Maserati Hopes For A Reversal of Fortune

Their problems are 100% product and not any pairing with Alfa Romeo.  Maserati cars have poor build quality, low rent interior plastics and their whole deal is supposed to be performance, and any of the Germans will sell a better performing car and at less money.

Case in point, Levante Trofeo is $170,000 base and the GLE63 which is dated itself is just as fast at about $125,000.  Or get a Cayenne Turbo or the new X5 M.  The most powerful Ghibli has 424 hp, you can get more than that in an E53, and the top Quattroporte has 523 hp, you get 630 in the AMG GT 4-door and the AMG GT is your Nurburgring lap record holder for a 4 door car.

Maserati is just a disaster, only way to fix it is better product, and clearly they don't have the money or resources or engineering know-how to do it.  

2 hours ago, smk4565 said:

Their problems are 100% product and not any pairing with Alfa Romeo.  Maserati cars have poor build quality, low rent interior plastics and their whole deal is supposed to be performance, and any of the Germans will sell a better performing car and at less money.

Case in point, Levante Trofeo is $170,000 base and the GLE63 which is dated itself is just as fast at about $125,000.  Or get a Cayenne Turbo or the new X5 M.  The most powerful Ghibli has 424 hp, you can get more than that in an E53, and the top Quattroporte has 523 hp, you get 630 in the AMG GT 4-door and the AMG GT is your Nurburgring lap record holder for a 4 door car.

Maserati is just a disaster, only way to fix it is better product, and clearly they don't have the money or resources or engineering know-how to do it.  

Hm, where to get the money for better product?  May I suggest ending FIAT and funneling that cash towards upgrading Maserati?  Makes a lot more sense than wasting a dime on FIAT.

They probably should dump Fiat.  Even in the 2nd world countries, I imagine VW, Skoda, Seat, Nissan/Renault or Toyota do way better and Fiat probably doesn't even do well in counties that crave cheap small cars.

I don't really see the need for Maserati either.  As a high dollar car it should have good margins, but it doesn't because they can't sell enough and you still have some amount of fixed costs to cover.  Really you could transform the Ghibli into a mid/large Alfa Romeo sedan then Alfa has 2 sedans, give them another SUV and they have 2, give them an 8C $100k sports car as a halo product and that makes Maserati pointless. 

Jaguar to some degree is in the same situation.  Just because Jaguar and Maserati are storied brands, doesn't mean they are relevant today.  Blockbuster Video and Sears were successful, segment leading brands are one point, irrelevant today.  I don't see any path in which FCA competes with the German luxury car brands.  They are too good at what they do and too far ahead.

Fiat cars worldwide were down to approx 1.1M in 2017, from 1.6M in 2010.   Fiat Commercial was up to approx 450k in 2017.   That is still a lot of sales...

Saving Maserati and Alfa was a fools errand run by Sergio.