Montezemolo Speaks out on Maserati

By Alexandra Kirkman,
Forbes, 14 May 2001

Anyone who doubts the power of a car to turn heads should drive a Maserati in Manhattan. "Make way for this car!" a pretzel vendor bellows when he spots the famous sports car. Another man sprints toward the racer: "Hey!" he shouts. "Is that a Maserati? Great car!"

Pretty remarkable for a set of wheels that hasn't been available in the U.S. for a decade -- in a city where people are famously unfazed. But Ferrari SpA, Maserati's owner, hopes this kind of recognition will translate into robust sales when the venerable racing brand is re-launched in the U.S. in early 2002.

There is some careful market segmentation going on here. Ferrari is 90% owned by Fiat Group, the Italian manufacturer of mass-market cars. But the Ferrari name goes only on sports cars costing $143,000 to $230,000. The Maserati name is aimed a bit down the scale from there, with the Maserati Spider two-seater to be priced near $80,000. Significantly though, Ferrari Chief Executive Luca Cordero di Montezemolo has no plan to slap the precious Maserati name on any $30,000 starter model, as Jaguar, Mercedes and BMW are doing.

In the $80,000 range, Maserati will be competing with the Jaguar XKR and the Porsche 911. All three have oversexed engines and 0-60mph acceleration below 5.3 seconds. One difference: The Maserati is customized to your taste. Spider owners get a car they help design, down to the color of the leather stitching in the upholstery. In fact, there's almost nothing Maserati won't do to accommodate buyers' requests. "If you come to me with denim and want that in the interior, I will do it for you," di Montezemolo, 53, says. "I want to emphasize the exclusivity and service that come with the brand."

There are other perks. If you want to learn to drive like a champ, there's the Master GT, a driving course run by former Formula 1 driver Ivan Capelli. Maserati owners can zip around the Varano de Melegari circuit near Parma, under the watchful eye of a team of professional instructors. Maserati, after all, was known for decades as the fastest car in the world before Ferrari came on the scene in the 1950s. Then the brand languished under a series of owners, including Citro‘n and Argentinean mogul Alejandro de Tomaso. Fiat bought it in 1993 and Ferrari took it over in 1997.

So far response to the Maserati is good -- and not just from pretzel vendors in Manhattan. Maserati is outselling the Jaguar XK series in Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland, where it has already been reintroduced. Those results are expected to boost Ferrari's 2000 revenue 20% to $820 million, the company says. If that revenue figure is correct, profits could more than double to $17 million.

Di Montezemolo is counting on the U.S. to deliver a large chunk of those revenues. His aim is to move 1,200 Maserati cars here next year. That's more than half the total number sold worldwide in 2000. Says he: "I want customers with good taste who are looking for a unique emotion from driving."

Or just a unique set of wheels.