sec to reach 62mph but it feels even faster. And it’s not fast in the “blink and you’ll miss it” way a Mercedes S600 or Audi’s forthcoming 6 litre W12 A8 feel fast: where they are effortless, the Maserati is involving; it makes an occasion out of its performance and with an engine like this, it can scarcely be blamed.

There is a downside, however. To maximise performance in every gear, Maserati has chosen very short ratios for its paddle-only gearbox. This means that while most £70,000 saloons waft down the motorway at a silent 90mph with less than 3000rpm on the clock, the Maserati’s already conspicuously vocal engine is singing away to itself as it knocks back unleaded at almost 4000rpm.

And this is not the only gearbox-related problem. Cars in this class are almost uniformly automatic — it’s what the market demands — yet what Maserati could deny its driver the right to change gear? Maserati’s solution is a manual six-speed gearbox, conventional in almost all respects other than the fact that changes are prompted electronically by the nudge of a paddle, rather than mechanically by the tug of a gearlever.

Learn its ways and it can work well, especially if you’re driving the way a Maserati should be driven. But select its automatic mode — where a computer decides when to change gear — and drive it the way you would a luxury saloon and smooth progress is impossible to maintain. Maserati is adamant that experience overcomes the issue, but I can’t see how myself.

Happily, where no improvement is needed is on the kinds of road where so many Maseratis of the past 30 years have promised so much and, more often than not, failed to deliver. For a four-door car weighing 4,100lb, it is astonishingly good to drive. Most such cars are distinctly nose heavy but by placing the gearbox between the rear wheels (hence that small boot), Maserati has actually achieved a slightly rearward weight bias and a beautiful handling balance to go with it.

The result is the best Maserati I’ve driven and as the first car to be entirely designed under Ferrari’s stewardship, it bodes well for the future of the marque. But it’s a much less impressive luxury saloon and those with S-class expectations of ride and refinement will find it significantly lacking in both regards. In the context of the Quattroporte, the word “limousine” is useful only to describe everything it isn’t.

But if you come at it from the other direction, that of someone who has always wanted an Italian supercar but needs a spacious, four-door saloon, it is very appealing — an authentic slice of Italian exotica wrapped up in an eminently practical and attractive shell.

Maserati expects to sell no more than 150 Quattroportes each year in Britain. With a three-year, unlimited mileage warranty and free servicing throughout, it should do that, and more.

VITAL STATISTICS

Model: Maserati Quattroporte
Engine type: V8, 4244cc
Power: 400bhp @ 7000rpm
Torque: 332 lb ft @ 4500rpm
Transmission: Six-speed semi-automatic
Suspension: (front) Double wishbones, coil springs, anti-roll bar (rear) double wishbones, coil springs, anti-roll bar
Fuel/CO2: 14.9mpg (combined) / 440g/km
Acceleration: 0-62mph: 5.2sec
Top speed: 171mph
Price: £69,950
Verdict: Immensely appealing, if somewhat flawed, four-door supercar