2014 Maserati Quattroporte Gts 1.9% For 72 Mths Financing on 2040-cars

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Junkyard Gem: 1989 Chrysler TC by Maserati

Lee Iacocca's friendship with Alejandro de Tomaso went way back, and it led to the Ford-powered De Tomaso Pantera being born in 1971 (when Iacocca was running Ford). After Iacocca moved over to head Chrysler in 1978, he began working with de Tomaso (who owned Maserati by that point) to develop a sports coupe based on the Chrysler-salvation K-Car platform. It took quite a while, but eventually that car became reality: the Chrysler TC by Maserati (officially known as Chrysler's TC by Maserati). Some 7,300 were built through 1991, and I've found one of them in a Denver-area car graveyard. I've managed to document four of these cars in their final parking spots prior to this one, in wrecking yards in Colorado, California, and Wisconsin. The Chrysler's TC by Maserati does have a devoted following, but they can't save 'em all. The TC really was assembled by Maserati in Italy, but the underlying chassis was taken from the Dodge Daytona. The body bore a strong resemblance to that of the Chrysler LeBaron GTC, which was unfortunate considering the price difference between the two cars: the MSRP on the 1989 TC was $33,000, while the LeBaron GTC cost $17,435 (that's about $80,880 and $42,730 in 2022 dollars). The TC had three different engines driving the front wheels over its short lifetime: two varieties of turbocharged Chrysler 2.2 four-cylinder (one with 160 horsepower and one with a Cosworth cylinder head with 200 horsepower) and that good old workhorse of a Mitsubishi V6: the 6G72, with 141 horses. This car has the 160hp 2.2. The Cosworth-headed cars (500 were built) got a five-speed manual transmission, but the other 6,800 TCs got a Chrysler slushbox of either three or four speeds (this one is a three-speed). There was a lot of snobbish disapproval of the TC by the automotive press, but just look at that interior! Even the most over-the-top LeBaron never got this level of swank inside.  Every time I write about one of these cars, I hear that the factory hardtop roof is worth fantastic money… but four out of the five examples I've found in junkyards had the hardtop, and I think every single one went to the crusher with its car. How many miles? Not many! Maybe the speedometer cable broke in 1995. The radio and HVAC controls are straight LeBaron, but the wood and leather are the real thing.

Maserati to halt production for one week in November

When it comes to selling cars, exciting new product is king. This is a fact Maserati is learning the hard way as it struggles to hit aggressive internal sales targets set by its Fiat Chrysler Automobiles ownership. And now a report from Reuters indicates that Maserati will be forced to shutter its Grugliasco plant near Turin, Italy, for one full week in November. Rewind back to 2013 and things were looking really good at Maserati. The brand had rolled out a new version of its four-door flagship, the Quattroporte, a smaller and somewhat more accessible sedan one rung below in the form of the Ghibli, and a new line of twin-turbo engines in both six- and eight-cylinder guises. A sales spike seemed imminent. That's exactly what appeared in 2014, as Maserati topped our end-of-the-year sales chart with a monster 171-percent gain in the United States when compared to the year prior. Like we said, product is king. The first signs of trouble brewing at Maserati rose into our consciousness in January of 2015, as, here in the States, the Italian brand took a monster nosedive in sales. That month's 20-percent decline would prove no anomaly, as February's 43-percent decline would attest. For the next few months of 2015, sales remained basically flat as allegations of shady sales accounting practices hit the news. In September, the last month sales data is available, the brand saw a drop of nearly 34 percent. How does Maserati expect to fix its lagging sales? Exciting new product, naturally, this time in the form of the long-awaited, highly anticipated Levante crossover. While Maserati's history is full of grand-touring coupes and four-door sedans, CUVs are all the rage right now. In other words, as long as the Levante isn't terrible, it really ought to bring the brand's sales back to 2014 levels. Following the Levante, Maserati has promised a new coupe based on the design of the Alfieri Concept it showed off at the 2014 Geneva Motor Show, and that will surely bring another hefty dose foot traffic into showrooms as the next product wave. FCA is banking on turning Maserati from a niche player into a meaningful contributor to its sales chart. If that plan has any hope of turning into a reality, it's clearly going to take a lot more shiny new product to make it happen. Here's hoping the Levante is the next positive step in that direction. Related Video:

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.