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2023 Maserati MC20 Cielo First Drive: Touch the Sky and Come Alive
Maserati drops the top on its mid-engine supercar to create an exotic convertible you can drive every day.

"Cielo." It means "sky" in Italian. Such is the lyrical beauty of the Italian language, Maserati didn't need to think beyond the prosaic to come up with a great-sounding name for the convertible version of its mid-engine supercar: the 2023 MC20 Cielo. It's worked before: This is, remember, the company that calls its four-door sedan, simply, the Quattroporte. Plain old English "Four Door" somehow doesn't conjure the same romantic elegance.

Not that the MC20 needs any more romance. In coupé form, Maserati's first mid-engine supercar in decades is a beguiling machine, a confident and capable car powered by one of the most charismatic high-performance V-6 engines of the modern era—an engine designed and engineered in-house at Maserati. It's not quite a Ferrari 296GTB and not quite a Lamborghini Huracán, but something all its own: a sports car with a soupçon of grand turismo evident in the mix that makes it as easy and comfortable to drive every day as a C8 Corvette.

The Good Bits Haven't Changed
The stuff we like about the MC20 is all there in the 2023 Maserati MC20 Cielo. The output of the twin-turbo dry-sump Nettuno V-6—Nettuno is Italian for Neptune, the ancient Roman god of the sea whose trident inspired the Maserati logo—remains unchanged at 621 hp at 7,500 rpm and 538 lb-ft of torque from 3,000 to 5,500 rpm. It drives the rear wheels through the same slick eight-speed dual-clutch automated manual transmission.

Performance is unchanged, too. The small carmaker claims the 2023 Maserati MC20 Cielo will sprint from 0 to 60 mph in about 2.7 seconds, just like the coupe. Claimed top speed is similarly just more than 200 mph.

As with the coupe, one of the keys to the MC20 Cielo's performance is its relatively low overall mass. The MC20 coupe's central carbon-fiber monocoque is made up of 57 molded pieces. Aluminum structures bolted to the front and rear of the monocoque anchor the front suspension and steering bits, as well as the rear suspension and V-6 engine and transmission assembly.

Cleverly, the monocoque was designed from the outset to facilitate a convertible version with only minor changes. As a result, the MC20 Cielo weighs only 143 pounds more than the MC20 coupe; the weight increase is pretty much all down to the glass roof and the mechanisms that stow it within/retrieve it from a compartment above the engine, in just 12 seconds.

The 2023 Maserati MC20 Cielo also shares its compact multilink suspension and giant Brembo carbon-ceramic brakes with the coupe, but it boasts several detail changes to the chassis setup. Rear suspension stiffness, for example, increased slightly to allow for the extra mass of the retractable roof to rest on the rear axle, and the e-differential is recalibrated to be less reactive, easing the load on the steering.

The default GT drive mode is also recalibrated to give a slightly softer, smoother ride at cruising speeds, but this is not—as in the case of many coupe-based convertibles—to compensate for the loss of rigidity that comes with removing the roof, says Maserati vehicle line executive Federico Landini: "We wanted the car to have a slightly different character."

It's Not the Soft Option

That's not to say the 2023 Maserati MC20 Cielo is the soft option, a cruisy-schmoozy take on Maserati's mid-engine supercar. Far from it. Yes, the low-speed ride in GT mode is impressively compliant, but it's surprisingly syrupy in the coupe, too. And when you twist the glass-topped rotary controller on the center console into Sport or Corsa mode, the MC20 Cielo tells you it's ready to play, the suspension stiffening its sinews and the Nettuno V-6 clearing its throat.

Nail the gas, and the MC20 Cielo slingshots down the road. The Nettuno is an engine of truly impressive range, crisp and responsive at low to middling revs yet searingly relentless in its power delivery from 6,000 rpm all the way to the 8,000-rpm redline, its baritone rumble morphing into an edgy snarl. It doesn't feel or sound like a turbocharged engine.
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