For years Maserati has been Ferrari’s plucky little brother. A brand full of Italian soul but always kept one step behind its more famous family member. Now however it’s a brave new world! Ferrari has been spun off on its own and Maserati is finally free to chart its own course. Their first bold gambit leaves their sporting sedan roots behind in a quest to find new buyers with a brand new SUV. The first SUV ever built by the company and something that their Ferrari family members would never do. Now the hopes and dreams of an entire brand rest on the success or failure of a single machine…
For more than a century maserati has handcrafted luxury machines for drivers in the know now they’re trying to break into the mainstream and increase their sales tenfold the thing that makes maserati cool to most people is that it’s unknown you walk down the street and talk to most people and they say maserati oh that sounds exotic but they don’t know
Anything about it the most prominent display of that kumus gets installed on the bumper sub-assembly line where the most modern maserati ever receives its heirloom link with antiquity in this particular workstation antonio is ready to install our grill on the front fascia with our famous trident today the trident is striking yet it hearkens back to another
Age as legend has it in 1920 one of the seven maserati brothers takes a visit to the neptune fountain in bologna’s piazza majori the idol stroll inspires him to sketch a new company logo and the result is automotive history the maserati logo is based on a piece of art people respond to it because that’s what art’s all about it brings some old italian art
History into this modern brand and it also looks great and it’s exotic and it’s interesting and it resonates with people it’s very fast but there are also rotating the bumpers five screws to secure it completed bumpers head right to the line this is a really amazing process because the preparation of our fascia is in front of us the installation is here in
Order to minimize the transportation and it is a beautiful a really exciting process nearly finished machines move to the chassis line i really love this car and i really love this job this car is a synonymous of beauty and of luxury it’s a very fast form of luxury thanks in large part to the sporty rubber so after the installation of the front fascia is
The installation of wheels after the wheels are installed they add a little bit more of the artisanal leather accoutrement this is the workstation where seats are installed they arrive just in sequence from the supplier and our operator can position seats inside the car at mirafiore they don’t just position parts and pieces but also family members for the
Future it is quite rare i would never have expected that one day i would have my son at my side and in the same role i have team leader i have been in that role for 27 years he has only been at it a few months but he still has a little ways to go he needs to grow into the job just like his father even if it has been 27 years there is always room for growth
My father and i work well together he has taught me many things despite the fact we work in different lines i hope to carry his torch because he is very good at what he does at dinner mom goes a little nuts because we talk about work all the time because we exchange advice and ideas for new projects and to bring forward new ideas some of those new ideas take
Place on the door sub-assembly line where they build up a set of four doors by hand the process begins with the installation of the handles then they add the locks wiring harness side mirrors and glass before bolting the leather interior panel into place completed doors then head back to the finishing line we are now in the final line so this is one of the
Last workstations of our assembly shop and in this particular workstation we install our doors on the levante after five days of manufacturing a new levante is nearly ready this is an italian product it’s made in italy is a performance car is a beautiful car is a in my opinion a perfect car nothing in the world is a similar to this kind of car the machines
Mean a lot for the people but perhaps even more for the country the success of this car means that our work our competence is recognized in all the world hearts sing with anticipation when they fire the vehicle up for the very first time like when a child born it’s uh the same sensation when a levante rolls off the line it looks complete but it still has two
Critical quality control tests left to go each new machine is subjected to a shake test then it takes a quick bar in the water booth finally maserati’s newest machine is ready to hit the road 95 of what you experience in the car isn’t the hardware is this a strut or is this a multi-link it’s the tuning and that’s the hard bit the majority of that tuning
Takes place in a highly secretive automotive proving ground this is belloco and it’s unlike any other racetrack on the planet the locos test track is one of these places that you don’t believe exists a bunch of jumps everything’s off camber there are things to hit there are guard rails there are trees and it’s genuinely one of the most fun race tracks
I’ve ever been on anywhere the facility features a high-speed oval a dedicated handling track and an off-road circuit you realize that kind of feeds back into the cars these cars can deal with a lot of stuff that other car companies cars can’t in my opinion the key system and the key concept was to introduce the aspiring standard on levante we can have a
Increase or decrease of the right dates we use rydates not only in a speed dependent way in order to improve aerodynamics we use ride it’s also for drive modes the drive modes raise and lower the levante depending on what you want the machine to do and what terrain you wish to conquer we have a normal mode which is specifically intended for comfort then we
Have an icd mode which stands for increased control which is good for low endurance condition and then we have two sports settle we added a off-road driver one sport mode alters the powertrain while the other changes the suspension what maserati has done is picked the best types of suspension that they can use front and rear and then supplement it with air springs
And adjustable shocks to make sure that the ride quality doesn’t change if you have five people in the car versus one and that you can set a sportier firmer ride if you want to drive like you know a maniac the levante is the one car out of the maserati portfolio that i think fits the maserati brand the best it actually is nicer than most of its competitors
And does drive more sporty than most of its competitors since its introduction the levante has accounted for 38 of maserati’s global sales a startling number for a new machine yet numbers alone rarely tell the whole story one of the things that makes an italian engine so special is the sound and maserati does that really really well you hear one ripping by
And you turn your head and then you see oh my god it’s a maserati and they’ve managed to do that with a v6 which often don’t sound that great the sound is evocative yet sitting behind the wheel might be even better a levante even in normal mode driving around town is going to drive more aggressively and more sporty than the competition it’s entertaining to
Drive they’re lively cars and they sound amazing and they look like you would expect your maserati to look as well sporty luxury that is reasonably affordable levante models start around euros before options while the more powerful s edition adds another 10 000 euros to the equation if you see bmw and mercedes is the successful working man’s suv and you
Have bentley and lamborghini in this other upper stratosphere maserati’s got a lot of play in that center section where people who can afford to spend a little bit more money on a styling statement will ultimately that’s what a maserati is right out on the road the italian styling is on full display however the quest for sales is often a double-edged sword
If the lavonte doesn’t do well in the marketplace i think it has nothing to do with the lavonte itself as maserati pushes sales towards 50 000 a year the cars become less and less exotic they’re still special because 50 000 isn’t a big number but when they’re chasing sales like this the effect is they lose some exclusivity chasing a different market has its
Perils but the reason to do so is absolutely clear he’s been remained in suv before national people are going to say well what do these guys know about it and so they took it very seriously and they made sure to make sure this thing is a maserati suv the maserati levante a machine built to grow one of the most famous italian motoring marks and a 424hp push
Into the future i find it interesting that a brand with a history like maserati has was not met with any resistance when they said they were going to build an suv i heard of no purist who said oh the end of the world maserati’s building an suv i think we’re okay with the idea of mars already building an suv because we just want something from them that we see
On the road this is one of these brands that everyone loves but we don’t get to experience all that often avonte will finally i think put it on the map for a lot of consumers that didn’t consider one of their cars before
Transcribed from video
SUV Superbuild Maserati Levante Documentary – Part 04 By Cry Havoc Productions
