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Maserati Levante production starting next year, Alfieri could come within 28 months

Maserati is on a roll. The new Ghibli and Quattroporte have been huge successes, and it unveiled the gorgeous Alfieri concept (pictured above) at the 2014 Geneva Motor Show. The next step for the brand is getting the Levante crossover into production.
"We are getting Mirafiori ready for production [of the Levante]. The first bodies are expected for 2015," said Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne to Reuters in Geneva. He also said that there isn't much keeping the Alfieri off the streets. "The platforms and motors are there. Technically, production could start in 24-28 months," he said. However, Marchionne refused to say whether the company would actually give the concept a green light to be built.
Fiat hopes to be profitable again by 2016, and while its acquisition of Chrysler is certainly going to help, rejuvenating Alfa Romeo and Maserati are also a major part of the plan. In 2013, the Italian luxury brand saw sales more than double to 15,400 vehicles. Maser is still far away from its goal of selling 50,000 units by 2015, but it's quite a start. Fiat bought Maserati in 1993, but business went through a decade or more of doldrums and falling sales. It appears that the century-old brand is finally finding a path forward with some gorgeous new cars.

2014 Maserati Ghibli Diesel

It used to be easier to make sense of the auto industry. There were mainstream manufacturers, and there were niche sports car manufacturers. That was before Porsche starting selling more crossovers than it does sports cars, Lamborghini began preparing to go down the same road, and Ferrari introduced an all-wheel-drive hatchback. But long before the arrival of the Cayenne, the unveiling of the Urus and the advent of the FF, the storied marque that is Maserati was already bolstering its sports car offerings with four-door sedans.
In fact, it's now been half a century and six generations since the launch of the original Quattroporte. So the idea of a four-door Maserati shouldn't come as any surprise by now, but the vehicle you see here has the Modenese automaker breaking new ground in another way entirely. And it's not the size, either: although the new Ghibli is smaller than the current QP, it's roughly the same size as the aforementioned original - not to mention the Dodge Charger, a corporate stablemate which similarly revived a coupe nameplate for a four-door sedan. No, what makes this Ghibli 'special' is what resides under the hood, because the model you're looking at packs the very first diesel Maserati has ever offered in its hundred-year history.
Sacrilege, you say? Maybe, but as so-called performance brands have turned their attention to four-door sedans and crossovers, they've also begun to embrace diesel propulsion. In Europe these days, even Porsche, Jaguar, the BMW M division and Audi Quattro GmbH are burning the midnight oil. So while it may be new territory for Maserati, the Ghibli is far from the first high-end, performance-oriented diesel on the Old World's market. It's also a vital addition to the brand's portfolio, particularly in Europe where the advantageous price of diesel fuel over gasoline (and the smaller volumes of fuel a diesel engine typically consumes) makes offering a model so equipped vital to the Trident marque's ambitious growth plans. The question, then, is whether it delivers.

Latin music star Ren? P?rez destroys own Maserati to send kids a message

Can destroying a car be art? That question comes a bit too late for the Maserati Quattroporte seen above. The act depicted is from the music video for Adentro by Puerto Rican hip-hop act Calle 13 new single.
While the video is not yet online, the making-of featurette is available below and shows the luxury sedan getting beat with a baseball bat (and more) by the group's frontman René Pérez. According to Latin Gossip, Pérez wants to send his fans a message not to place too high a value in material objects. The Maserati represents a time in his life of too much excess, it seems...
The guy might have an argument, but it still seems pretty wasteful to destroy a perfectly good Italian sports sedan. We will be curious to see how far the destruction goes, but you can get a peak at it in the video below.