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Ferrari to stop supplying Maserati with its engines

The Ferrari Q1 earnings call was full of information, and perhaps the biggest revelation was that Ferrari is going to stop supplying engines to Maserati. CEO Louis Camilleri broke the news, and The Motley Fool posted a transcript of the whole call online. "Eventually, we will no longer supply engines to Maserati, which actually from our perspective is actually a good thing, both from a margin perspective, but also the fact that we can transfer a lot of the labor that's been focused on the engines to the car side of the business," Camilleri says. Maserati has used Ferrari engines (arguably, one of the most compelling reasons to buy a Maserati) in its vehicles since 2002, a little while after Fiat passed Maserati off to the prancing horse. The partnership continued as both Ferrari and Maserati were under the same house at FCA. Then when Ferrari was spun off from FCA in 2015, they kept the supply steady to Maserati. Those engines include a 3.8-liter twin-turbo V8, 3.0-liter twin-turbo V6 and a 4.7-liter naturally aspirated V8. Camilleri said Ferrari will officially stop in 2021 or 2022, with no intention of supplying anybody with engines beyond that. Of course, this leaves Maserati high and dry with no engines for its growing lineup. Maserati will have to reach into the FCA parts bin, find a new outside supplier or develop its own engines. Battery electric sounds out of the question. As of now, there doesn't appear to be a clear plan going forward. We've reached out to Maserati to see if they have any comment on the situation as it stands.

Maserati Levante, Ghibli and Quattroporte get Edizione Nobile limited edition models

Maserati has a new special-edition package for its 2019 vehicles it calls the Edizione Nobile , or Noble Edition. The Levante, Ghibli and Quattroporte (not the GranTurismo) are all going to get in on the Noble fun, with 50 of each being built. Why Maserati decided to go with the Noble Edition name isn't exactly explained beyond the name of the paint being Blu Nobile. Each Maserati gets that handsome blue paint plus 20-inch alloy wheels and silver brake calipers to set them apart from their non-noble (peasant?) siblings. We'll note that this package is available on top of the GranLusso trim level for each of the cars. Inside, you'll get the sport seats from the GranSport covered in a black/brown color combination. The Quattroporte and Ghibli cabins use glossy wood for their cabin trim while the Levante uses a high-gloss metal. An Edizione Nobile badge is displayed on the center console with the car's series number next to it. There aren't any exclusive features beyond the appearance of the Edizione Nobile, but a few options are made standard. Those include the Alcantara headliner, Bowers & Wilkins audio system and Maserati's Level 2 driver assistance package. Maserati says Edizione Nobile models will be delivered to dealerships sometime this month. Just add $7,500 on top of the GranLusso trim for each model, and you've got your price. This means a Levante S GranLusso would go from its $91,980 starting price, to $99,480 with the Edizione Nobile package. These models don't really differ much from your run-of-the-mill Maseratis. However, if noble vehicles are your thing, Maserati has 150 of them waiting. Related video:

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.