No more excuses for Maserati under new watch

Many major events and launches in the automotive world have been postponed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, one of the more tantalising of which was the relaunch of the Maserati brand that’s been pushed back from May to September.

Maserati, like Alfa Romeo, has been promised a lot by its parent firm Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) owner over the past decade or more, but been given the chance to deliver very little to realise its full potential.

And what has come from Maserati, the likes of the Maserati Ghibli and Maserati Levante, has been well short of rivals including Porsche and Mercedes-AMG. While actually creating at least some of the cars has been an improvement on some of the revival plans of the past, creating them to match and better the ever-higher standards has been beyond Maserati thus far.

Now there is a new plan, and an even more ambitious one at that. As we reveal, it includes up to 10 new models, including derivatives, before 2023, kicking off with a dramatic carbonfibre mid-engined supercar called MC20. The investment runs into the billions.

If it feels like we’ve been here before with Maserati, we have. However, there’s one key difference this time.

FCA’s upcoming merger with PSA puts Maserati’s feat under the ultimate control of Carlos Tavares, the future head of the combined PSA-FCA. No-one has a better track record in recent years of turning around brands, as he has shown both with Peugeot-Citroen and then again even more impressively for Opel-Vauxhall, loss-making in each of the 17 years previous.

Under Tavares’s watch, there can be no excuses for Maserati this time.

Opinion: With PSA in charge, Maserati can finally flourish

Maserati postpones bold brand relaunch until September

Mark Tisshaw

Title: Editor

Mark is a journalist with more than a decade of top-level experience in the automotive industry. He first joined Autocar in 2009, having previously worked in local newspapers. He has held several roles at Autocar, including news editor, deputy editor, digital editor and his current position of editor, one he has held since 2017.

From this position he oversees all of Autocar’s content across the print magazine, autocar.co.uk website, social media, video, and podcast channels, as well as our recent launch, Autocar Business. Mark regularly interviews the very top global executives in the automotive industry, telling their stories and holding them to account, meeting them at shows and events around the world.

Mark is a Car of the Year juror, a prestigious annual award that Autocar is one of the main sponsors of. He has made media appearances on the likes of the BBC, and contributed to titles including What Car?, Move Electric and Pistonheads, and has written a column for The Sun.

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