The new Maserati Levante SUV has raised the luxury bar
Matthew DeBord/BI
That will all now change, and it couldn't happen at a more important time for the Italian automaker, part of the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles empire. It's down at the bottom of the luxury sales hierarchy in the US, with a puny 0.1% overall market share (Porsche sells five times as many vehicles annually).
The Quattroporte and Ghibli sedans have their fans (me, for example). But in the US and increasingly China, you really need a strong crossover offering. Porsche established the template for an automaker that had never built an SUV crossing that river in the early 2000s when it created the Cayenne, a hugely successful vehicle.
Now Maserati has taken the same plunge.
We first saw the Levante when it was revealed at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show and later in the flesh at the New York auto show. Now we've actually spent some time behind the wheel. It was a relatively brief, two-hour run from a working farm and restaurant, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, about an hour north of New York to Bear Mountain, under pleasant Northeastern autumn skies.
This wasn't enough time to fully evaluate the vehicle - we'll get a crack at that later - but we formed some early impressions. And those impressions were good.
Read on:
- Colon cancer rates are rising in young people. If you have two symptoms you should get a colonoscopy, a GI oncologist says.
- I spent $2,000 for 7 nights in a 179-square-foot room on one of the world's largest cruise ships. Take a look inside my cabin.
- An Ambani disruption in OTT: At just ₹1 per day, you can now enjoy ad-free content on JioCinema
- In second consecutive week of decline, forex kitty drops $2.28 bn to $640.33 bn
- SBI Life Q4 profit rises 4% to ₹811 crore
- IMD predicts severe heatwave conditions over East, South Peninsular India for next five days
- COVID lockdown-related school disruptions will continue to worsen students’ exam results into the 2030s: study
- India legend Yuvraj Singh named ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2024 ambassador