New Maserati Quattroporte to get Supercharged Ferrari V6

It’s reported that the next generation Maserati Quattroporte will be offered with a Ferrari-built V8 turbo and Supercharged V6.

The next generation Maserati Quattroporte has been a long time coming, and much of that is tied up with Fiat’s takeover of Chrysler.

Normally, we could have expected a new Quattroporte to arrive by now, but with everything in the mix after Chrysler and Fiat became one, the exact future of the Quattroporte was in flux.

But last year we learnt that the new Quattroporte would arrive not as a direct replacement for the current car, but as a choice of two models – perhaps a standard Quattroporte and a Maserati Grande Quattroporte?

Sergio Marchionne made it clear last year that the new generation Quattroporte would come in two sizes to accommodate one as a proper drivers car and one as a sports limousine, both of which could arrive as early as Paris in September or, if not, then at the Detroit Auto Show in January 2013.

We had thought that Maserati would be getting the Chrysler V6 Pentastar engine - suitably Maserati-fettled – to deliver somewhere around 400bhp. But Car and Driver are reporting that the new Quattroporte – although they don’t say whether it’s the full size or the sporty version – will be getting a new supercharged V6 built by Ferrari and delivering 420bhp.

In addition to the new Ferrari V6, it’s said that there is also a new Ferrari V8 with a turbo bolted on and delivering 520bhp, which sounds appealing even if it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Why would Maserati want a turbo on a Ferrari V8 to churn out 520bhp when Ferrari already build V8s that deliver 490bhp in the California and 570bhp in the 458? Why would they need a turbo to achieve 520bhp? Why would they want one?

Still, it all sounds rather appealing, even if we’d always prefer to see a Maserati with a naturally-aspirated engine.

Source: Car & Driver

By Cars UK