It's big, and it's ambitious. From sales of just over 6,000 units last year Maserati is suggesting it'll be selling 50,000 cars annually soon. Bold, yes, and more so given the anticipated timescale, Maserati's CEO Harald Wester saying the Italian firm will achieve that goal by the end of 2015.
Driving that optimism will be a new range of cars, the first of which is the all-new Quattroporte. The new luxury saloon does underline Maserati's ambitions, the outgoing model rather uncomfortably positioned somewhere between high-performance E-segment saloons like BMW's M5 and traditional luxury cars such as the Mercedes-Benz S-Class. The new car is more clearly positioned among the luxury machines. It's bigger, more refined, far more spacious, offers four-wheel drive in some markets and, thanks to the adoption of a turbocharged V8 petrol engine, is a less frenetic machine to drive.
Those changes to the Quattroporte will significantly broaden its appeal, though that alone won't be enough to fulfil the firm's lofty goals. A new E-segment saloon will follow; named Ghibli it'll be based on a shortened version of the Quattroporte's platform and come with smaller engines - including a diesel. Maserati's insiders wouldn't rule out an estate either, wagons making up a significant portion of E-segment sales in Europe.
Maserati will also finally produce the SUV that has been on the product planners' wish list for as long as anyone in the industry can remember. Borrowing some hardware from Jeep, the Levante will be an upmarket SUV in the guise of Porsche's Cayenne and Land Rover's Range Rover. The current mainstay of Maserati's sales, the GranTurismo, will be updated in the next 24 months, Maserati also promising a 'surprise' for its sports car line-up.
Helping achieve the growth will be the company's acquisition of a new factory. The former Bertone plant offers modern production facilities of the likes that workers on Maserati's existing line could only dream of. That should both improve build times and enhance quality - both crucial to Maserati's ambitious plans.