“No part of Maserati has not been touched,” said Fiat boss Manley about the rebuilding. New models should now shake up the competition.
The Italian-American automaker Fiat Chrysler (FCA) sees itself on the right track with the expensive conversion of the ailing luxury brand Maserati. In the past 18 months, Maserati has rebuilt, said Fiat Chrysler boss Mike Manley on Thursday at a press conference in Modena, Italy.
“No part of Maserati was left untouched,” said Manley. With the investment program in new models and new technology such as electric drives and assistance systems, the group wants to ensure that the brand will continue to be relevant in the future.
Maserati, like the British luxury car manufacturer Aston Martin, has problems surviving the competition from the VW subsidiaries Porsche and Lamborghini as well as the luxury top dog Ferrari. However, for Fiat Chrysler and in the future for the Stellantis merger that is planned with PSA, the brand is a prestige brand at the upper end of the model range.
Therefore, FCA has put a lot of money into modernizing Maserati. Of the Group’s announced investments in Italy for 2019 to 2021, at least 1.6 billion were earmarked for the luxury brand.
Maserati now wants to attack Ferrari and Lamborghini with the newly launched MC20 super sports car, and additional new cars such as another SUV and electrified models are also expected to bring momentum in the coming years.
That is also necessary: In the second quarter, sales and deliveries fell by more than half in the corona crisis compared to the same period of the previous year. But even before that, Maserati had serious problems, in the entire past year the deliveries fell by 45 percent to only around 19,300 cars, with the Italians making a loss.