Maserati notably absent from Paris, but its future will be revealed in December

Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa has reiterated the group’s commitment to the Maserati brand after it was a conspicuous absentee from this year’s Paris Motor Show. Speaking with media, he said: “Maserati will be presented in December, in Modena. It won’t just be about slides, but a real plan that will secure the future for our beloved luxury brand.”

The embattled Italian manufacturer has been under intense scrutiny regarding its future within the Stellantis conglomerate. Sales of its current models have been decimated in the last few years, as its initial dedication to electric powertrains, at the same time as killing off its V8 models, hasn’t proved popular with customers. In response, FIlosa continued: “Maserati needs product, Maserati needs technology, and these will be extensively presented in Modena in December.” 

Front and centre of this new product offensive will be our first look at a concept previewing a replacement for the Levante, Maserati’s now-discontinued SUV that rivals cars such as the Porsche Cayenne, BMW X5 and Mercedes GLE. 

Maserati’s CEO, Santo Ficili, confirmed: “A new concept car will be presented. Let me call it Levante, just to say that we are coming back to the E SUV segment.”

However, while the Levante might prove to be a big driver of sales, the brand’s soul remains in its more traditional segments, one of which will be represented by a new interpretation of the iconic Quattroporte. 

Ficili continued: “The story of the Quattroporte, in my mind, for the future is not a sedan. It can be something between a shooting brake and a crossover: a very low, big car to come back to this part of the segment.”

Of less certainty at this stage are the tools Maserati has to create this new line-up of models. The company might be part of the giant Stellantis group, but its access to cutting-edge technology at the very highest levels is limited in comparison to companies like BMW, Mercedes or the Volkswagen Group. 

There’s a more pressing question to ask, however, and it’s whether this new product will be enough to keep Maserati profitable and relevant in the long term. Ficili laid out the structural change to the brand by telling us: “We can imagine having the brand built on two different pillars. One is the world of the GranTurismo, where today we are okay because we have the MC20, the GT2 Stradale, the GranCabrio, the GranTurismo. Then Levante, [which] is a Quattroporte SUV… We need to come back to this pillar, and in the middle we have the Grecale that is supporting the volume of the brand.”

With these new models in place, Maserati’s future could be considered more secure than it has been in a long while. But we’ll have to wait until December to see what the future of Maserati looks like, and whether confidence in the brand might be instilled after years of disappointment. 

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