Fiat is investing €1.2 billion in luxury brand Maserati, hoping technology and dealer network from its tie-up with Chrysler will help it to take on German rivals BMW and Porsche.
While previous attempts to grow its Maserati and Alfa Romeo brands have fallen flat, Fiat hopes Chrysler’s 2,300 dealerships in the US will make the difference, raising its share of the luxury market, which enjoys double-digit profit margins, many times Fiat’s likely 2 per cent mass-market returns this year.
Its platform-sharing with Chrysler also lets the Turin-based company tap into the US carmaker’s expertise at making bigger cars and save on development costs.
Maserati brand chief executive Harald Wester said this week that Fiat would invest in three new Maserati models in a bid to lift sales to 50,000 cars in 2015. The brand aims to sell at least 13,000 of its new four-door Quattroporte sedans in 2013, compared with a total of about 4,700 cars Maserati sold in the first three quarters of 2012.
The new Quattroporte is the second car built from a shared car body to be launched by Fiat since the start of its 2009 tie-up with Chrysler. It competes with the BMW 7 Series and Porsche’s Panamera. The Quattroporte is priced at around 20 per cent below an entry-level Ferrari.
The launch is being watched by enthusiasts and investors alike to see how well Fiat executes its ambitious plan to leverage Chrysler’s market access and technology to build up the Maserati brand in the US.
Bernd Buechner, the head of brand research group Millward Brown in Germany, said the Maserati brand – “aspirational, and with a strong appeal for car buyers in the Asia-Pacific region” – was positioned a little higher than BMW, but couldn’t match the cachet of its sister brand Ferrari, with its Formula One racing credentials. The sleekly styled new saloon is built on a Chrysler 300-derived chassis, and is powered by an engine designed and manufactured in Italy by Ferrari.
“This is a totally different product, and it speaks to a much broader customer base,” said Wester when asked how he intends to meet his aggressive sales target.
The Quattroporte is built at a new Turin factory refurbished by Fiat at a cost of around €1 billion.