Maserati’s $193,000 sedan to challenge Porsche primacy

Maserati, the luxury-auto maker owned by Fiat Spa, will start an effort to boost sales eightfold and challenge Porsche for performance-car buyers with a new version of its Quattroporte flagship sedan.

The sixth generation of Maserati’s four-door model, which costing about $193,000, will feature cleaner and more powerful engines developed by Ferrari. The car will challenge the Porsche Panamera Turbo for performance drivers needing a back seat.

“The new Quattroporte will close the power gap the old version had with the fastest Porsche Panamera, while maintaining its unique driving feeling,” said Pierluigi Santoro, a cardiologist in Naples who has three Maseratis and chairs the brand’s Italian owners’ club. “When you drive a Quattroporte you feel like you’re in a sports car, but you’re really in a luxury sedan with plenty of room for five.”

The Quattroporte spearheads a series of six new models that will be introduced by the Modena, Italy-based Fiat unit over the next four years, including the Levante sportutility vehicle and a smaller sedan, called the Ghibli. The goal is to boost sales to 50,000 vehicles by 2015 from 6,159 last year.

Maserati’s expansion is critical to Fiat Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne’s plan to turn around the automaker’s European operations, which Fiat expects will lose 700 million euros this year. Combined with an expansion of Alfa Romeo, the Turin, Italybased automaker is counting on demand for higher- margin luxury cars fill factories in Italy for export outside debtstrapped Europe.

Fiat cut its 2014 profit goal by 31 per cent in October with the European auto market on pace to contract for its fifth straight year to the lowest level since 1995. Marchionne doesn’t see any recovery in demand before 2014 and is targeting reaching the break-even point in Europe at the earliest in 2015.