Alexandre
After unveiling the Alfa Romeo product plans and Fiat to 2028here's the one from Maserati. Let's face it, there's not much to learn, but a lot to worry about.
Before Stellantis was born, the plan was to launch the MC20, Grecale, Granturismo, Grancabrio, Levante and Quattroporte in both electric and combustion versions. All this first by 2022...then 2025.
Then, Big Bang, Stellantis is created. While for most brands, the product plan was quite clear, for Maserati it was much less so. All of a sudden, Folgore are scheduled to launch by 2025 all models listed for create a luxury car brand with a 100 % electric range by 2030.
So, what about the cars already in development? All but the MC20 are based on Giorgio, a platform not designed for electric drive. The decision has been taken to launch the most advanced models, such as the Grecale and Granturismo, first with internal combustion, then with electric drive.
For the Levante and the new Quattroporte, platform change to STLA Large therefore reset developments. This brings us to the document we were able to consult, which, in all transparency, dates back to 2022, and revealed the following.
| Model | Platform | Motorization | Launch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maserati Quattroporte | STLA Large | PHEV / electric | 2024 |
| Maserati Grancabrio | Maserati Spaceframe | electric | 2023 |
| Maserati Levante | STLA Large | MHEV / PHEV / electric | 2025 |
First of all, the new Quattroporte and Levante are on STLA Large. Second thing, In the end, the brand decided not to opt for the electric 100 %, leaving the possibility of a combustion engine open, including plug-in hybrids. Probably with GME T6 which will soon arrive with PHEV technology, and since it seems highly unlikely that the Nettuno will be adapted to STLA Large (but we could be wrong). Thirdly, we might as well ignore the launch dates, as they're already going to be missed. So, apart from these two new models... nothing else.
The Maserati star in the Stellantis galaxy is getting dimmer and dimmera brand on the verge of implosion? We've been saying for years that the brand's positioning is unclear. This product plan confirms it. While all the other Stellantis brands have a roadmap to 2030, Maserati is stuck with "old generation" models on the Giorgio platform, which have just been released, and two hypothetical models for which we have yet to see a prototype on the road.
It's about time, in 2024, that Maserati's management communicate clearly where it wants to be by 2030. 100 % electric ? Plug-in hybrid? What volume? Which range? What price? What communication? What pace of launch? In the meantime, development of the Quattroporte M9S is already behind scheduleand for Levante, there's no sound or image.
Is it a coincidence that a few days ago.., the brand has announced the arrival of Giovanni Perosino as its new marketing and communications director Maserati, succeeding Paolo Tubito, who came from Nike... Italy is also gnashing its teeth, unions to meet management on january 25 (the day of the presentation of the electric Macan), for the brand to set out its plans for the months and years ahead.
How can a group of essentially generalist brands understand anything about sports and luxury brands such as Maserati and Alfa Romeo?
On the positive side, we finally understand that sports cars can't just be electric. It would be enough to take inspiration from Ferrari, which understands this while making hybrid models, like the 296 GTB/GTS.
Is not having a clear plan for Maserati worse than having a bad plan based on electric SUVs like Alfa Romeo?
Everything is said, nothing is clear
As for the Italian product plan, I've stopped believing in it ... Now I'm waiting to see a car on the road!
It's about Stellantis, but it's about Peugeot.
Maserati, like Fiat, Alfa and Lancia, is 100% dependent on Peugeot's decisions in Paris.
Their financing, product plan, strategy, technologies to be used, etc. are all up to Peugeot, or rather the Paris-based French management of Stellantis.
The Italians know nothing, can do nothing, because they have nothing. They've never brought a single marble back into the group, either during the Fiat Spa period, the Fca period or the Stellantis period.
Italian brands have always been loss-making and dependent on subsidies, recapitalizations and money from foreign manufacturers Jeep/Dodge/Ram then Peugeot/Citroën/Opel.
In short, if Maserati is in trouble, it's not because of Peugeot, says Stellantis, it's mainly because of the Italians, who make bad products that don't sell.
It's not enough to put a luxury price tag on a luxury car!
Maserati is all about premium cars at luxury prices. With the exception of the Mc20, nothing is original or luxurious.
And the Mc20 is being knocked off its perch by Lotus, Aston, McLaren and Chinese news, while we wait for MG's Cyber and Tesla's Roadster.
The Italians make banal products and take foreigners for pigeons. No wonder they don't sell.
This is simply the explanation for the failure of every Italian manufacturer except Lamborghini, because Lamborghini is run by Germans who keep an eye on everything Lamborghini does. They don't give them carte blanche to do whatever they want with their money and their technology. They expect them to deliver results and to produce products that are superior to the competition or up to scratch.
Maserati's products - Ghibli, Levante, Quattroporte and even MC20 - were never on a par with the competition when they came out. It was more a case of trying to catch up with the competition, but without even catching it.
With all that you've just written, well, it's comforting to know that I'm going to continue buying Italian.
Because if there's one country that knows how to make cars with soul, it's Italy. Which country can boast such emblematic car brands as Ferrari,Maserati,Lamborghini,Alfa Romeo,Abarth ,Pagani ,Osca ,Mazzanti ,Intermeccanica ,Cizeta ,Bizzarrini ,Iso ,Lancia and for motorcycles the list is just as long Italy is a country of enthusiasts. In France we don't like cars and even less those who drive them.
I used to read nonsense, but this is rock bottom!
Already the cleaning up of the executives shows that PSA are not in charge as you say and they have always been chronic incompetents for decades in Luxury, Premium and Sport cars trying to sell carts at gold prices like today. You only have to look at the extent to which it was the French state and donfgeng that saved them from bankruptcy to understand this. Whatever the market outside Europe, PSA has always ended up in a fiasco, and that's never going to change.
To say that the Ghibli, Grecale, Levante, Quattroporte weren't up to the level of the others proves that you know nothing about them and shows that you've never driven one, just like the latest Alfa.
French carts have always been unsellable disasters around the world, and even today nobody wants them except in France.
Comparing an MC20 with Lotus is laughable. You're talking about Aston Martin when this brand is in its death throes, just like Jaguar. MGs and Chinese cars in this style don't exist, so don't be ridiculous.
McLaren makes Ferrari-type products and not luxury ones like Maserati and can't match Ferrari which is above the rest (sorry for you but it's purely Italian not like the Lamborghini-badged garbage that sells "so-called sports cars on soon-to-be-Chinese chassis to save VAG from bankruptcy for EVs (total disgrace as Germans produce hideous bodies that customers don't want anymore and without their crappy URUS that looks like a tractor 🚜 (just good for pulling a cart), this brand wouldn't move forward.
They couldn't save Seat, which will go bankrupt in 2030 (losers), and making Audi, VAG and Skoda on Chinese chassis and taking their technology from the Chinese proves that the Germans are incompetent. They're just good at taking customers for suckers and sheep by selling them overpriced junk that's not worth a damn, and that's why Lexus has been pounding them in Asia, the USA and soon in Europe (already the case in Switzerland) 🇨🇭!
An MC20 is a thousand times more efficient than a bloody R8/Gallardo/Huracan, which also spends more time broken down than on the road!
Marchionne may have screwed up for Lancia, but not for Alfa, Ferrari or Maserati, and you can show us where the Italian state spends its time financing FCA or Fiat, when it's the VAG group that was financed again by the German state to avoid a takeover bid with their 11 billion loss... the most indebted automotive group in the world!!!!
MDR, the boss of Stellantis is Italian (Elkhann) and the main shareholder is Exor, i.e. Fiat, Tavares is only there because Elkhann wants him to be, don't get me wrong but Peugeot is in Italian hands!...where I agree with you is on the management of Maserati, which is run by incompetents.
Not especially for Maserati, but let's just say that the Grecale or the Ghibli are the kind of products that customers expect from Lancia (we often talk about these 2 in Switzerland with the customers who buy this kind of product), and the Maserati Quattroporte was a dud in terms of design.... It's a shame.
And last but not least, apart from BMW and Mercedes who innovate, at VAG Group they all pump from their Italian or Japanese competitors and dare to claim to be the first to have launched the concept.... Pathetic.
Hello
It's obvious that you have no knowledge of the automotive industry.
2024 is already a "valley of death" year for manufacturers!
In my opinion, the EV has already won the race, efficiency obliges, but only in the medium term, between now and then many things can happen...or not.
Nevertheless, when it's unclear, it's because there's a wolf.
I remember a report on 2 French maserati managers....explaining that the phev was not in keeping with the brand's values. That's the kind of story I'd like to hear. We don't hear from them anymore.....
This is a huge mistake. The PHEV is the real solution.
I think that unfortunately the problems of Maserati and Alfa Romeo are not due to stellantis but to Sergio marchionne's calamitous management of product plans and brands,remembering his thundering announcements of new cars with production figures never reached.on the whole, stellantis managers are making an effort, but to have a close friend in the stellantis France management team, the fiat group's networks weren't great, they had to clean house, and the switch to hybrid and electric vehicles was not anticipated by fiat auto, so the business is complicated.For me, trying to resurrect Lancia is a waste of time and money. The brand may still have a certain aura among 50-somethings like me, but the Lancia era is long gone.
of course there has been a real lack of anticipation from fca on electrification. However, the FCA/PSA merger was decided in 2019, is now in 2024, and I personally find that Maserati is the only brand in the group where the projection is not clear. Do they want to make 15, 20 or 30,000 cars? Do they want to keep making 100 % elec cars between now and 2030? Which models? Some external communication would be welcome to explain this.
There are brands to be taken out of the Stellantis galaxy, but by whom?
DS, which is useless and an abyss. Fiat can give way to Abarth. Citroën must regain its rightful place above Peugeot and be Premium like Lancia.
I disagree. Premium Citroëns are supposed to be DS. Citroen hasn't been able to make anything but practical, ugly cars for a long time now, and there's no reason for that to change. But I agree that DS serves no purpose at all.
Abarth and Fiat don't have the same image, because Abarth is supposed to be a sporty brand, whereas Fiat makes cars where performance is not the goal. Fiat is more of an all-purpose brand that has to make volume, whereas Abarth makes cars derived from Fiat but with higher performance, without seeking volume.
The only brand that is capable of making Maserati shine again (and has already proved it)... is Ferrari and would be capable of doing the same with Alfal and Lancia. Exor must do as it did with Ferrari, let Maserati manage itself by leaving Lancia under its Tutelage and place Alfa under Ferrari's Tutelage. It's as simple as that, and customers will really appreciate it.
Instead of making a new Ypsilon, the best thing would have been to abandon it altogether and invest the money in Abarth and let Lancia make "REAL" PREMIUM cars again under the Maserati umbrella.
We all knew in advance that Stellantis wouldn't be able to do it.
The only step FCA has missed is not electric, because they started long before anyone else with the 500e in the USA, but hybrid. And PSA missed the boat, as did VAG and many others.
The Toyota group and alliance can rest easy.
The first Fiat 500e sold in the USA Marchionne even asked potential customers not to buy it, because Fiat was losing money on every car purchased.
It's true that FCA missed the boat when it came to switching to hybrids.
Exactly Stanislas, and for PSA too, and for Stellantis, they're putting the lid back on once more. They don't want to understand what customers want, but what they want. In short, we're seriously delusional, when it would be simpler to take the 2.0 GME, the 2.9 690T, the 3.0 F160 and the Nettuno and switch them to hybrid, but no, it's too much to ask, apparently, and then they'll say:
"It's not our fault it's those before us!" In short, the usual refrain.