Ah, Stellantis. You’ve been having a right time of it, haven’t you? You’re a big company in charge of a whole flock of automakers, and just about none of them are doing great right now. Or even good, really. Maserati is one of those brands, and questions continue to swirl—will Stellantis cut it loose?
The latest rumors come to us from Chinese social media, as shared by Inside China Auto. A post reported a supposed update on a rumor that has been floating around for some time. It states that the Italian government has granted approval for the sale of Maserati to Chery Auto.
The hope is that Chery Auto could come to the rescue by purchasing the Italian luxury automaker, and ideally, revitalizing it for the future. Chery is an automaker that doesn’t get a lot of attention in the West. Despite this, it’s quite a large operation. It’s currently the fifth-largest automaker in China, having built 1,881,316 vehicles in 2023. If that weren’t impressive enough, that figure is almost double what the brand sold in 2021. Chery’s growth has been fast to say the least.
????Breaking news????
Potentially massive news if true, but this account states that Chery is in the final stages of acquiring Maserati from Stellantis.
Stellantis has been rumoured to be looking at offloading some brands and this could be the first domino. pic.twitter.com/ltPJ0LsKpA
— Inside China Auto (@InsideChinaAuto) October 17, 2024
A single social media post isn’t a lot to go on. However, these rumors have been brewing for some time. In April, there were reports of a meeting between Chery CEO Yin Tongyue and Adolfo Urso, the Minster for Economic Development in the Italian government. At the time, the talks were said to be regarding the sale of a former Maserati plant in Grugliasco, which Chery would potentially use to produce a range of electric, hybrid, and gas-powered vehicles.
Fast forward to August, and the winds were blowing the other way. As covered by GoAuto, Stellantis made a statement that it had no interest in selling Maserati. It reiterated its “unwavering commitment” to the brand and highlighted numerous new models in the works. At the same time, a post on QQ was telling a very different story, saying that both Chery and Dongfeng Motor were interested in snatching Maserati up.
Just a month later, though, the rumor mill was turning again. DigiTimes Asia ran a piece that Chery could be eager to purchase Maserati as it attempts to gain a foothold in the prestige market. Just days later, an official statement from Chery merely added fuel to the fire. In a statement to the press, the Chinese automaker stated there was “no relevant information” to share regarding the matter. A simple denial might have put the story to bed. Instead, the ambiguous response suggested the possibility of a takeover was very real.
At this stage, nothing is certain. The Autopian has contacted Stellantis and Chery for comment and will update this article accordingly.
Fundamentally, these rumors will go on and on for as long as Stellantis and Maserati continue to struggle. For its part, Maserati sold around 26,600 vehicles last year—not exactly its worst year on record, but a long way below the heady 51,500 units sold in 2017. Meanwhile, 2024 has been harsh in the extreme. Sales were down to just 6,500 units in the first half of this year—over a 50% drop compared to 15,300 units sold in the same period last year.
It’s worth saying out loud: selling Maserati could make a lot of sense for Stellantis. It would provide Stellantis with an injection of cash, and one less beleaguered brand to worry about. Given the brand’s publicly revealed future plans are less than exciting, it’s hard to say Stellantis would be losing a whole lot in the bargain.
In any case, it’s probably an exciting time to be a Stellantis executive, and not in a good way. Maserati could yet come back from the brink, but it’s anyone’s guess how or when that will happen.
Image credits: Maserati, Chery
Im not the slightest surprised. Stellantis is basically all the struggling, historically crappy (low build quality) carmakers gathered into one basket in hopes the synergies will save them all. Most of these brands has already been sold and synergiezed before and will likely meet their final destination in China where everything is already copied and sold for profit because what is real these days and why do we care?
Peugeot and Citroen are not crappy low build quality cars.
As an European citizen, I beg to differ.
Maserati is popular with the upper middle class demo in China. At my neck of the woods, people who drive Maserati’s are often new immigrants from China.
The way I see it, is it is like RCA / Nokia / GE / Kodak branded cheap consumer electronics, they are just selling the brand, not substance. Seems to be the name of the game in the 21st century.
I wonder what the reaction would be if they buy Jeep.
If Chery starts making noises about buying Jeep, I will invest all liquid assets* in pitchfork futures
*$2.37 in change & a Starbucks card with $6.74 on it I found in the couch
Buying Jeep might have national security implications. Ha! Well, it’s been passed around so many times maybe not. The current crop of Fiat Jeeps already has the brand in a pickle.
I look forward to Maserati’s all new lineup of battery electric luxury sports cars.
I love this line. ” I used to think Chinese cars were not good enough, but now they have acquired luxury car Maserati.” Ok, does that make them good now? I would say it makes them still the same but now they own a luxury automaker.
Geely’s ownership of Volvo and Lotus seems to have helped them up their game.
The US essentially handed the Chinese the keys to machine shop and they now manufacture everything sold everywhere. With this capability comes political strength and influence along with incredible wealth. This power was gained by the democratic republic known as the United States in the 1930 with the implementation of the New Deal policies that gave rise to widespread individual wealth and laid the foundations for rapid innovation implementation in consumer products and weaponry. The same wealth and power is now being gained by a anti-liberal communist dictatorship. Where original Swedish Volvo leadership long term goals were to bring their solutions to a broader public and they used innovations in safety to appeal, what the Chinese communist plans for Volvo are more cloudy. I have never seen Chinese demonstrate authenticity as a core value and that gives me GREAT suspicion about all Chinese owned companies.
Try again.
US Capitalist CEOs decided that it was better to export US jobs than to pay US wages and deal with US workers to produce goods to sell in the US.
US Capitalist CEOs told George H.W. Bush to give China “Most Favored Nation” trading status in order to accomplish this.
US Capitalist CEOs decided they could sell these goods for just a bit less than the goods that were made in the US – earn a larger profit, and pocket the difference.
When other US Capitalist CEOs saw what was happening, they were forced to do the same: export US jobs & reap the rewards.
Last I checked – US Corporations are not run by the US Government.
Meanwhile – China isn’t Communist anymore.
Authoritarian? Absolutely. Communist – No.
The Chinese are better at Capitalism than the US is these days.
You can bemoan the past all you want – but it’s not going to change the future.
My guess is that Maserati will do just fine under Chinese ownership.
Chinese questionable labor practices and build quality combined with Italian questionable reliability. What could go wrong?
Chinese good are built to a price point – that’s what dictates quality. Not where the machines are plugged in. When asked to make high quality items, the Chinese have shown to be very capable. iPhones and other Apple products are always perfect.
One way to get around the Chinese car tariffs set by US and Europe. In practice could be interesting. First coupled with Ferrari and then hamstrung by Stellatnis, Maserati has not been allowed to be an “A” player for a while. Maybe Chery will make it a flagship again. A modern Bora, anyone?
Alternately they could go full mass-market and call the Cherys assembled in Mexico for the US market or in Poland for Europe “Maserati”.
True. But as Michael Beranek pointed out, people are probably not foolish enough to fall for a Chery TC BY Maserati.
uhh.. have you met people?
on this side of the Atlantic at least, people can’t tell you how many gears their Volvo transmission has (or even how many cylinders in the engine), brand ownership is way more out there
People? SMH
A kid-poor coworker ‘exhaustively researched’ mini vans for months before buying an Ascent. Upon his return from Disney World, I asked him how the inaugural trip went: “Man, when you stomp it, the transmission kicks down, and that V6 pulls hard!”
”Uh…You know you have a boxer engine and a CVT, right??”
I still give him shit about that as he tends to be the ‘Well, akshully…” guy 😉
Ah yes. I had a co-worker who swore his Volvo had a V4. I always wonder how some people can go though life not paying attention to the things they OWN.
Some will.
I love seeing Maseratis in the wild, but most I see in our 110k -ish population burg seem to be owned by lower middle class income people with aspirations. Like, if you regularly shop at the dollar store, I can’t imagine that the repair bills will be non-catastrophic
Interesting. Maserati could use a new lease on life. It’s not like the reliability can get any worse.
It will get better when it goes all EV.
Because China has proven that if it plugs in, they can make it work pretty darn well.
So true. My hobbies use a lot of electronics. Virtually all is Chinese. The name brand stuff is rock solid. Even the cheap stuff used for beaters is surprisingly decent most of the time.
So the British colonized and controlled India, and now Tata owns Jaguar and Land Rover. I’m not sure if the Vikings ever made it to China, but they sure would have tried, and now Geely owns Volvo. Marco Polo traveled to China from Italy, and now Chery might own Maserati. I’m wondering what will be next? If the Dutch had a “normal” car company, I would be looking for someone in Indonesia to buy it, maybe someone there could buy DAF? Looking up German colonialism, wouldn’t it be great if someone in Rwanda bought VW?
So I guess Vinfast is going to buy Citroen or Peugeot? That’ll be interesting.
Toyota being swallowed whole by BYD may not be as far-fetched as we think.
It’s honestly pretty odd this isn’t about Ferrari. I figured they’d want to keep them together.
Oh well. It’ll probably be for the best for Chery to buy the brand. Not like it’ll be deemed less reliable. It’s not we’re talking about Yugo or something.
Ferrari is not owned by Stellantis, it was spun off into its own years ago.
And I’m not saying it isn’t? I’ve always heard the Agnelli family and Elkann, who were the head honcho’s behind FCA and now a part of Stellantis, always wanted Ferrari and Maserati to be attached. Ferrari being spun off doesn’t signify much when Elkann still has his hands in it, completely. I’m surprised he didn’t force some sort of sale.
I’m sure the French wouldn’t mind.
Ferrari is highly profitable (unlike Stellantis), why would they want to sell it off??
That’d be like VW selling off Porsche. It makes no sense.
That was back in 2014. It was to get money from a public offering to feed back into FCA. The Agnelli family and John Elkann still have full control over Ferrari, so while you can buy stock in “an independent Ferrari”, it’s still ran by some of the same people leading Stellantis.
I remember back before Ferrari was spun off (before Stellantis). Ferrari considered Maserati as a competitor / threat. That was when they made the California. Also there was something about not being able to make enough V8 for both brands.
A bit like Tudor and Rolex.
Bit odd to be honest, as Maserati is like purely Super GT-focused and Ferrari, as a company, would rather just build high end supercars and whatever they call their not-a-SUV.
Would be an interesting situation in the US where many Maserati stores are dualed up with Alfa Romeo and/or Fiat. Most dealers with these brands are struggling as is, and a split like this would likely lead to one or both OEMs demanding a facility separation. Given the low franchise value I expect most would plan to give back one or the other.
I actually wonder if it would. Chery would want an existing dealer network, Stellantis just needs some cash so they would probably be fine if it meant the deal went through. Annoying for the dealers to have two systems to deal with though.
Chery could license the Stellantis dealer stuff so dealers don’t have to do anything differently on their end.
Didn’t think of that, but I think Stellantis would be on board, because then someone’s paying them.
New model: Chery TC by Maserati. With portholes!
Just let them die. What is the point of keeping these storied Italian brands around if they’re just going to end up a hodgepodge collection of Chinese platforms and parts?
I’m guessing strategic acquisition (see Lotus/Volvo/etc). They’re getting the R&D and tooling plus more entry into the Italian market. Market exposure baby!
Yeah from a business perspective. But from an enthusiast perspective it’s hard to watch once great names become thinly veiled Chinese cars.
100% agree but chinese/italian fusion does sound like a good restaurant idea
Hong Kong style spaghetti is a thing, and it’s awesome.
Is the issue that the new owner would be Chinese?
At this point it’s not Italian any more then it would be if owned by Chery. Stellantis is a Dutch company run by a Portuguese guy who was educated in France. It’s basically just a brand.
Volvo arguably had a lot more to offer when it was sold by Ford. It wasn’t a failing brand. People were still buying Volvos, their lineup wasn’t dying on the vine.
Maserati has got the full Stellantis treatment here. Besides the MC20, their lineup appears to largely be the same thing it was 10 years ago. Oh yeah, there is the “Grecale” compact SUV that seems to be newer and about as remarkable as you’d expect a recent Stellantis product to be. I’ve seen zero of them on the road.
If I see a Maserati these days it is a 10+ year old GranTurismo or Quattroporte driven by a guy who looks like he bought it at the buy here, pay here lot and decided to spend his WRX money on something more exotic.
The brand is on life support and Stellantis might kick the plug out of the socket by mistake, in their latest goofy attempt at running a mega-corporation.
the Penguin drives one. enough said.
Idk man. Look at Volvo- They may be owned by Geely, but they still design and manufacture their own platforms and technology in Sweden, and have far greater autonomy than they did under Ford.
Maserati is hardly thriving under Stellantis. The brand has barely any cache beyond “Wow that person must be a big spender to burn so much money on depreciation”. Other than a few of their halo sports cars, the rest of the lineup is basically just a step beyond owning other upmarket Alfa / Jeep/ Chrysler models.
It’s possible Maserati may actually get a longer leash under Chinese ownership. But they will need to fit the kind of bread and butter [probably electric] luxury vehicles popular in China, (and with the Chinese diaspora) into their lineup.
I’m ambivalent about this topic, but wanted to see if I could comment and remain logged in as myself.
Also I would love to have a Quattroporte but would need to buy better shoes first.
That is Chery’s new marketing idea. Every new Maserati comes with Florentine loafers and egg rolls.
Maybe Chery will throw in some fashionable driving shoes from Temu, guaranteed to last the life of the transmission!
Maybe they’ll sell Maseratis on Temu!