Quattroporte S, Executive Wheels, Comfort Pack, Paddle Shift Andy 1-936-414-2295 on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Maserati's Super Bowl spot may have cost more than $700 per car [w/video]

It's no secret that Super Bowl ad time is very, very expensive, with a 30-second spot for this year's game costing around $4 million. For Maserati, which aired a 90-second spot showing off its new Ghibli sedan during this year's game, the price was considerably above $4 million, though.
Automotive News estimates that the spot cost Maserati the equivalent of over $700 for each of the 15,400 vehicles sold last year. That works out to nearly $11 million. It may have paid off, though, as search traffic for Maserati and the Ghibli in particular saw a significant spike following the airing of the stylish commercial, and the brand's total sales were already on target for record levels before the ad aired.
The Ghibli "deserved a wide audience platform such as the Super Bowl," according to Maserati's chief marketing officer, Saad Chehab. The sports sedan is Maserati's most affordable entry, with prices starting around $67,000, moving the brand further downmarket than it's ever ventured before.

Maserati returns to Indianapolis to commemorate historic win

This past weekend was Memorial Day weekend, folks, and you know what that means: racing. There was the Monaco Grand Prix for Formula One fans, and back Stateside there was the Indianapolis 500. You might expect to see a name like Maserati pop up at the former more than the latter, but that wasn't always the case.
These days its all about Dallara chassis powered by Chevy or Honda, but over the course of a century there have been plenty of foreign automakers that have won the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. McLaren won it twice in the 1970s, Mercedes and Peugoet won during the race's pre-WWI infancy, and in between them Boyle Racing won it two years in a row with a Maserati chassis and engine.
The car was the Maserati 8CTF "Boyle Special," and its first win came 75 years ago. So to mark the occasion (as well as Maserati's 100th anniversary), the car was brought back to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for a revival lap. Unfortunately Wilbur Shaw, who won the Indy 500 three times (twice in the Maserati) and went on to be president of the speedway, died in a plane crash the day before his 52nd birthday in 1954. So in his place fellow three-time winner Johnny Rutherford took the wheel of the 8CTF in front of the gathered crowds.

Autocar compares new Maserati Quattroporte to Jaguar XJ

Autocar's Steve Sutcliffe took the 2014 Maserati Quattroporte on a spin along snowy mountain roads to test it for a specific brief: as a limousine for the chauffeured class. It's sporting credentials are impressive: Twin-turbocharged 3.8-liter V8, 532 horsepower, 475 pound-feet of torque in casual circumstances that rises to 532 lb-ft in overboost, a 0-to-60 mile-per-hour sprint of 4.7 seconds and a top speed of 191 mph.
However, citing Maserati's desire to not just increase its sales to 50,000-per-annum by 2015, but to sell many more of its cars in China, Sutcliffe wanted to find out if the livery side of the Quattroporte could match its sport sedan side. So after taking the pilot's seat and trying out the sport settings, Sutcliffe hops in back to test out the CEO's seat.
Then he compares the Quattroporte against the long-wheelbase Jaguar XJ with its supercharged V8, a sedan that's 15,000 pounds less expensive than the Maserati. It doesn't take long for him to find that one of them is a clear winner when it comes to transporting VIPs. To find out which one, enjoy the video below.