Herb Chambers gets Maserati franchise??

I can confirm that...Herb Chambers added Maserati in Wayland. Also heard another Maserati dealer happening North of Boston

 

And Ernie's reaction?

 

Also supposed to be coming to Inskip in RI. Maserati has big expansion plans.

 

Ernie didn't have a reaction.

You are correct, Herb got a Wayland dealer and Inskip also got one. I haven't heard about a Northern area one.

My question is will we see the same sort of move from Ferrari?

 

I am currently holding a current business card for the Kelly auto group here in Danvers Mass which clearly shows a Maserati (soon) franchise. Upon calling the number they "confirmed" that a Maserati franchise is forth coming.
For what it's worth...

 

Kelly all ready has a Fiat store so it makes sense.

 

Inskip was a Maserati dealer back around 2003/2004 and then they stopped carrying them.

 

I remember that and it didn't go over well with them which surprises me even more that they are going to do it again.

 

Thats why it surprises me also! I wonder what caused them to want Maser again?

 

Fiat is looking to put Maserati into the mass market. An an entirely different proposition.

 

I read in a national car mag that they are trying to sell 50,000 new Maserati's per year and that they are increasing the number of Maserati only dealers (non-ferrari). Believe it or not there are already some Maserati dealers now that are not Ferrari dealers too.

I was at my F-dealer's service department and they told me there are several new ones coming in the NYC area.

Personally I think they are being a bit optimistic in this goal. These cars don't hold their value so unless the factory is going to subsidize the leases like MB and BMW then these cars are going to be hard to sell and/or lease.

 

No way. The Ferrari factory only has so much capacity to feed its current US and world wide dealers. New Ferrari franchises in the U.S. are rare, I think the newest ones were like 15 years ago with Orlando and Tampa. Some in California went out and so did the one in Wilton, CT. Some older dealers have changed hands but are still in their original areas.

Plus, more cars sold dilutes the market and lowers resale values. Dealers make lots of money reselling the same cars. Even if U.S. gets a new dealer, I don't see one in Mass. as Mass. already has a very big dealer.

Where I live in the NYC area we have 4 Ferrari dealers (1 in CT, 1 in NJ and 2 in NY), but that is not the norm.

 

ferrari of palm beach...shiny new

 

Ya but it is not its own dealer as it is part of Wide World Ferrari in NY which is a very old dealer.

 

Inskip in RI, was a Maserati (NON-Ferrari) dealer for 2 or 3 years around 2003/4. So I have seen a Maserati (non-Ferrari dealer in the past). Someone told me at one point they did it with the hopes of getting Ferrari, not sure if that was true or not.

50,000 cars sounds overly optimistic, especially when one considers their average new car MSRP.

 

Isn't Inskip a Penske dealer? If so, they already have 3 Ferrari dealers (NJ, AZ and Las Vegas).

I don't know the RI area demographics but would there be enough Ferrari cars there to support a new dealer and its service department? Isn't FoNE pretty close?

The 50k cars i read about is worldwide not just US. Still seems optimistic to me.

 

Yes, they are part of Penske and I am aware that Peske has Ferrari dealerships in other states. What the person was saying (and maybe I was not clear enough) was that Inskip took on Maserati around 2003/2004 with the hope of also gaining Ferrari at that specific dealership.

As for how close FONE is to RI, from me its just under an hour. From other parts of RI its easily 2 hours, at which point one might consider Miller Motor Cars.

There is a pretty good size group of Ferrari owners in RI. In addition, there are also plenty of Maser, Bentley, and RR owners in RI, so there are people that have the funds to buy high end cars. Back in the early to mid 90s there were 3 Ferrari dealers near us, 2 in MA (Gaston Andrey and Autohaus) and 1 in Middletown, RI (at what is now BMW of Middletown). Even when we lived in MA, the one in RI was less than half the distance of the others. Now with Ferrari producing more cars than ever, there is only FONE for all of New England.

Yes, I presumed you meant 50,000 cars world wide.