Maserati

Maserati produced 9,760 units in 2024—a 64% collapse from 27,166 in 2023—making it one of the automotive industry's most catastrophic single-year contractions. This isn't market adjustment; it's population crash. The Mirafiori plant that once built Ghibli, Quattroporte, and Levante produced just 2,250 units in 2024 (down 74%), while Modena's MC20 production dropped 79% to 260 units. Even Grecale SUV production at Cassino—supposedly Maserati's volume seller in a global market where SUVs represent 49-54% of sales—fell 58%. Stellantis attributes the decline to discontinuing three V8-based models, but this explanation obscures deeper dysfunction. In an ecosystem where premium SUVs (Porsche, BMW, Mercedes) thrive, Maserati's new mid-size Grecale failed to gain traction. Q1 2024 saw Grecale down 11%, Levante down 71%, Ghibli down 69%—a pattern suggesting not product transition but market rejection.

Maserati's crisis mirrors what happens when an organism loses its ecological niche. The brand historically occupied the space between volume luxury (BMW, Mercedes) and ultra-premium (Ferrari, Lamborghini), signaling Italian craftsmanship without Ferrari's motorsport pedigree or Lamborghini's theatrical excess. But this positioning depended on V8 powertrains that could no longer meet emissions regulations. When Maserati discontinued those engines and shifted to turbocharged V6 and four-cylinder powertrains shared with Stellantis brands, the costly signaling collapsed. Buyers paying $80,000-$150,000 discovered their Maserati used components from Jeep and Alfa Romeo. The brand's premium evaporated faster than sales.

Stellantis projects fewer than 10,000 units for 2025, with the second-generation Levante not arriving until 2027 and a new Quattroporte in 2028. This timeline reflects terminal neglect. Maserati's lineup now consists of GranTurismo, GranCabrio, and the exotic MC20—a portfolio too narrow to support a global dealer network or amortize development costs. The brand occupies a refugia within Stellantis, sustained by corporate resources but generating insufficient revenue to justify investment. This is how extinction proceeds in complex organizations: not through dramatic failure, but through resource starvation. Maserati remains biologically alive but metabolically irrelevant, consuming capital it can't repay. Without drastic intervention—injection of dedicated EV platforms, separation from Stellantis parts-sharing mandates, or acquisition by an entity that values the brand's signaling independent of volume—Maserati faces managed decline toward dormancy.