Maserati boss Harald Wester has confirmed the company’s long-awaited SUV will make its production debut at the Geneva auto show next spring. But unlike other European brands, Maserati won’t be a smaller, companion model, company insiders said.
-Previewed by not one but two Kubang SUV concepts (in 2003 and 2011), the production Levante will be based on the same modular architecture as the Quattroporte and Ghibli sports sedans. Powered by the same family of Ferrari-built twin-turbo V-6 and V-8 engines and (in Europe) a VM-built V-6 turbo-diesel, it will come exclusively will all-wheel drive. It also will deliver some of the technology that Maserati has been criticized for lacking, including a plug-in hybrid, which will trickle into both the Quattroporte and the Ghibli by 2018.
-While it had been expected that the Levante would be a rebodied Jeep Grand Cherokee, Wester insisted that was untrue, and that the car would share nothing with any model from other Fiat-Chrysler brands. “Of course, it is a real Maserati,” Wester said.
-The SUV, which is a key vehicle in the brand’s push to reach 75,000 sales by 2018, will be positioned between the Ghibli and the Quattroporte in both price and in wheelbase. “The market has changed and the preference of our customers has changed,” he said, adding, “The sports-car market has slowed down dramatically, to 50,000 cars a year. The luxury SUV segment is 10 times that.”
-At the same time, however, Wester and other sources at Maserati ruled out a smaller SUV, which could have been created cheaply and quickly on the modular architecture being developed (ironically, inside an engineering skunkworks at Maserati’s headquarters) for Alfa Romeo. The Alfa platform, which will appear first as the basis of the Guilia sports sedan and will also underpin an Alfa SUV, is not needed by Maserati, they insisted. “We want a certain volume, but we want to remain relatively exclusive, so we don’t need that kind of volume,” a Maserati spokesman said.
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One year after the Levante, we’ll see a production version of the gorgeous Alfieri coupe concept car [shown above]. Replacements for the GranTurismo coupe and convertible are also under development, and will become slightly more comfort-oriented to allow the Alfieri to be more hard-core.
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