Ferrari + Maserati = united again!

Of course Chrysler is doing a lot of damage in the new world in terms of how clumsily they handle sales and service.

However they do not decide on Maserati 's future and it's models contrary to what some here believe, be they shareholders or not.

 

it’s now just a matter of when and if it’s Ferrari or someone else


https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/maserati-sales-operating-margin-slump-first-half

 

Paywalled, please copy paste. No time to register for yet another website.

 

The push is now on.



July 26, 2024 09:37 AM UPDATED AN HOUR AGO
Why Ferrari should be Maserati's next owner
Stellantis has struggled to make money with the luxury brand, while since becoming independent Ferrari has been even more successful, so it's time to give Ferrari a second chance to make Maserati sustainably profitable.
LUCA CIFERRI
https://s3-prod-europe.autonews.com/s3fs-public/styles/width_792/public/Maserati%20Grecale%20nose%20left%20grey%20Arc%202024.jpg
MASERATI
Sales of the Maserati Grecale fell more than 40% in Europe during the first half, according to preliminary figures from Dataforce. The Grecale is a rebadged version of Tonale built by Stellantis sister brand Alfa Romeo.

Stellantis' disappointing first-half results — adjusted operating income fell nearly 40 percent to €8.46 billion — has led the automaker to announce that big steps would be taken to fix the problems.

CEO Carlos Tavares said July 25 he would sacrifice a big chunk of his forthcoming summer vacation to go to the U.S. to address Stellantis' biggest headache: North America. The company's most profitable region's adjusted operating profit decreased by €3.7 billion to €4.4 billion in the first half due to several wrong calls on inventory size and incentive spending.

Perhaps an even bigger challenge for Tavares is to repair Maserati.

The luxury automaker's global first-half sales more than halved, falling below 1,100 vehicles a month, resulting in an adjusted operating loss of €82 million compared with a profit of €121 million in first six months of 2023.

For the full year, Maserati is on track to sell fewer than 12,000 vehicles and deliver a negative two-digit margin (it was -13 percent in the first half).

What is also troubling is that Maserati won't get any new product until 2027 at the earliest.

Not surprisingly, Stellantis CFO Natalie Knight said on July 25: "There could be some point in the future when we look at what's the best home for [Maserati]."


Tavares was even more blunt when asked about how much patience Stellantis would have for unprofitable brands (of the 15 brands that make up Stellantis, Maserati is the only one that has its own profit and loss statement).

"If they don't make money, we will shut them down," he said. "That is very simple, because we are talking about a very difficult transition period (where) we cannot afford to have brands that do not make money."

Maserati under scrutiny after disappointing first half
Ferrari, which controlled Maserati from 1997 to 2005, could be the Italian brand's "best home."

Since its 2015 Wall Street listing, Ferrari has shown a spectacular level of execution. In 2023 it had an industry-leading 27 percent adjusted operating margin, generating revenue of almost €6 billion on sales of just 13,663 cars.

Ferrari could be the company best suited to properly manage and nurture Maserati.

Although Ferrari is listed, Exor, the financial holding of the Agnelli-Elkann family and Piero Ferrari control enough of the supercar maker's voting rights to push through an acquisition of Maserati, regardless of possible complaints from other shareholders.

The deal could provide a triple win:

1) Maserati would be able to create cars that fit its brand identity rather than selling models such as the Grecale, which is a rebadged Alfa Romeo Tonale. Many customers do not consider the Grecale to be a true Maserati, so they are not buying it. This is reflected in midsize SUV's more than 40 percent sales decline in Europe during the first half.

2) Stellantis would get rid of a brand it has proved unable to properly manage, freeing financial and management resources for its other 14 brands.

3) Ferrari could leverage the additional volume it gets by adding Maserati to help it with investments in powertrains and electronic systems without diluting its biggest asset, brand exclusivity.

Difficult past

This is not Maserati's first rough patch.

Citroen bought the Italian company in 1968 and by 1975 put it in liquidation, but it survived.

When Fiat, which controlled Ferrari from 1969 until 2015, bought Maserati in 1993, the volume-focused automaker also failed to make the brand a success.

Fiat in 1997 put Ferrari in charge of Maserati. Unfortunately, the move created immense tension between Ferrari and Fiat, so after eight years Maserati went back to Fiat, which created another ill-fated combination, this time with Alfa Romeo.

The combination with Alfa was supposed to help boost Maserati's sales to 75,000 units by 2025. There is no way this will happen.

Another prediction was that Maserati would deliver a "sustainable" 15 percent margin by 2025 and boost that to 20 percent in the long term.

That might be possible under new leadership but seems unlikely if Stellantis keeps control.

 

Marc, I'm not sure how square your assertion with what Joe just posted. It seems like they're about to have huge impact on Maserati's future.
Perilous times once again at the Trident.
One thing about an assertion in that article that the Grecale is not a real Maserati. It's available in the trofeo version with a motor very similar to that of the MC20 and the handling reviews are good as well.
If people are already balking at their pricing and they are image how much more the price will be if they stop sharing basic platforms with Alfa.

And what's going to happen to Alfa?

 

Coincidentally


Ferrari saved from deepfake scam involving CEO by one question
The criminals carried out a live phone conversation using an AI-generated version of CEO Benedetto Vigna's voice with the goal of infiltrating the Italian supercar maker.


July 29, 2024 04:21 AM UPDATED AN HOUR AGO


It was mid-morning on a Tuesday this month when a Ferrari NV executive started receiving a bunch of unexpected messages, seemingly from the CEO.

“Hey, did you hear about the big acquisition we're planning? I could need your help,” one of the messages purporting to be from Chief Executive Officer Benedetto Vigna read.

The WhatsApp messages seen by Bloomberg didn't come from Vigna's usual business mobile number. The profile picture also was different, though it was an image of the bespectacled CEO posing in suit and tie, arms folded, in front of Ferrari's prancing-horse logo.

“Be ready to sign the Non-Disclosure Agreement our lawyer is set to send you asap,” another message from the Vigna impersonator read. “Italy's market regulator and Milan stock-exchange have been already informed. Stay ready and please utmost discretion.”

What happened next, according to people familiar with the episode, was one of the latest uses of deepfake tools to carry out a live phone conversation aimed at infiltrating an internationally recognized business. The Italian supercar manufacturer emerged unscathed after the executive who received the call realized something wasn't right, said the people, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The voice impersonating Vigna was convincing — a spot-on imitation of the southern Italian accent.

The Vigna deepfaker began explaining that he was calling from a different mobile phone number because he needed to discuss something confidential — a deal that could face some China-related snags and required an unspecified currency-hedge transaction to be carried out.


The executive was shocked and started to have suspicions, according to the people. He began to pick up on the slightest of mechanical intonations that only deepened his suspicious.

“Sorry, Benedetto, but I need to identify you,” the executive said. He posed a question: What was the title of the book Vigna had just recommended to him a few days earlier (it was "Decalogue of Complexity: Acting, Learning and Adapting in the Incessant Becoming of the World" by Alberto Felice De Toni)?

With that, the call abruptly ended. Ferrari opened an internal investigation, the people said. Representatives for the Maranello, Italy-based company declined to comment on the matter.

It's not the first such attempt to impersonate a high-profile executive. In May, it was reported that Mark Read, the CEO of advertising giant WPP, was also the target of an ultimately unsuccessful but similarly elaborate deepfake scam that imitated him on a Teams call.

“This year we're seeing an increase in criminals attempting to voice clone using AI,” Rachel Tobac, CEO of cybersecurity training company SocialProof Security, said in an interview.

While these generative AI tools can create convincing deepfake images, videos and recordings, they've not yet proved convincing enough to cause the widespread deception that many have warned about.

However, some companies have fallen victim to fraudsters. Earlier this year, an unnamed multinational company lost HK$200 million ($26 million) after scammers fooled its employees in Hong Kong using deepfake technology, the South China Morning Post reported in February. The swindlers fabricated representations of the company's chief financial officer and other people in a video call and convinced the victim to transfer money.

Other companies, such as information security outfit CyberArk, are already training their executives how to spot when they're being scammed by bots.

“It's just a matter of time and these AI-based deepfake sophistication tools are expected to become incredibly accurate,” Stefano Zanero, a professor of cybersecurity at Italy's Politecnico di Milano, said in a phone interview.

 

Oh everything is getting a lot more sophisticated when it comes to crime.
Last week in my 35 unit complex of town homes someone went through @ 3:30am and utilized a device that reads the keyfobs to your car from inside your home and then they unlocked cars and pilfered what they could find. No cars were stolen.
It's hard to determine how many cars they tried as most were empty anyway. I had a ton of equipment and supplies in my 99 Suburban as a result of a recent home AC system replacement project in my garage. They got nothing from me. Perhaps the electronics of a 99 GM car are just too crude for them to bother having developed the code to decipher the security?

The defense against this sort of thievery is to place your key FOBs in a Faraday cage. (look it up) Well it's possible that my habit of placing all keys in a HS shop class brass bowl I made a million years ago might have helped?
I'm going to get a certified actual one and maybe a travel sized one as well.

Four cars lost some content in the attack.

I found this article helpfully https://askthecarexpert.com/faraday-boxes-for-car-keys/#how-keyless-car-keys-work

 

Wow that is wild. I have to wonder if this may be more of a thing moving forward on Wall St. Talk about insider trading possibilities to temporarily destroy or elevate stocks.....

 

And other arenas ... think November.

 

Hello Bob,

Sorry for the late reply.

To comment only on your post above, you misunderstood me.

I never said Maserati are now in control of their destiny.

I just said it is not Chrysler deciding, unlike what a lot of people in the US believe.

It is Stellantis, the merger of what were formerly fiat and Peugeot Citroen management, with all the companies they own.

Stellantis is based near Paris; that is where their offices are, even though their official address for tax reasons is in the Netherlands.

Chrysler is just one of the brands. They do not decide Maserati's fate anymore than Alfa Romeo or Vauxhall. Put it this way to be clear, they are soldiers not generals.

If you 1-click on the link below then 2- on the icon top left and choose to click on brands you will see that.

https://www.stellantis.com/en

Stellantis owns these brands and decides, it is run by its CEO Carlos Tavares. He answers the board which is made of the two parties that merged: PSA Peugeot Citroen and Fiat group run by John Elkann. Tavares is in fact coming to the US this summer to review the Maserati situation in the US as the article by Luca Ciferri states.

So yes Chrysler's network may be distributing Masers in the new world -in one country- but they have no say on the worldwide future of the Trident or its models.

 

Why are Maserati customers (not very many it seems) so averse to badge engineering? Doesn’t seem to bother all the Urus/Cayenne/Bentayga customers who bought what are essentially tarted up, much more expensive Audi Q8’s…

 

Imagine if Maserati sales were being well handled here in the United States instead of how the Chrysler team in Michigan has been doing. The USA has been a very large market for them.

Lots of interesting charts and information in this link https://stockdividendscreener.com/auto-manufacturers/maserati-global-sales-statistics/

 

You'll plenty of bad mouthing on this website and on the YouTube automotive "journalists". Carping about the generic switch gear and AV interface that was taken from the Chrysler/Stellantis parts bin. At least in the current models it's quite up to date whereas back in 4200 & QPV days it was was not. The Smoking Tire channel has been pretty fair to the latest models of Levante and Grecale. They loved the overpriced Trofeo editions.

The biggest parts bin error they made was the Ferrari cambiocorsa which somehow wasn't nearly as big an issue in a Ferrari ... go figure it was in all their challenge cars at the time.

 

The problem with Maserati in the US is that US buyers have come, rightfully, to be leery of any Italian manufacturer staying in this market. Ferrari and (to some extent) Lamborghini are the exceptions, but those are a very different world. I have a FIAT that is 10 years old, and for the last 5 there has been no dealer support whatsoever. Why would your average buyer pick Alfa, Maserati, or Fiat over the equivalent Audi, BMW, Honda?

 

If you look at those sales statistics by region/county it would be insane for them to withdraw from the USA. That would be like them withdrawing from Europe or China.
However, I suspect that the Folgore strategy may destroy Maserati. It's a huge investment for them in a marketplace in the USA that seems to be pulling back from solely electric cars, other than the Tesla fanatics.

 

Wow. Nice catch.

One word: multi factor authentication (said in my best Nigel Tufnel voice).

 

Stellantis states that Maserati is not for sale. As the last sentence in the article states, "at least not for another quarter." https://www.thedrive.com/news/stellantis-denies-reports-that-its-selling-maserati

 

It terrifies me to think of Maserati being a diet version of Ferrari if Ferrari owns them again, but it's better than where they are now. Competing in the lease market with a product 20% more costly than the brands they are competing with is painfully dumb. They need to repair the damage to the trident in the US market they've done with badge engineering. The 08-2012 quattroporte and Granturismo are actually becoming collectible here as they are best cars they've placed in the US for a generation.

That quarter will blow by quick as I don't see it being different than the last....

 

Not sure if you've driven a run of the mill Grecale. I've had a few as loaners while my wife's QP was in for service. The four cylinder in the Grecale is appalling. Revs to about 5k RPM. Sounds awful. Reminds me of the turbo diesels I used to get as economy rentals in Europe. But in an $80k car.

The interior is fine, I guess. But nothing about it feels special. And I think people buying Maseratis want their cars to feel special, to have a bit of personality. Maybe the Trofeos do, but the base model does not.

After three straight Maseratis for my wife, we gave up. Zero investment in the Quattroporte, which is now quite dated. So she's in an S-Class now. Shame. (S-Class really is something, though.)

 

Well, that would beat making Ferrari into Ferrari's Tesla.

 

Chinese company looking to enter higher-end market is more likely to take Maserati than Ferrari. That's not all doom and gloom to me as the Chinese actually did a great job bringing back Volvo.


https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20240920PD211/stellantis-chery-2024-ferrari-brand.html

 

Volvo are not out of business and sell a product in their category well enough. Volvo also did a smart thing lately by reversing their decision to make more or even all electric cars by 2030 too. I'll put it this way, it is my personal opinion they are doing a better job than when they were under Ford ownership.

And please expound on how Stellantis cannot make the decision?