“Overcome challenges successfully.” This Tuesday, November 5, automaker Stellantis committed to relaunching its Italian luxury brand Maserati, whose sales experienced a serious slowdown while counting on its first electric models to accelerate its growth.
“New products and new technologies”
Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares traveled to Maserati’s headquarters in Modena, northern Italy, to meet with teams and unions and lay the foundations for “a strategic plan to return the brand to the top of the industry,” according to a press release.
This plan should contain “a complete portfolio of new products and new technologies for the coming years,” says the Franco-Italian-American group.
The goal is to make Maserati “a pride of Stellantis, successfully overcoming the challenges” of the transition phase towards electrification, he points out.
Stellantis is going through a difficult time after years of record profits since its founding in 2021 with the merger of PSA (Peugeot-Citroën) and FCA (Fiat-Chrysler). The manufacturer has fourteen brands and a joint venture with the Chinese manufacturer Leapmotor.
“There is one that is going through difficulties at the moment, it is Maserati. It is the only brand (that is losing money),” commented in October Carlos Tavares, who has just entrusted the steering wheel, in addition to that of Alfa Romeo, to the Italian Santo Ficili.
A position to clarify
Maserati’s positioning “has not yet been well communicated,” it is “a mix of grand tourer performance and dolce vita,” explained Carlos Tavares. According to him, their high prices can also “be one of the elements” that pose a problem.
The trident brand saw its sales fall by 58%, to 8,600 units, in the first nine months of the year and its turnover was reduced by half, to 800 million euros.
Maserati is struggling to sell its Grecale compact SUV and faces “a lower appetite in China for European luxury cars”, according to the group. The drop in sales is also due to the discontinuation of several models in the range while the brand launches its electric sports offensive.
At the beginning of the year, the luxury brand presented the electric versions of its Granturismo sports car and its Grecale SUV, versions called “Folgore” (lightning, in Italian), designed especially to take on the Porsches on their terrain, with the Taycan and the latest generation of the Macan SUV.
Stellantis has repeatedly said it has no intention of selling Maserati or merging the brand with other Italian luxury carmakers, seeking to end speculation about its fate.
Source: BFM TV
