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Maserati to Debut GranTurismo Replacement in 2017, Alfieri in 2018

Good news, fans of the House of the Trident! An official at Maserati has assured that the Maserati brand is going to finally replace the GranTurismo in the calendar year 2017. The even more spine-tingling Alfieri is slated to be unveiled by the end of 2018.
2014 Maserati Alfieri concept 1 photo
Photo: Maserati
Speaking to the peeps at drive, Maserati engineer Davide Danesin let the information slip and added some juicy details about the Porsche 911-rivaling Maserati Alfieri sports car.

But first, the GranTurismo. Even today, nine years after it started production, the GranTurismo and GranCabrio are very, very beautiful machines. However, the grand touring scene has changed since 2007, which is why even the GranTurismo MC is not up to par with other high-performance propositions in this segment.

Its replacement will retain its 2+2 seating layout and will reportedly make use of the platform employed by the Ghibli, Quattroporte, and Levante. Unfortunately yes, the 4.7-liter naturally aspirated V8 is expected to bite the dust. In this lump’s place, the next-gen GranTurismo (and GranCabrio) will get a 3.8-liter twin-turbo V8 with at least 530 ponies from the Quattroporte.

Regarding the Alfieri, this model will be smaller than the GranTurismo and it will be a little sportier than its bigger sibling. Davide will take over from here: "With the Alfieri we think we need to make another step on the architecture so we're going to arrive at another more sporty architecture, with some common basis [with Ghibli] but with development from there."

The engineer adds that Maserati will be "adapting the new design to have more distance between the front suspension and the cabin. And also on these cars we are going to work on multi-material body, more aluminum." In plain English, the Alfieri will have a long, long hood.

It’s still too soon to tell whether the Alfieri will sport a twin-turbo V6 or a twin-turbo V8 underhood, albeit the six cylinders could be the case according to what we heard at the 2015 FCA Bank am Bellevue conference. However, the platform used by the 2018 Alfieri and the 2017 GranTurismo can be had with the Q4 AWD system. In the Ghibli, all-wheel-drive adds 130 pounds (59 kilograms) to the vehicle without changing the weight distribution over the RWD model.

If Maserati went to such lengths to keep the weight distribution bang on in the family-hauling Ghibli, guess what? The Alfieri and GranTurismo will be even better at carving corners. Oh, and another thing: the Alfieri will be available as a coupe and as a convertible.
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About the author: Mircea Panait
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After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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