Maserati Sees Key Niche in U.S.
For lovers of Italian performance sports cars there’s great news on the horizon: They won’t have to spend a minimum $142,000 for a Ferrari or $290,000 for a Lamborghini.
Maserati--the Modena, Italy, auto maker with a storied racing history in the 1950s and that later evoked passion and elegance with such models as the Vignale, Mistral and Ghibli--is returning to America.
The 2003 Maserati Spyder will be unveiled for the U.S. market at the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show in January and will go on sale in the first quarter of the year; the Maserati Coupe will have its world unveiling later in January at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit and arrive in showrooms in May. Both cars will have a 4.2-liter V-8 engine that pounds out 385 horsepower, with a top speed of 176 mph, and will be priced in the $85,000-to-$95,000 range.
Maseratis haven’t been sold in the U.S. for 10 years. Plans are to come back modestly, through 33 dealerships, mostly existing U.S. and Canadian showrooms of sister brand Ferrari.
“Now we are ready,” said Ferrari’s ebullient chief executive, Luca di Montezemolo, here for the recent Frankfurt International Motor Show. “We spent years of hard work reorganizing, rebuilding, relaunching: engineering, working with management, dealers, quality and product. We have worked very hard on our dealer network in the U.S.”
The United States is expected to be the largest market for Maserati, which plans to quickly outpace Ferrari, which sold 1,200 vehicles in the U.S. last year.
The question is whether Maserati can serve its customers once they buy its cars.
“The key is they have to have a lot of commitment to buyers that they will be around and not withdraw from the market,” said Greg Salchow, senior auto analyst with investment bank Raymond James in Detroit. “If they don’t have the quality right, then there will be big problems, which have plagued all Italian cars.”
Di Montezemolo, 54, insists he is confident that quality and service will do Maserati and its triton logo proud.
Maserati dominated the Grand Prix racing scene in the 1950s, and it was only when it left racing in 1957 that its street cars began to be taken seriously.
Fiat Group of Italy acquired Maserati in 1997 and merged it into Fiat’s Ferrari unit, the roaring king of performance sports cars. That gave Di Montezemolo a chance to develop a more affordable, luxurious yet sporty performance car without diluting Ferrari’s image.
“For Ferrari dealers, we wanted another car--but not a smaller Ferrari, because that would mean less content,” Di Montezemolo said at the Frankfurt show, where the Spyder was unveiled.
“These are two companies, not marques, with completely different strategies,” he said. “Ferrari means extreme performance, prices, exclusivity. We will never build more than 4,000 cars a year. Maserati is not extreme; it’s a very competitive sports car: two-seat, two-door and four-door. It’s expensive, like Porsche, but not extreme.
“Maserati does volume but not so extremely low volumes. Therefore they are two different companies.”
Maserati fits comfortably between Ferrari at the super-high end and Alfa Romeo, another Fiat brand, at the near-luxury end of the passenger car business.
“We seek U.S. sales from the BMW, Porsche, Jaguar and Aston Martin driver, people 30 to 60 years old who have an interest in cars, who’ll take it as a second or third car,” said Stuart Robinson, chief executive of Ferrari Maserati North America.
He is encouraged by the recent rise in the market for $80,000-plus sports cars, which include the Jaguar XK8 and XKR, the Porsche 911, the BMW M5 and the upcoming “baby” Aston Martin.
Robinson said he expects to sell 1,500 Maseratis in the U.S. next year, rising to 4,500 in 2005. The mix probably will be 75% Spyder and 25% Coupe--the mirror image of sales in Europe, where hardtops are favored.
Maserati will come out with a new four-door in 2003 designed by renowned Italian auto stylist Sergio Pininfarina, long associated with Ferrari. (Giorgietto Giugiaro, who designed Maserati’s famed 1966 Ghibli coupe, collaborated on the 2003 Spyder and Coupe.)
The forthcoming pair of Maseratis “will put some pressure on the Porsches of the world, coming in at a lower price,” said Jeff Schuster, director of North American forecasting for J.D. Power & Associates in Detroit.
“There’s been a resurgence in the fun, sporty, ‘I-want-to-drive’ experience as opposed to getting from Point A to Point B,” Schuster said.
Gloomy economic forecasts in the wake of September’s terrorist attacks shouldn’t cloud Maserati’s plans, he said, because those wealthy enough to afford such cars will spend the money anyway.
“By the time the vehicles hit the market we’ll probably be faring a little better than now,” Schuster said.
To Di Montezemolo, Maserati had to get three things right before bringing the brand back to these shores: braking, handling and acceleration. For Maserati’s very existence is to appeal to the true motoring enthusiast.
“We want drivers to be the protagonista of the experience but not to be ruled by technology,” he said. “We bring our experience in the sex appeal of Italian cars that you can drive every day, even to the supermarket. A sports car, easy to drive, but, but, but ,” he said vigorously, “with emotion.”
“We are looking for women too, hedonistic drivers,” he added brightly, as if not wanting to forget.
The wiry Di Montezemolo is a consummate Italian dandy, intense and always snappily dressed and groomed. He loves driving anything with wheels--even the tiny, low-end Fiat Panda--and owns his own brand of men’s fragrance, the outrageously expensive Acqua di Parma.
He plans to cultivate a similar exclusivity for Maseratis.
“We plan to supply less cars to the market than the demand,” he said sternly. “It’s important to look at the quality of sales, not just the quantity.”
Di Montezemolo said Maserati’s image will capitalize on the brand’s own racing past as well as its being in the same stable as Ferrari, which has won the last three Formula One racing manufacturer’s titles.
“It’s the accumulated knowledge from racing that makes the street cars handle so well and have great durability,” said Raymond James analyst Salchow. “People don’t realize it, but those cars are tough. They don’t wear out.”
Will Maserati reenter racing?
“Until now we’ve been totally, deeply into the reorganization of the car,” Di Montezemolo said. “I was thinking we should be concerned with the shirt, not with the tie. Now we can start thinking of the tie.”
Maserati will certainly return to racing, he said, but not in Formula One, given Ferrari’s presence there and what he sees as an insufficient U.S. following to make it worthwhile for the brand.
Since Maserati is returning to the American market, might the brand follow the cue of Porsche and develop a performance sport-utility vehicle?
“My friend Ralph Lauren said to me, ‘Why does Ferrari not do a large station wagon?”’ Di Montezemolo said. “Listen, it’s out of our target and out of our know-how. We’ve got two cars, and we’re ready to go back to the U.S. with the right product.”
But some kind of sport-utility doesn’t seem so farfetched.
“We have some ideas. An SUV is something extremely important for the United States,” Di Montezemolo said. “For me, the question is: ‘What do you intend with an SUV?’ I’m not thinking off-road, but I think a creative way of sporty use of free time is very important to our future.
“I think between off-road, SUV, station wagon, there will be room in the near future for a sport approach, to think of free time and technology in a creative way.”
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Terril Yue Jones is The Times’ Detroit Bureau chief. He can be reached at t.jones@latimes.com.
