Is Maserati Dying?

Maserati has been a great sports car company making beautiful looking, great sounding GT cars, but it cannot do what it has been doing for too long now, because Ferrari after it acquired Maserati has not let the company function to its full capability.The last great car to roll out Maserati factory was the Ghibli. All they have been doing since then is changing the audio system and face-lifting the car. Ferrari owns Maserati but the parent company has never taken steps to provide them with the great F1 technology from Ferrari.

Maserati Ghibli.

Maserati Ghibli Interior.

When it comes to the rise of great GT cars, Aston is takingthe lead and catching up with Ferrari and on the other hand Ferrari isn’t doing so well, the earlier California was actually a car developed by Maserati which was taken away by Ferrari because apparently “it was too good to be a Maserati”, this is what I meant when I said that Ferrari wouldn’t let Maserati function at its full capability and has hindered the company’s progress ever since. Ferrari has always considered Maserati as a sub-par luxury brand and even then it hasn’t been able to make a great deal of difference to its own products. The first generation California T was a big flop, it had transmission problems and didn’t handle very well, though there are mixed opinions about looks, I personally think it looks “cheap” for a Ferrari. And that’s the same complain I have from the new California T replacement which is now called the Portofino, it still doesn’t look like a Ferrari especially for the hefty price tag of about $240,000! And that is the sticker price, I really expected more from Ferrari…

What is this got to do with Maserati?

If that is the attitude the parent company has then Maserati is likely to die, and to give you some background and proof, it isn’t selling any cars. Maserati claims to have sold ‘x’ amount of cars, the point is you never see those cars on the road because the cars are sold to the dealers and marked as “sold”, Maserati asks the dealers to mark the cars as sold as soon as the dealers receive them. This is done only to pump up the sale numbers, so that profit can be shown and the inventory can be moved out from the factories. This is the reason why most of the Maserati dealerships are providing cheap financing options on the cars and worst part? You go out to buy a Ferrari dealership and they ask you to buy a Maserati dealership first. Yeah you heard that right!

Maserati vs Alfa Romeo:

Alfa Romeo Giulia

Alfa Romeo Giulia Interior

On the other hand, Alfa Romeo has been making some great leaps, they have improved the design significantly, the interior looks gorgeous and everything inside looks premium from the quality of materials to the electronics and the buttons. And mind you these are $44,000 cars. Maserati’s on the other hand cost about $120,000 and the interior is nothing compared to an Alfa Romeo these days, the interior looks like an old German car with too much plastic.

There is a news that the Indian motor company TATA Motors Grp. Which owns Jaguar Land Rover(JLR), is rumored to buy an Italian luxury car company. It can be Maserati, because Ferrari is barely trying to keep Maserati in a good shape and TATA Motors Grp. might be interested to revive it like it did Jaguar and Land rover when they were in a bad shape financially.