What's Going To Happen With Maserati?

Stellantis has confirmed that it will have news about the fate of Maserati during an investor call scheduled for May 21st. Despite being the automaker’s flagship luxury marquee, Maserati has endured several years of profitability issues. While this has led many to assume that Stellantis would simply sell the brand, leadership has suggested that won’t be the case.

Officially, we know that Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa announced this week that the Italian carmaker would begin reporting its financials to regional offices. This has furthered speculation that Maserati is being positioned for sale or would perhaps be prepped for downsizing.

"The overall organizational strategy for Stellantis, starting from H2 of 2025, has been to increase the level of regionalization, since we strongly believe we are a strong global company with even stronger regional roots," Filosa explained during the earnings call.

However, CarBuzz reported that Maserati has subsequently stated that it will remain a part of Stellantis for the foreseeable future and rebuffed speculation from the outlet that Filosa had avoided answering the question of its sale.

“Our Group CEO did not avoid the topic,” stated the spokesperson. “He simply reiterated that the full narrative for all Stellantis brands — including Maserati — will be shared on May 21 during the Stellantis Investor Day. Maserati is not for sale and remains the only luxury brand within the Stellantis portfolio. Further details will be presented on May 21.”

From CarBuzz:

That doesn't entirely jibe with our experience during the earnings call — Filosa could have easily squashed all rumors relating to Maserati sales. Nevertheless, the decision to rationalize the Maserati financials under a regional office indeed lines up with Stellantis strategy for its other brands. In that sense, it seems reasonable to guess that the Dutch-French-Italian-American conglomerate is actually drawing its luxury marque even closer to home.

As recently as last year, Maserati operated relatively independently, with its own public relations, financing, and corporate leadership — some of its products used shared Stellantis engineering, but the company structure was pretty siloed. Now, Stellantis is incorporating Masi into its own operations, which would be an odd (and expensive) tactic if the end goal was to unload the luxury brand to another party. Regardless, we have just under three months before we learn more about Maserati's future, and we'll be waiting to find out its fate with bated breath.

These are tough times for a lot of luxury brands, especially those not at the tippy-top of the market. Many households can no longer afford basic transportation, let alone premium automobiles. But we’ve likewise heard claims that even quadrants of the ultra-wealthy are intentionally avoiding conspicuous vehicle purchases because they’re concerned about “showing off” in a bad economy.

From a strictly financial perspective, Maserati doesn’t appear to be doing Stellantis any favors. The company is losing an estimated $25,000 per vehicle and has been experiencing declining global sales. While premium brands can often get away with low volumes, Maserati is clearly on a bad trajectory.

The company doesn’t even expect to crest 8,000 global deliveries for 2025 and noted a 48-percent drop in sales through the first three months of last year. But 2024 likewise saw sales slipping by 57 percent against 2023.

The blame for this often goes to lackluster reliability. While Italian brands are rarely praised for peak dependability, Maserati is often ranked near the bottom in reliability studies. But there is also a sense that its products are similarly less refined, often trailing rivals in terms of technology features. Reviews of older models often noticed that some of the switchgear could be found on mainstream vehicles, resulting in accusations of the cars being the premium equivalent of a “parts-bin special.”

This is one reason we see Maserati vehicles deprecating more quickly than models from rival automakers. Ironically, attempting to address this seems to have worked counter to Stellantis’ interests. Maserati seems to have pivoted to touch controls right at the moment when everyone decided they were chintzy and unintuitive. Some now mourn the loss of the comparatively straightforward and user-friendly interiors of older luxury models.

Electrification efforts haven’t gone over well either. The company’s “Folgore” EVs are seeing some of the largest dealer discounts imaginable in a bid to attract customers. But the cars never really made much sense for the brand.

For example, the Maserati GranTurismo Folgore is an immensely fast and supremely attractive luxury grand tourer offering about 240 miles between charges. While the battery recharge times were also impressively quick, they required locating an accommodating fast charger. Meanwhile, achieving anything near its maximum (albeit still modest) range under spirited driving was totally impossible — undermining the entire point of owning a powerful grand tourer.

Not only did customers lose the sumptuous exhaust soundtrack Maserati vehicles are known for, they were also forced to sacrifice the road-trip potential of what was being marketed as a GT model. Who could have possibly thought that was a good idea when the whole premise of grand tourers is to create an automobile that’s great to drive at high speeds over long distances?

The reality of the situation may simply be that the brand hasn’t been issued the attention it deserves. Marketing for Maserati borders on nonexistent and new products haven’t been getting the kind of support necessary to stay competitive. Former Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares was pretty clear about the former being a problem, despite the company having a rich automotive history to draw from.

After all, Maserati has been around for over a century and has managed to produce some truly magnificent vehicles within that timeframe. Granted, we can probably gloss over certain eras — with the latter half of the 1980s being particularly bleak. But no company has a totally flawless record, especially those catering to a niche corner of the luxury market.

Maserati seems to be suffering from the same issues as Chrysler. Nobody at the parent company seems to know what to do with either nameplate and hasn’t yet decided to give them the kind of attention that could yield the kind of product or marketing offensive that turns things around. Both were likewise previously framed as would-be pioneers of electrification, only to see the relevant plans walked back several years later.

What they need is a new identity or the restoration of their past personas. With Maserati EVs clearly not selling, the brand could market itself as a traditional, serious brand that’s focused on customization — basically becoming the Italian Bentley with a stronger focus on performance and panache (which is a French word that really feels like it should be Italian).

We've even seen the company leaning further in that direction after sales began to sour. Upholstery, paint, wheel and material options have gotten truly interesting, even if they come at a premium. But this doesn't necessarily have to be a core component of Maserati's official recipe.

Frankly, any effort to solidify the brand’s identity that coincides with a sound marketing push would be welcome. We just hope Stellantis steers clear of the same bold-but-empty advertising used by Jaguar as the business effectively suspended operations. Sadly, the brunt of the industry presently seems wholly fixated on finances and is incredibly risk averse. Electrification, despite being heavily subsidized, hasn’t paid off for automakers and creeping regulations have resulted in staggering development costs.

This has further encouraged just about everyone to take what’s presumed to be the safest approach possible in terms of product design. But some of these brands absolutely need to take a few risks in order to rationalize their continued existence. Here’s hoping that Stellantis confirms it's actually willing to roll the dice on Maserati on May 21st.

[Images: Stellantis]

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